Most everybody has heard “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” It works for the ambitious among us, those that understand about being personally responsible for their actions and their lives. For the rest, there’s government, and it mostly gets spending. Whether times are good or bad, government spends. Unfortunately when the economy hits a rough spot, and goes into a spin, the politicians panic. We have perfect examples of this here in Canada, and in the United States. Trillions of dollars are being spent to prop up both countries.
The problem is the government just doesn’t know what to do, and that’s partly because many people don’t know either. We are full of special interest groups, with hands out, begging for subsidies, grants and whatever else they can get for free. Lobbyists have developed careers around cajoling bureaucrats for money. When you add legacy ministries who, after spending years vaporizing billions of tax dollars, and convincing themselves and a large percentage of the population that they are doing a good job, it’s a disaster. They don’t know any better. The easiest thing to do is keep the cash flowing any way possible. Print it or borrow it, doesn’t matter, just get it into the hands of the voters. They want it and need it, and if we don’t give it to them, well, in Canada anyway, there might be a few nasty letters to ignore.
So we are wallowing around in a pig pen full of short term financial bailouts and the slop is getting deeper. In fact, so deep that on Sunday, November 22, the Canadian debt is going to reach one half trillion dollars. That’s $500 billion worth of obligations on the wrong side of the balance sheet. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, our debt is increasing by $153 million a day. Interest expense is $84 million per day. Imagine if your personal finances were going down hill at $153.00 a day, and your cost of interest to your bank was $84.00 per day. What would you do? Try and make it an even $200.00? Probably not.
Unfortunately the politicians don’t think like we do. They don’t have to. The citizens have provided a backstop since taxes were invented and the only thing that will stop a politician in his tracks is fear of voters. A very large group of voters, angry and frustrated. It’s really the only way we can stop them. One at a time, we are useless. They’ve learned to write nice letters thanking us for our concerns and opinions, and promising to look into whatever it is we are upset about. Then it’s back to business as usual. But when a large enough group arrives on their desk in the form of a petition, accompanied by the news media asking a lot of questions, the fear returns. It scares the hell out of them. Their excuses and long winded blather doesn’t stand up against the truth.
In the case of our debt and what it’s going to do to our future and our kids future, we need to do something now. One of our allies as voters is the aforementioned Canadian Taxpayers Federation. They are a small group of dedicated individuals exposing government waste and incompetence on a daily basis. I encourage everyone to go to http://www.debtclock.ca . Read the facts, fill out the petition and send a link to as many friends as you have. It’s fast and easy just like a politician and one of the best ways we have to fight back.
