PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
by Newsletter
John Stossel: Succinct Statement
Some insights on entitlement. John Stossel is a libertarian in his outlook and summarizes, in pithy statements, the disastrous economic decisions he sees the Government is making. Michael Tanner of the libertarian CATO institute makes similar points AND provides some legislative solutions from Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Dallas Federal Reserve describes the phenomenon in detail. $99 Trillion Storm on the Horizon. This is a slow moving inexorable economic reality we are only barely addressing.
Storm on the Horizon
Ahead of the curve: kicking the can down the road, a bus, with us on it, headed toward the cliff, storm on the horizon, slow moving avalanche. How many analogies, what analogy moves this issue into the Presidential debate?
The Dallas Fed President gives a very serious and bleak presentation of unavoidable disaster but America is always facing unavoidable disasters and we manage to avoid them and there is good news on policy political arena and in personal arena.
Solutions from Ryan and Tanner
Here are some real world, free market, limited government solutions to Entitlement Reform. No one disputes there is a financial tsunami headed our way with increasing numbers of seniors needing social security and Medicare/Medicaid. There are four solutions 1) reduce benefits to those who need them; 2) increase payroll taxes on productive working people; 3) Paul Ryan's solutions; 4) inflate the problem away, the least obvious and most politically palatable.
These seem like feasible limited government solutions. Since Marina is going to lose, she has the freedom to tell the truth. Freedom - another way of saying nothing left to lose.
Miracle of Compound Interest
Kicking the can down the road is the rational and most emotionally satisfying strategy for the elected official (and for us) and it leads to less than optimal results, like not exercising or eating a bad diet. Fun and you end up on Pleasure Island; it is fun AND not good for you or your kids. So why do we do what we know is bad for us and don't do what is good for us? A recurring question.
John Maynard Keynes said in the long run we are all dead; John Maynard Keynes was not a man who had kids or who believed in God and Eternal and Individual Soul.
The Miracle of Compound Interest and the good news - and there's bad news, too
American Faith in American Optimism
It seems the Entitlement Storm on the Horizon is ignored with a fatalistic acceptance of the inevitable. The appearance of unconcern may be a sense of the underlying dynamic of individual initiative and creativity in American the experience. While past performance does not predict future performance, and one cannot underestimate human perfidy, there is reason for faith in optimism.
