From the Sustainability Desk…

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that the tern sustainability is bandied about without a care as to whether or not it has any real applicability to the example represented. This is unsustainable and that is unsustainable, no mention why or by what means, it is merely unsustainable. Simply telling us a thing is unsustainable is supposed to send us into an apoplectic quivering mass of jelly ready to cede any liberty to rectify the problem.

The Western way of life, we are told, is unsustainable. We are given vague reason like global warming, population bomb, peak oil, pesticide use, mining, timbering, breathing. The fear monger comes up with scientific sounding explanations why you should lower your standard of living but he should raise his.

Extreme examples like Al Gore, promoting a drastic lowering of the American standard of living yet burns more BTUs of energy in a month than ten households in the US in a year, are common. This level of hypocrisy is always on display whenever the true fear mongers speak. The very things they warn us of they are doing themselves.

But one thing the true fear mongers agree, should not be ratcheted down, is the level of government spending. The term unsustainable is forgotten in this context. We are told that if only taxes went up a tiny little bit the level of spending could be sustained.

I wonder however. If some alien race, landed on Earth and gave the US government a billion dollars an hour, to subsidize the level of spending, would that solve the US national debt? No it would exacerbate the problem. Even if the aliens gave the US government a trillion dollars an hour it would fall short of what was needed.

Because there is no end to the need of government to spend money. Government’s appetite for spending is insatiable. No amount of income could come close to sating this beast. It could swallow the universe and cry for more with true indignation. It is a beast with a mouth but no stomach.

So if government deficit spending cannot possibly be solved by increases in revenue then how do we solve the problem? We slay the beast. We slay it else it will slay us. The amount of money the US government has pledged to spend but is not accounted for in the fourteen trillion dollar debit is closer to seventy five trillion dollars! The amount of money the US government will have to spend due to it’s Medicare/Medicaid commitments will exceed thirty percent of total US GDP in Five years.

This coupled with the social security time bomb that is ticking down. The US social security administration is already spending more than it is taking in. As with any Ponzi scheme this is the beginning of the death spiral. Again in five years the amount of US GDP swallowed by social security will be over twenty percent of total GDP. Thirty plus twenty is fifty percent of the US GDP swallowed by just these two programs! But that is not the peak.

This is the definition of unsustainable. Government spending exceeding fifty percent of GDP for a prolonged period is assured economic collapse. Government spending cannot long surpass a countries surplus GDP. Even the most efficient economies have surplus GDP in the area of fifteen percent. Any level of spending over that gnaws away at economic growth. That saps the prosperity from a country.

If a person is standing on a train bridge over a chasm, you see a train coming, it is not fear mongering to warn him or her. But if a person is standing in a field and there is a possibility that a meteor might hit him, it is fear mongering, to work him or her into a lather over it.