The Dumb Deficit for Dummies

by Dick McDonald
www.riseupeconomy.com

The concern over the deficit of the Federal Government is another deception that serves politicians well. The major deception is that it covers up the greater sin of distracting the public's mind away from the fact that government continues to spend not only the yearly increase in tax revenues the private sector generates but just a little more. Of course, the little more is always the deficit.

As usual the deficit is either going up or going down and publicized as a great accomplishment or continuing disaster when in fact it is totally immaterial. Look at it this way, if the net worth of America went up $12 Trillion last year and it cost Americans a $200 Billion "deficit" even a dunce would admit that a 60 to 1 annual return on investment was worth it it.

However, all this talk hides an even bigger sin - bigger and bigger government. Politicians know that if you get the public to concentrate on a tree, they can slip the forest right past you. Here again the "tree" is the deficit and trumpeted as the report card for politicians when in fact those people are doing us in - they rightly deserve a perpetual "F".

In the bigger picture politicians are running up unfunded debt at an alarming rate. David Walker, the government's CFO, is running all over the country screaming that America will go bankrupt if we don't raise taxes or cut benefits to pay for these benefits.

Yes the politicians have run amok - they are hiding the forest with a tree and the public will someday wake up to the fact that the people will have to take away entitlement funding from the politicians as they have never met a problem "your" money can't fix. For a solution see here.