8/17/03 - Rabbi David Eidensohn
Hopefully, the blackout will make what I write here more cogent. The bible says, “Happy is he who lives with fear, and who hardens his heart will fall in evil.” If you don’t live in fear, it is only because you don’t know what I am going to tell you.
If you were trapped in an elevator during the blackout, probably, you only thought about getting out. If you were one of the huge amount of people turned loose into the street to walk miles to home with no transportation and little light, perhaps you had the ability to question just whether your government was doing anything except raising money for the next election. Well, here are some facts you might have considered while you burned the shoe leather. If you think a power outage is bad, just wait until the blackout on the dollar. You can ignore it, but it is hard to breathe when your head is in the sand.
For 20 years, from 1950 till 1970, the national debt crept up slowly from 257 billion to 389 billion. Then, in seven years, it almost doubled, from 389 billion to 718 billion. Four years later, in 1981, it was over a trillion dollars. Five years after that, in 1986, it doubled to over two trillion dollars. Four years later, in 1990, it was over three trillion dollars. Two years later, in 1992, the national debt rose to over four trillion dollars. Four years later, in 1996, the debt rose to over five trillion dollars. Today, it is pushing seven trillion. That’s right. In one generation, from 1970 till today, the national debt has risen from a quarter of a trillion dollars to about seven trillion dollars. This is 28 times today what the debt was about 30 years ago.
The quantum leaps in short periods are more frightening than the actual numbers. As a country, we have gone hundreds of years without a large national debt. Suddenly, in the space of a few decades, we lose it. Our debt is now over three times our earnings, which are less than two trillion dollars. Our 2003 income is projected at only 1,756 billion dollars. But spending will be 2,212 billion, leaving a deficit of 455 billions, or almost half a trillion dollars. When we, in one year, run a deficit of half a trillion dollars, we should be terrified. But save your fears. Alan Greenspan tells us that in a few years, we will have an additional ten trillion dollar debt to pay for social security for retirees, monies the government collected from working people and spent and now has no way to recover it. Our government is a huge fraud. They don’t cook the books, they eat the books.
Nor is the above the whole problem. Originally, official government projection from 2002 to 2011 called for a surplus of 5.6 trillion. Now, it seems we will have a debt of probably twenty trillion. If so, the official government projection was off by 25 trillion dollars. This is more than the total annual income of the government for a dozen years. A government that makes such a mistake cannot be trusted with any projections.
If September 11 turned a 5.6 trillion dollar surplus into a huge deficit, there was something wrong with the economy to begin with. If the blackout spread as it did, the system failed. It failed because there is no money for it. We print and print money to pay off various political constituencies, but the silent masses get blackouts and pink slips.
Our population is about 291 million people. Of these, about 120 million pay taxes and support the country. If we have a national debt of over 6 trillion dollars, each taxpayer owes 50,000 dollars! This is a small problem. The big problem is the process. We are not just growing more debt; it is exploding. Within a decade or so, when social security payments come to for people now working, the ten trillion dollars for social security and the snowballing deficits will bring the debt much higher. It will surely be 20 trillion dollars, or at least triple our present debt. This means each taxpayer will owe 150,000 dollars. So what? Walking down the street in the dark is an experience. After all, if we make it to the next morning, we can tell our friends, if they believe us. And think of the shoe manufacturers. They have to live too, you know. Wear out your shoes and serve your country.
Speaking of manufacturing, where were your shoes made? Consult your computer, and where was it made? Your clothes, your office supplies, are probably not American made. An article in the New York Times, August 17, tells how we are losing our manufacturing base. So what? The politicians and the global billionaires will still be doing fine. The rest of you? March, march, march. Get used to it. Light isn’t everything.