Why You Shouldn’t Give A Shit About the Federal Budget Deficit

If you’re worried about leaving our kids and grand kids a great big fat bill they’re going to have to pay for because of our multi-trillion dollar federal budget deficit, then stop worrying.  Those numbers don’t mean squat and they won’t be a problem for our future generations.  During my 53 years on the planet we’ve had deficits and we’ve had surpluses and it hasn’t meant a damn bit of difference to the kids or their parents.

It’s only made a difference to professional politicians who regularly wave the bloody shirt of deficits to try and scare the public and get them to spend less money on the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised and especially the environment while we simultaneously splurge like drunks in Vegas on phony wars, shameless subsidies for the dirty fossil fuel industries and tax breaks for rich people and big business.

But what do you expect from people in the political field whose business model is to constantly have their begging hand out while they ceaselessly hit you up for “campaign donations” so they can get elected and re-elected and then have their staff people do all the work while they themselves keep on fundraising.  If you want to take financial advice from people of that ilk then you deserve to get conned and jacked.

But if you’d like a simple explanation of why you should just laugh at the fear of deficits then read on after the break for today’s enlightenment, courtesy of a commenter on Gawker.com

Christopher Mims on Grist turned me onto this yesterday and it made so damn much sense I’m passing it on to you today:

Comment by: James_from_cambridge 03/02/11

Seriously, everybody needs to stop panicking over this ridiculous Republican bullsh*t about the deficit. They create this panic to fool y’all into cutting the New Deal programs we all know and love and that they’ve had a grudge against for the past 80 years (a-holes never forgive, nor forget and Republicans are the biggest a-holes that ever were.) Republicans themselves created these huge deficits, which started after their huge tax cuts for gazillionaires in the 80’s, and they never went away. They figured the tax cuts would force government to cut spending. Never happened, never will happen because the only way to make a dent in the deficit without raising taxes to the level they were at pre-Reagan, is to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, brutally. Again, NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN, because the Middle Classes love their Social Security and Medicare. But these deficits, and the massive debt, don’t matter anyway.

We will never go under as a country for two reasons. 1) We can print money. 2) We’re vampires. That’s right, we’re the Edward Cullen of planet Earth. When Reagan the infirm created those huge deficits and the dollar plunged, the Japanese started investing heavily in the U.S., buying property and our debt. We sucked them dry and when they collapsed, we then moved on to European and Asian investors in the 90’s. Now we have the Chinese, who think they’re being smart by not going on a buying spree of American infrastructure like the Japanese but instead buying up our good old Government bonds. They’re bigger idiots than the Japanese because we’re gonna inflate our way out of this particular debt, and they’ll get back half of what they invested. When we’re done with them and they collapse, which I promise you they will, we’ll move on to the next group of suckers. Probably the Indians (and after that, we’re coming for you South America [I’m looking at you Brazil!], probably around 2025, so get ready!)

We’re too big to fail folks, way too big to fail, ’cause if we do, we’ll take the entire world economy down with us and all other countries know it and will therefore prop us up indefinitely. So stop panicking like little schoolboys in a rectory. Pick up a friggin’ Economics book and stop swallowing Republican lies about what caused the deficit and how important it is anyway (Republican tax cuts that drove down the top marginal rate from 70% in the 1970’s to 35% now is the only cause. How the hell can the Federal govt. function when they’ve completely deprived it of oxygen?)

**Thank God I finally got to use my Economics degree!!**

The Greenius says, if you really care about your kids and future generations then stop worrying about accounting tricks and start focusing on the climate deficit you’re leaving everyone under 40 to deal with.  Instead of cutting the federal budget, our politicians need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions and use of fossil fuels.  But they’re all too cowardly and impotent – on both sides of the aisle – to do anything about that in time to make a difference.  In fact, most of them are doing their best to bring it on as rapidly as possible, and rubbing their hands gleefully as they do.

But at least every one of them will be well financed for their comfortable ride to the hell and high water coming our way.