The debt talks break down

I’ve never seen a single issue dominate the political news so long—week after week after week—as the debt negotiations. Of five Must Reads at Lucianne.com this morning, four are on the breakdown of the talks between Boehner and Obama, only one is on the mass massacre in Norway.

I confess that haven’t been following the issue, as I find it too difficult to understand, with several plans being floated, each with several parts, and with, seemingly, every conservative commentator having a different view of what would be victory and what would be disaster.

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Mark A. writes:

The debt talks are quite fascinating. Basically each plan varies in the amount that they reduce the increase in deficit spending. There is no plan actually to cut the debt (i.e. bring in a surplus and lower the nation’s debt). Both Republicans and Democrats favor plans that are backloaded with cuts. What this means is that they cut very little government spending up front and project that the cuts will come in later years when the economy begins growing again, etc. (Of course, just as Reagan and Bush the first discovered, these cuts never happen.)

When I was studying mergers and acquisitions in law school, I asked my professor, a cynical (but quite kind) tax partner at a major law firm, whether the tax system was just a vote-buying scheme. He replied, “Of course.”

This is a great topic for VFR because I have always believed that true conservatism can only come in the form of a constitutional monarchy. (Yes, a Republic is nice, but as Ben Franklin knew, they are hard to keep.) Democracies such as ours today devolve into vote buying schemes where the respective political parties buy votes using deficit dollars. The Democrats buy them with food stamps, AFDC, Section 8. The Republicans buy them with F-22 fighter jets at $135 million a copy. (Note that every Western democracy is heavily indebted for this very reason.)

Please study the topic more. Your insight would be invaluable. Believe it or not, we’re living through the collapse of the modern democratic welfare state, which is happening because it can no longer fund itself.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 23, 2011 07:19 AM | Send