So goes Obamanomics. Kevin Hassett, writing at Bloomberg:
Last week, we discovered that the state of California will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
With California mired in a budget crisis, largely the result of a political impasse that makes spending cuts and tax increases impossible, Controller John Chiang said the state planned to issue $3.3 billion in IOU’s in July alone. Instead of cash, those who do business with California will get slips of paper.
The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.
It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors.
California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.
And that deficit is rising rapidly – with even more psychopathic spending and brutal taxation already in the pipeline. I don’t agree with everything Hassett writes here. For one, I think taking small bites of a growing pie is much better than taking ever-increasing bites of a shrinking pie is a better formulation for long term success. But he still makes several excellent points.
California, we are assured regularly by the media, is a bellwether for the rest of the country. We would do well to remember exactly where the word bellwether comes from:
Middle English belle ‘bell’ + wether ‘castrated male sheep’
My 8yo son has recently been playing around with making stable structures out of cards. Tonite as I was tucking him in, he asked me if when he grows up if there is anyone who would pay him to make structures out of card. I said “you might try the government”.
Used to live in California years ago. Honestly, it was like visiting a foreign country for this good ole’ boy from Texas. The mindset of the folks that lived there was vaguely anti-american. Never could get used to the tremors. What I could see of the welfare benefits being offered to the poor were incredible, as far as I could tell. Mexicans were pouring across the border to reap the wonderful things that the gringos were willing to give them. I reckon that the unbridled benefits given the illegals coupled with a rampant public service union setup was bound to break the bank.
It’s like these progressives are trying to reinvent the wheel; and having endless discussions avout how oval it should be. All for the benefit of the illegal immigrants and the unions. Who, in turn, vote for the progressives.