National(ized) Economy

Take a look at the national debt counter spinning away at the top of the page. At the time of this writing, it's spinning away at 10 trillion dollars. Now play that against the money committed to bailouts so far - $3.9 trillion. That's right, the government has committed nearly half the value of the national debt to bailouts, and for those of you keeping score, that's about 6.75 times the cost of the Iraq war to date. That's just the financial system bailouts. Let's not forget that coming up in about a week, the big three automakers will be back in Washington with their hands out. Then it's also been rumored that the television networks could be asking for assistance.

These bailouts seem to be breeding requests for more bailouts. When I took logic class in college, I was taught that a slippery slope argument is fundamentally flawed. That may be, but I see a lot of ice forming on the hill we're standing at the top of, and it's a long slide down.

What makes this scarier is that President-Elect Obama has said in multiple speeches that because of the economy situation, we can't worry about the condition of the national debt right now. To the contrary, now is the perfect time to be worrying about the national debt. We have an administration coming in combined with a congress who want to enact billions and billions of dollars of social programs on top of the trillions of dollars of bailout money. Currently, the numbers in the thousands are spinning upward. If we don't watch what we're doing, the millions could start moving at that speed. As the debt spins upward, the government prints more money, and as the government prints more money, our dollar goes down in value.

Then let's add that the folks in congress are talking about the government having ownership interest in the bailed out companies. I hope it's not just me who is frightened by the idea of the government having ownership interest in the banking system, major industries and the media.

In the book, The Forgotten Man, we are reminded that when things aren't going well and the the government is doing a poor job, the solution isn't necessarily more government. Let's hope the folks in Washington remember this.