There should be more pundits and "news" sources that take a time-agnostic point of view: "Oh so that's what happened today, is it? Well who the hell cares." But the Media focuses on the trivial and ephemeral. I'm afraid the internet is just making it worse, with its obsession with how things are "trending", and with who's hot and who's not.
In the political news, the Media obsesses over tweaking this or that tax policy or government entitlement program to the Left or Right. When are we going to focus on something important for a change?! We live in a Democratic age, as opposed to the earlier era of an Aristocracy or Monarchy. We think that the very legitimacy of our political establishment is based on "the consent of the governed."
And yet, we have created trillions of dollars of debt or unfunded entitlement programs that will have to be paid by people in the years of 2020-2050 A.D. Some of them aren't even old enough to vote yet, or they haven't even been born yet! Consent of the governed?
This is an old guilt trip that people are sick of hearing. Maybe it wouldn't be so boring if, instead of guilt-mongering, we switched the discussion to whether our vaunted democratic system is even a fundamentally legitimate form of government. I would argue, as others have done in the past, that unlimited democratic government is inherently despotic. And yet, we teach kiddies in (government-run) schools that "freedom" and "democracy" are symbiotic.
This is an old guilt trip that people are sick of hearing. Maybe it wouldn't be so boring if, instead of guilt-mongering, we switched the discussion to whether our vaunted democratic system is even a fundamentally legitimate form of government. I would argue, as others have done in the past, that unlimited democratic government is inherently despotic. And yet, we teach kiddies in (government-run) schools that "freedom" and "democracy" are symbiotic.
Saddling people in the future with the debts that enable us to whoop it up today is a type of slavery for citizens in the future. How I would love to see a presidential candidate in 2012 rub this irony into the face of the country's first (half) black president who bears some of the responsibility for this crime. If the candidate keeps pressing on this issue, the president will be perceived as being on the defensive, essentially making excuses for a type of slavery.
Comments
"if some fool doesn't spend it". But they will, of course.
Julie said -
Government will go broke paying for them. No one seems to realize that this group of people will die off in record numbers in twenty years or so.
I just saw she is a 80 year old stupid government worker , making $100k retirement most likely , laughing her ass off at people starving on $600 per month SS