Kindly Note the Impending Bankruptcy

Mark Steyn

Last year, the US set up a Super Committee to find $1.2 trillion of deficit reduction by November in order to avoid “automatic sequestration.” Over a decade, sequestration would reduce the federal debt by $153 billion (which is about what the US government currently borrows every month). The latest drama: the fiscal cliff.

But it’s not rocket science; the US government’s problem is that it spends over a trillion dollars a year that it doesn’t have. It needs either to reduce spending or to increase revenue. The US seems to want EU-style government dependency, but doesn’t want to pay for it.

According to OECD statistics: government expenditures per person in France, $18,866.00; in the US, $19,266.00. This makes the federal debt look like an “American Self-Delusion Index,” measuring the ever-widening gap between fiction (limited government and self-reliant citizens) and fact (a cradle-to-grave nanny state).

Generally speaking, functioning societies make good-faith efforts to raise what they spend, subject to fluctuations in economic fortune. So all the agonizing over annual trillion-plus deficits overlooks the obvious solution: Spending more means higher taxes.

Steyn discusses America’s severely redistributive taxation system; why it’s not a matter of the rich not paying their fair share; and the massive scale of course correction required.

The Obama Administration wants everyone to know that it has made more than a billion dollars’ worth of cuts, and it wants some credit for that. But Washington borrows $188 million every hour. So if it took over five hours to negotiate those cuts, it was a complete waste of time. So are most of the “plans.” Any “debt-reduction plan” that doesn’t address at least $1.3 trillion a year is, in fact, a debt-increase plan.

Bottom line—you cannot have both American-sized taxes and European-sized government. One or the other has to go.

source: nationalreview