Many years ago now I decided to commit myself to having and always keeping zero credit card debt and paying zero in banking and financial services fees. I decided back then that banking was going to have to pay me money for having access to my money while it sits in their bank.
This strategy has served me well.
From where I sit, the federal government should do the very same thing: pay as you go and collect interest on investments in the future.
It’s as if the federal government has maxed out its credit card limit, and most of our tax dollars are going to pay interest and fees. We aren’t buying anything for all of our tax dollars! We’re just paying absurd amounts in interest. This makes no sense, no sense at all.
To keep the American people from focusing on this irresponsible financial malaise, the crazy talking heads in the media feed us a steady diet of blaming the debt on all the supposedly wasteful government programs and welfare recipients. The real problem is the amount of our tax money we spend on interest payments from the national debt! Paying down interest is wasting money! It buys us nothing. It invests in nothing. It has zero return.
I want my tax dollars to be earning money, to be investing in my country’s future, not to be paying on revolving debt that is never ending.
Click to enlarge.
The debt ratio of selected countries*:
- 4% – China
- 5.8% – India
- 14.3% – Brazil
- 18.4% – Russia
- 92.6% – EU
- 95.4% – USA
- 413% – UK
- 1,307% – Ireland
Earlier this week I overheard two elderly men sitting at the breakfast counter in The Coffee Cup in Pensacola, FL. They were talking about how great the US economy is compared to the rest of the world. Either these men are on drugs or have dementia!
Our current political system and those running it have consistently failed and seem incapable of fiscal responsibility. The time for substantive change is now!
We don’t need to just fire all of the politicians, we need to fundamentally change the political system that allows this irresponsible financial pattern of behavior to flourish year after year, budget after budget.
Maybe we can start with not paying the politicians a dime when they don’t pass a budget that produces an ##% revenue surplus. And if the budget year closes without that surplus being realized, none of those politicians can ever run for office again. They get fired. Permanently. Period.
* Source: CIA World Fact Book
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