Maybe Uncle Sam should have ordered a free credit report

My Dear Fellow Americans:
They will spit on your grave

by Craig J. Cantoni

An old adage says that if you find yourself in a hole, quit digging. So, my question for you, my fellow Americans, is why do you continue digging, and, worse, why are you thinking of electing another steam shovel to the presidency?

What are you digging? You're digging not only the nation's financial grave but also your own. That's not hyperbole. Historians are already chiseling a tombstone with this epitaph: Buried Here Is a Nation that Spent Itself to Death.

If you don't think the nation is spending itself to death, then you don't know the facts. That's understandable, given that it's not in the interest of K-12 schools, colleges, politicians, the financial industry, and the media to give you the facts.

Let me give you some of the facts (all data is in inflation-adjusted dollars):

• Federal spending has increased more than 300 percent in the last 40 years, during a period in which population has increased 56 percent, and median income, 35 percent. (Source: American Institute for Economic Research)

• In the last 50 years, household debt per person has gone from $7,000 to $45,000, a more than six-fold increase. Fifty years ago, Americans saved about 7.5 percent of their disposable income. Today, they save less than zero percent of their disposable income. In other words, they are spending more than their disposable income, going into debt to make up the difference. (Source: Federal Reserve)

• Unfunded obligations for entitlements total $99.9 trillion. Every family of four would have to fork over $1.3 million, or 25 times the average family's income, to fund the obligations through taxes. To fund them through spending cuts, 97 percent of federal discretionary spending would have to be eliminated, including defense spending. (Source: Richard W. Fisher, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas)

The foregoing is a fancy way of saying that the nation is bankrupt and will soon be unable to climb out of the fiscal hole it has dug for the last 50 years. Yet Americans keep digging. AARP wants free medicine, farmers want crop subsidies, sub-prime borrowers and lenders want a bailout, teachers and parents want a teacher-pupil ratio of 1:1, single parents want free child care, parents want free lunches for their chubby kids, the military-industrial complex wants 700 bases around the word, neo-conservatives want to democratize the world at America's expense, Poland wants to stick missiles in the eye of the Russian bear at our expense, Europeans want our protection so they can spend more on their welfare state, South Koreans want our troops to go home but we keep them there, Americans want free health care so they don't have to give up their Starbucks and big-screen TVs, and over 60 percent of American voters either work for the government, work in private-sector jobs that depend on government regulations, or receive government handouts, subsidies, or entitlements.

Many of you diggers think of yourselves as patriots. You stand up at sporting events, shovel in hand, and sing the National Anthem. But the words, which have changed, are Greek to you:

Oh, say, can you see, from the grave's dark light,
What so sadly we wail'd at the Republic's last gleaming?
Whose shabby stripes and dim stars, thro' the financial fright
Over the berm we watch'd, were so tragically weeping?
And the deficits' red glare, the dollar bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that the treasury was bare.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of free stuff and the home of the knave?

The digging would continue with either McCain or Obama in the White House, albeit not as furiously with McCain. As the hole gets deeper, the next president will have no choice but to take the savings of thrifty and industrious Americans, either by confiscatory taxes or through inflation. Some of them will see it coming and take actions to protect themselves.

My wife and I are among them. One of the defensive actions we have taken is to cut our income by two-thirds, so that we can be in a lower tax bracket and not be pillaged as much. We don't know how it helps the economy and society for us to work a third as hard as we used to, but maybe the economics genius Obama can explain it to you.

When nothing is left to confiscate, the hole will be filled with dirt and the tombstone will be put in place. Those who were smart enough to get themselves and their money to another country might visit the grave someday.

In memory of the diggers, maybe they'll spit on it.
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Mr. Cantoni is a part-time author and columnist. He can sometimes be reached at ccan2@aol.com.