The Short and Winding Road to Financial Failure

From the polling center-right and the political right; first, the polling:

Americans Reject Keynesian Economics (Rasmussen):

By a mere 70-11.

What's more:

In fact, 59% think Keynes had it backwards and that increasing the deficit at this time would hurt the economy rather than help.

And from the political right, Mark Steyn:

Unsustainable:

At the National Prayer Breakfast, Barack Obama singled out for praise Navy Corpsman Christian Bouchard. Or as the president called him, “Corpseman Bouchard.” Twice. . .

Is America a Corpseman walking? . . .

Testifying to the House Budget Committee, Director (Ed.: of the Congressional Budget Office) Elmendorf attempted to pull back from the wilder shores of “unsustainable”: “I think most observers expect that the government will act, that the unsustainability will be resolved through action, not through witnessing some collapse down the road,” he said. “If literally nothing is done, then eventually something very, very bad happens. But I think the widespread view is that you and your colleagues will take action.”

Dream on, you kinky fantasist. The one thing that can be guaranteed is that a political class led by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, a handful of reach-across-the-aisle Republican accomodationists and an economically illiterate narcissist in the Oval Office is never going to rein in unsustainable spending in any meaningful sense. That leaves Director Elmendorf’s alternative scenario. What was it again? Oh, yeah: “Some collapse down the road.” . . .

And the wicked conclusion:

If unsustainable is the new normal, it should also be the new national anthem. Take it away, Natalie Cole:

“Unsustainable
That’s what you are
Unsustainable
Though near or far
Like a ton of debt you’ve dropped on us
How the thought of you has flopped on us
Never before
Has someone spent more . . . ”

It’s not the “debt” or the “deficit,” it’s the spending. And the only way to reduce that is with fewer government agencies, fewer government programs, fewer government employees, lower government salaries.

Instead, all four are rocketing up: We are incentivizing unsustainability, and, when it comes to “some collapse down the road,” you’ll be surprised how short that road is.

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