Are you following this "Sequester" thing? Did you hear what our President, Obama, said about it? Who do you think is correct? You know me. I have been saying that it will take "pain" to correct the situation. It can not be done without "pain". You know it, I know it. First a little story.
Look at our problem this way. Our government went out and borrowed some money and "forged" the names of our children on the note. Our government then gave the money to us so that we could go out and buy things that we could not afford, like homes, cell phones, computers and vacations. Notice how happy it made us to get all that "free" money that we did not earn. We were so happy that we re-elected them to keep it up. That is what happened and now we have to stop the "forging" of our kids signatures on new borrowing, and "we" have to start paying off those notes. That is the "pain".
Try this one. Consider that you are in a car that is rolling toward a cliff and the brakes are out on the car. You could put your foot out and drag it on the ground and stop the car, but it would injure your foot and give you "pain". It could even break your leg, but it would stop the car and save your life. If you don't get the car stopped, you will go over the cliff and die. Now what should you do? If you put your foot out, it could break your leg and give you "pain".. You will have "pain" as soon as your foot hits the ground. If we only consider what happens in the next 5 seconds, like Obama, you should "not" put your foot out. If you consider what will happen in the long term, it is clear that it is better to accept the "pain" now rather than kill yourself or your children. Isn't this the problem that we face?
I have a real problem with the talking heads on TV and Obama with them only considering what will happen 5 seconds after the "Sequester" goes into affect rather than what will happen a year from now if we don't do it.. If the choice only considers the impact in the next 5 seconds rather than what will happen next year we will all "die" in the end. It is that simple. If we can't handle a little "pain", it does not say much for our character. Are we all simple minded "one movers" like dogs and cats who live in the moment rather than consider the past, present and future? It is this last that I thought made us humans rather than dumb animals. Was I wrong?
PS-----How about this one? We started out with 75% of our people paying income tax to pay our bills. Along comes some smart politician with a big idea. Take the "bottom" 25% of the people and have them "stop" paying income tax and make up the difference by borrowing the money from China. Now, they have extra money to keep increase their rate of spending and 25% of the voters in their pocket because these 25% don't pay income tax any more and have extra money to spend on things that they could not afford. Isn't that a perfect system? I don't think that you realized how smart your elected officials really are.
Remember the old Chinese proverb, "A long trip starts with the first step". We are looking at a "long trip" to get our spending back under control and it starts with this first small step of "Sequester". This is the smallest and easiest step in a long process, and if we don't take this "first step", when? It is not any more complicated than that.
