Well the debates are over and I still feel that no matter who wins the election my 40 year old self better plan on working until the day I die as there will be no social security, no Medicare, no pension, no 401k etc (at least as we know them). Sending the children to college so they can hopefully get good enough jobs to support us in our old age? As if. All I see are mountains of debt, getting larger by the second, that will have to be paid down and no real plan to do so; just promises of more tax cuts and more spending. Aughhhh!!!!! And I thought NJ politics pandered!
Good grief people. We have been spending like there was no tomorrow for many moons and now that tomorrow is here it seems like we are using the opportunity to go on one final drunken spending spree. I wouldn't be so upset if all the recent deficit spending had been used for investing in our schools, transportation or energy infrastructures, but that has not been the case. Instead we went out and created thousands of jobs in Asia and the middle East as we ran out to buy fuel for large SUVs to haul home our 52 inch flat screen TVs.
Ok, fine. That was free choice. But what really gets my goat is that the politicians are still promising us we can continue living like that, a life of leisure followed by a long, healthy, luxurious retirement, despite mounting evidence to the contrary for most of us if only they can cut more taxes and increase spending on anything but investing in our country's future. The sooner we realize that we are being sold a bill of goods and we have some real hard choices to make, the better.
Sorry folks, the social security retirement age is going to have to be raised. The average person in their late 60s in the 1930s probably only had a few years to live when they started collecting their social security, today anyone dying in their 60s is considered to have died young. I am already realizing that I better plan to stay healthy, something that really came home this week as my mobility was quite limited (fortunately I can telecommute).
We're also going to have to do something about health care. One of the claims people make to say why socialized medicine is horrible is the long wait to see a doctor. Well, I severely sprained my ankle last weekend, and the earliest I can see the orthopedic doctor will be almost 2 weeks later, by which time my ankle will have healed or I will have really messed up my foot. And I get to pay a nice chunk of change, on top of the Medicare & social security taxes which I'll never see again, from my paycheck for this privilege. Whoopee. And about our infrastructure: we can short change our schools, roads, trains and ports all we want to save a few pennies, but our competitors are not and they will continue to take advantage of a country living off its past legacy.
Instead of tackling these tough problems we have instead been focusing on abortion, what associates did 40 years ago, whether cavemen had dinosaurs as pets and other irrelevant issues in these tough times. Those arguments are for a rich, fat, lazy nation at peace. Well we're fat and lazy but we are no longer rich or at peace. Low taxes are nice, but the goods and services we as a society want costs money, as is evidenced by a now over $10T debt. If we're not going to cut services, we can't keep cutting revenue like there is no tomorrow, especially when tomorrow will soon be yesterday.
Of course we the people are to blame. We listen and accept all this garbage and never concentrate on the real issues. The real issues are boring. Cutting the budget can be done, but that takes courage and will cost some pain. It is also dull. It is more entertaining to discuss whether Osama bin Barack blew up a weather station when he was 8 or whether Caribou Barbie really believes her ancestors had pet dinosaurs as she ponders international security matters from her suburban house. We can say we're mad as heck, and demand a government that will do what is best for the country, but we're probably going to take more of what we've been taking because that is much less work anyway.
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