Lies Are Easier To Tell

For God's sake, read this testimony given to the United States Senate Committee on the Budget by Professor Mark Blyth. You remember Professor Blyth. I told you about him almost two years ago. Try to grasp what he is saying. I know it isn't that easy. But I also know that if I can understand it, you can too.

But most importantly, anytime you hear anybody say:

"It is irresponsible and immoral to kick the can down the road.
We cannot saddle our grandchildren with a crushing burden of debt.
We need a budget that is painful to all (today) in order to protect future generations.
Future generations are going to have an inferior standard of living because of our fiscally irresponsible behavior."

You can send this this link: Statement of Mark Blyth, Eastman Professor of Political Economy, The Watson Institute for International Studies and Brown University, as a response.

Lies are easier to tell than the truth. The truth is usually more complicated and harder to hear than a lie. But it's worth telling.

"Third, unlike households, the United States issues its own cash, owes itself money, borrows other people’s savings with its own paper, and brings new people into the household so that it can tax them across the next several generations. National governments can do all that, families and firms cannot and US states cannot. And no one can do that better than the United States national government since its debt is backed up by the world’s most dynamic economy, 14 aircraft carriers, and positive intergenerational capacity to tax. Let me unpack this."

If your brain just isn't wired for the economic stuff, then try the story Professor Blyth tells on the personal level.

"I was born in 1967 in a working class family on the East Coast of Scotland. My mother died when I was three weeks old and I was given up to my paternal grandmother for my care. Our income was her state retirement pension (an entitlement). I went to school (paid by taxes) and ate free meals at school (an entitlement). I went to university for free (an entitlement) and now I am a professor at an Ivy League school. As such, I will pay more in taxes over my lifetime to the US government at a much higher rate, and for longer, than I would have ever done if these entitlements had not been there. They made me what I am today and I am a fiscal net positive long asset.

So when people say “we cannot saddle our grandchildren with a crushing burden of debt,” or that “we need a budget that is painful to all (today) in order to protect future generations,” they are really saying “lets shrink the economy today so that the parents of today earn less money and pay more for services. That will make sure that their grandchildren grow up poorer, with a smaller economy, and a worse education.” Quite how that is supposed to keep America great going forward is a mystery to me (unless it’s the magic of tax cuts themselves, but they keep failing to show up too)."

Read. Share. Engage. Send it to your Congressional Representatives.

Don Brown
March 13, 2015