On Our Electees

There’s an old aphorism in physics that says that something that can’t go on forever - won’t. Well today, it seems that the Republican party voted to test that proposition by  voting through a bill in Congress that is to add roughly, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), $2.3 Trillion bucks to the US national debt over the next ten years. 

As the Babylon Bee puts it:

But who cares? $2.3 Trillion dollars worth of debt is a drop in the ocean in relative terms. That’s just a few hundred billion off of what the United States Federal Government spends each year. So Americans are getting roughly eleven years of debt added over ten years - what’s the big deal?-it’s all just numbers right? 

What the big deal is is the statement at the beginning of this piece: something that can’t go on forever won’t. The even bigger deal is that not a soul in either chamber, well, except for a couple of House Republicans that voted against the new bill (and one who couldn’t ‘cus he was asleep), seems to give a hoot. Which is real bad considering that the US Federal Government is more than $36 trillion dollars in debt.

And what about the Big Orange Man in the White House - does he care? Take a wild guess…

Being that it’s a Trump presidency, there’s stuff like - as the Donald gloats - “MASSIVE Tax CUTS, No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, Tax Deductions when you purchase an American Made Vehicle, along with strong Border Security measures, Pay Raises for our ICE and Border Patrol Agents, Funding for the Golden Dome, “TRUMP Savings Accounts” for newborn babies, and much more!” 

Now sure, tax breaks are well and good and all but if this does add the estimated few trillions of dollars that the CBO predicts, then Americans still end up paying the price in inflation. Maybe those guys workin’ down at the Southern Border do deserve a pay rise for the work they’ve been doing, especially considering that illegal border crossings are down 95%, or at least that’s what the White House figures say. And maybe the American public should be entitled to more years of the tax break issued back in 2017 under the first Trump administration. But it’s staggering how the United States’ fiscal position is so blatantly tenuous; yet at the same time, the same Republicans who lambasted the Biden administration for overspending are happy and compliant in voting for the same sorts of spending increases.

~Meanwhile over here in Britain, things are just as bad:

….Yeah, so, uhhh…about that whole Brexit thing - didn’t go to plan after all. Like I posed some weeks back, this is the real cost of democracy: there is no democracy. You thought your ballot mattered? You thought the pen was mightier than the sword? Nope, apparently not. Keir Starmer has sold out one of the flagship parts of the Brexit deal: that we had unbridled and unrivalled control of our waters. For the next twelve years, members of the EU can fish in our waters, giving up our water sovereignty for a UK-EU security-pact that we’ll have to pay into and a few less food checks between UK and EU ports. At least we can use those E-gates at more European Airports so that when you’ve finally decided that you’ve had enough of it here you can do it quickly enough so as to not be held up in a queue behind several-hundred other people all escaping the decrepit English state.

And no one would blame you. Take a look at this:

Alarming stuff. Nationally, Birmingham does sit above the average: close to 15% (close to 10 million out of 70 million) of the population are out of work (although that figure is bound to shrink thanks to immigration outpacing worklessness, probably). What’s genuinely concerning is that the welfare system has been quite clearly manipulated:

In just 10 years, the UK's "sickness benefit caseload" is set to nearly double. Again, let's not forget about the border here because the prediction above could very plausibly be a conservative one. To think that every one of those men (which it mainly is) coming into the country every day are productive and salutary additions to the UK economy, is to be blithely insouciant. And by the way, the UK is actually an outlier here:

Under the new premiership of the Labour Party, they have done two things to increase Britain's worklessness: in the October Budget, Rachel Reeves increased both minimum wage and national insurance - two anti-work policies bound to increase unemployment.

Again: anything that can't go on forever - won't.

In America, in Britain and much of the western world, we are ignoring basic fundamental logic. Eventually of course, it's gonna catch up to us and when that day comes, do you know who's gonna pay? The same people who always do - regular everyday folk who actually do stuff. And it won't be just their cash they'll be paying with...