Rich and poor

When I was growing up my mother used to say that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It was obvious to her and others like her that the government in cahoots with big business was funneling money and favors to the rich. In an ideal situation the poor people would have risen up and demanded that this favoritism come to a stop. The less rich had this idea in their hearts but they were unable to change the system, so they decided to try a new approach. They would demand their fair share of the government largess and with the election of President Obama they got the opening they needed. His main theme was the redistribution of the wealth based on the concept of fairness and this is a euphemistic way of saying he would take money from those who have a lot and give it to those who have little. With the re-election of Obama this plan was approved by the American people and we have now cemented the path we have been on for the past 50 years but at an accelerated pace. The people have realized that they can get gifts from the government just like the rich and powerful have been getting and this trend will continue and the demographics of the continued growth of minorities will add to the momentum. The problem with this is that there are too many non-rich and there is not enough money to go around. This is what a number of famous people meant when they said something to the equivalent of: A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses. With this past election the majority has discovered it can vote itself benefits and the phrase loose fiscal policy means going in debt to pay out the benefits to get more votes. This has been going on for most of my life and will now continue at a faster rate. The national debt has been slowly rising since our founding in 1787 from zero to 8 trillion in 2005. The past seven years it has grown to 16 trillion. This means that in seven years we have added to the debt as much as we ran up in the first 221 years. Experts tell us that you can’t keep spending more than you earn but I have been hearing that for 50 plus years and we just keep on going so who knows if this will ever reach the breaking point. I have an idea this point will be tested sometime in the next ten years. I see two possible ways out of this mess. The first and by far the best is to grow the economy through innovation and the second is inflation. Maybe there is a third way that I am unaware of and time will tell.