One of my teen-aged granddaughters left a magazine here last week with a cover story: Lee Ann Rimes is broke. Don’t you wonder how a young country music star who has been earning millions since she was 14 years old can go broke? Or, a pro athlete who made $20 million a year for 10 years blows it all? Or, how a city like Detroit has to file bankruptcy? Or, a state like Illinois will go broke in the next 5 years if Pat Quinn is reelected governor? Radio Shack will be gone soon, joining the long list of brands that no longer exist. How about your neighbor with the good job who is losing his house and will be moving and filing bankruptcy?
Anything can be mismanaged. Even a country. You see it coming, Lee Ann, the pro athlete, Detroit, Illinois, Radio Shack, and your neighbor all knew it was going to happen, but they can’t make the adjustments that are needed to stop it from happening. Other things matter most: the house, the kid’s schools, the next election, the CEO pay, and the avoidance of pain from change. Circling the drain, everyone knows it’s going down the drain, but the flush happened years ago. The drain is it.
Here are some facts: America’s unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years are between $100 and $200 trillion dollars. If we take $150 trillion and divide it by the 90 million kids who are under the age of 18, all of my grandkids except one, that totals $1.5 million per child who did not vote for the idiots who are running up this tab. That’s $30K per child in supplemental taxes over and above normal taxes. If some of us live long enough to kick some in, let’s cut that in half. It’s $15K a year. This doesn’t include the damage ObamaCare will do or the additional burden the spend-crazy politicians my add to stay in office or to get elected to office.
The flush happened the day Obama took office. There are no plumbers to re-route the pipes in Washington. Some states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Louisiana have re-routed the pipes and the states will not go down the drain. Illinois has a prospect, Bruce Rauner, the Republican candidate for governor, who might save the state from the drain.
Sadly, the country has no prospect for stopping the inevitable from happening. If you can sleep at night knowing you are doing this to your kids and grandkids, go next door and ask that neighbor how he feels about spending his kids into bankruptcy. It’s no different. You were a silent observer to that and you are doing the same for our own kids and grandkids. It’s the frog and the pot deal. Throw a frog in a boiling pot of water and he jumps out. Put him in a pot and gradually raise the water temperature and he dies. We are all frogs in a pot with the temperature raising since destroying a country takes time.
