Are you nuts? You think we are into recovery? Wait until the hyper-inflation hits from the out-of-control spending our socialist government has done, is doing, and will do. Transition, yes, right into third-world nation status.
Well, it didn’t take long to get a response to my provocative blog yesterday, and, of course, the response reminds me of the same rhetoric that has appeared in this country since 1930s when President Roosevelt was accused of being a socialist (communist) for his government spending. No, I wasn’t living then, but I can read and do. As a matter of interest, I am a history buff, with a particular interest in U.S. economic history. So I will respond from an historical perspective.
Government spending in deficit mode has been going on since the establishment of our first government, which means, the U.S. government has more times than not had a budget deficit and debt. If you don’t believe me, read the following excerpt
Several years earlier, in 1789, Hamilton had been appointed the first ever Secretary of the Treasury. In that post, he directed a monumental undertaking to straighten out the nation’s tangled finances. He funded the national debt and even engineered the “assumption” by the new federal government of all the various state debts accrued during the Revolutionary War and its aftermath.
Folks didn’t like what he did then anymore than they do now, but it was necessary in order to preserve the new country. Jumping forward, Abe Lincoln funded the Civil War, the building of the transcontinental railroad, and the development of a public school system on deficit spending. President Roosevelt softened the Great Depression and conquered the Germans and Japanese with deficit spending. Dwight Eisenhower financed the GI Bill and interstate highway system on deficit spending. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon financed the Vietnam War on deficit spending. Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior financed who knows what on some of the largest deficit spending in history. Bill Clinton … oops, no comment on his eliminating the deficit … George Bush, the second, financed two wars, an unfunded Medicare increase, and a massive tax cut for the wealthy on deficit spending, and now President Obama has deficit spent to bring us out of the “Great Recession,” and to finance the economic transition I wrote about yesterday.
Deficit spending is not good. We would be better economically if we spent within our means, but sometimes, just as it is in business, we have to go to the well for money we do not have, and when we do that, some economic pain results. We will feel the pain of the borrowed dollars down the road, but it will not kill us. It never has before and there simply is no reason to think it will now. We have always, and I repeat always, come out of spending deficits and large debt stronger, richer, and with more wealth for everyone. I have no reason to suspect otherwise today. It is just a matter of time …
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
