PART ONE CONVERSATIONSWITH A GHOST
“Uh... thanks for the opportunity, I guess. Gosh, nobody ever asked what I thought... I mean, speaking from beyond the grave and all. So here goes.” BIG DIFFERENCES “I don’t mean to sound critical, but right off the bat I notice some big differences between what we did and what you are doing. “Let’s begin with money. I died in 1960. The federal budget was balanced when I checked out. It’s not that we didn’t know about debt. We ran up huge debts in WWII. “But we were fighting a real war. One we could lose. Not some phony-baloney war with people who didn’t have a country, an army, a navy, or an air force. ‘Terrorists,’ you call them. Ha ha. “And then, when our real war was over, we sent the troops home, cut the military budget, and began paying down the debt. Isn’t that the right way to do it? “But you didn’t have any war to fight... and when your only adversary – the Soviet Union – threw in the towel, instead of cutting back on the military, you actually increased it. Geez, what were you thinking? “Spending more money on ‘defense,’ even though you don’t have any enemies you needed to defend against? I don’t get it. “And you increased spending on domestic
giveaways, too – medical care and social security pensions, mostly. And I’m not going to bother with all those crazy agencies and departments that spend a few billion here and a few billion there... and nobody knows what the heck it is for. “And the result is that now, you’ve got a debt of $22 trillion that you can’t possibly pay. They still taught arithmetic when I was in school. And I see you’re spending 38% of GDP, but you’re only collecting about 17% of GDP in taxes. “And this is in a time of peace. And prosperity. What’s going to happen if you ever have a real war? Or a real depression? I’ll tell you... those numbers – bad as they are – are going to get a lot worse. And you’re going to have a real crisis on your hands. “What kind of financial management is that? And you’ve got a Fed that is manipulating interest rates to encourage people to borrow more. I don’t get that, either. “And you think you’re so smart... with all those PhDs at the Fed. Well, let me ask you something. We got 5% growth... throughout the 1950s. You’ve barely got 2% for the last 10 years. We did it while paying down the national debt. You added $13 trillion. How come? “And our wages went up – for working people, as well as managers and executives
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May 2019
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