Fiscal Fatigue

    All I hear about is the Fiscal Cliff and how this country is going over it. To that I say, "Good." We have invested way too much time and wealth in assisting those that would loot this nation of its resources so that they may either continue to wallow in their miserable existence, or continue their opulent lifestyle. And sometimes, it's difficult to determine who is who.

    We encourage, dependence on government to the point where there are families who have spent generations on welfare. We reward failure in school, in business and in life. Some executive invests his company in something that eventually brings the company to ruin and he is given millions of dollars as a bonus. A company starts up by manufacturing a product that nobody wants, and the government gives them a bailout, costing the taxpayer billions, and they go under anyway. Later, it's revealed that the "bailout" was a thinly disguised payoff to a campaign donor of one stripe or another.

    Congress ignores or ostracizes people who tell the truth. and embrace the liars, charlatans, and con men that tell them what they want to hear. Moreover, they use voodoo economics and outright lies to create an atmosphere of panic, all in order to amass more power and influence for themselves.
Mencken said it best, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamoring to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    The infuriating thing is that, when someone, who is demonstrably smarter than all of them combined on the subject of Economics, explains reality, they act as if they heard nothing. Even worse, they think we are stupid enough to believe their bullshit. They make the often fatal mistake of confusing powerlessness with ignorance.

     It's a dangerous game. Powerlessness is okay when it's shrouded in the cloak of prosperity. Joe Average doesn't mind the games government plays as long as his quality of life remains unchanged. It's sort of the same philosophy as those people that live in the same neighborhood as a notorious gangster: as long as our neighborhood is safe, we don't care what he does. The problem for those in government is, they have begun diminishing the quality of life of those that live on Main Street, and when the Middle Class feels threatened, they can become dangerous. And when they finally decide enough is enough, there might be a bunch of government types going over the cliff with the economy.

    Maybe if a few go over, the rest will see the error of their ways. Let's hope we don't ever need to find out.