The Dumbing Down of America

The average US citizen is a vegetable that reclines on a couch. Overweight, hates his or her job and wants to make more money to buy more toys. Nobody saves for retirement until they approach 55. Then they put their retirement fund in a 401k or IRA and the salesman shows them a pyramid diagram and asks them where they want to invest their funds—down at the bottom where it’s safe or up at the top in the winner’s circle?

Did you know that solar panels are a “no-brainer?” Just ask Ed Asner. That means you don’t have to think to make money. Then there are the hybrid cars that you need to own 10 years to break even on, the only trouble is most people get a new car every 4 years because the one they’ve got, is falling apart. Plus after 10 years the car is worthless unless you replace the battery.

Obama’s wife started a healthy school lunch program to keep kids from getting fat. All it has done is reduce the number of American kids eating the lunches. Fat kids know what tastes good, they enjoy deep fried food and pizza. If you’re from Central America, any lunch is better than no lunch. The neat thing about the new kids in the school is that the school district gets $8,000 for each one, to educate them. And this is government money, it’s not like it is taxes that we paid. I’m not quite sure where that sort of logic leads to, but I wouldn’t wait for the music to stop, to sit in a chair—their playing with half a deck.

Then we tell our kids they have to go to college to get a better job. It’s true for some professions, but how many rocket scientists and brain surgeons do we need? As long as we have rich people, we will never have enough lawyers, go figure. As the student loan approaches 200k it becomes a form of slavery, from which there is no relief. Lincoln freed the slaves and by God Obama will get them back. This time it won’t be an issue of skin color, but rather one of naively trusting a government program to do what it promised. Name me one government program that has—I go ballistic with the mention of the ethanol gas program.

The new minimum wage will give everyone a boost in wages. So everyone up the ladder gets a pay raise. It’s a little like putting a magnifying glass in front of the carrot on a stick. You’ll never enlighten these workers about inflation and its causes; they’re more into cars, women, football and basketball. Notice as you earn more, you have to pay more in taxes, and 50 percent of the population pays no Federal income tax now so that should drop a tad, to say 48 percent with the pay raise.

When people discuss presidential administrations in relation to their successes and failures, they often forget to realize that it takes about 4 years before there is a cause related effect. The president on watch gets credit or blame for what was set in motion 4 to 10 years earlier. Clinton is cited for balanced budgets, guess what? Congress was Republican, both houses then. The president may be the head honcho, but he is not the one issuing the laws and writing the checks. This argument would glaze over the eyes of most minimum wage earners; the knowledge puts no money in their pocket.

Our government’s 17 trillion dollar debt is so large that it escapes comprehension. This method of accounting will work until it doesn’t. The warm and fuzzy feeling is gone, financial security is what we desire. But look at it from the government’s point of view, everyone is setting there watching and hoping that nothing overturns the apple-cart (notice how we have progressed from the analogy of the straw on a camel’s back). We are good for now, but now, is not forever.

Many cite this country as being the greatest in the world. It was at one time. You used to have to be a citizen to vote, now nobody cares, anyone can vote if they look old enough, and they can vote more than once if they feel like it. Our government hands out free money to anyone who can make it here (of course those aren’t my tax dollars that I paid to the Federal government). It still is the greatest country in the world, but it depends on whether you’re in, looking out; or out, looking in.

We need to understand that whatever our beliefs on the issues, it will not influence the final outcome. But one thing is very obvious. Things are promoted or sold to make money. SOMEONE ends up paying all of the bills. If government was smaller or had a smaller budget, we would have less of the stuff we really don’t need. I guess that is just too simple of an idea to work. (Mr. SOMEONE lives down the street from me somewhere, God bless him for all the taxes he pays.)