Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Focus on issue that matters: Taxes, debt

Having just read page after page of soft-headed drivel on the subject of gay marriage, I had to speak out. Gay marriage just doesn’t matter!

It is about government and corporate benefits. It is not a moral issue. If anything, gay sex is a moral issue, but it is none of your business.

If two guys want to put on wedding dresses and marry each other, a sheep, a goat, or a coke bottle, it is no one’s business but their own.

Because gay this and gay that is all I see in The Citizen, I am starting to wonder if this county is populated by short-sighted idiots.

There are real issues confronting all of us. We do not have time to fool around with paper tigers like gay marriage. For instance, debt in the form of our trade deficit, the federal deficit, and personal consumer and mortgage debt is a real issue.

We on average are a nation that is massively in debt. We buy half a trillion dollars more a year from foreigners than we sell to them. This money then gets invested each year by the central banks of foreign in our federal debt for our children to try to pay off one day.

Additionally, most consumers are now spending more than 100 percent of their income. They are taking equity out of their houses that they will need in retirement and spending it on consumer goods. They are living well beyond their means.

In 20 years we will see massive government taxes and probable insolvency as the feds try to provide the seasoned citizens with retirement and health benefits and pay debt service on the crushing federal debt. This will probably bring on the next great depression.

Because the citizenry is living beyond their means and in many cases paycheck to paycheck, when the crisis finally happens most people will go directly from middle-class status to third-world status.

This time the government will not be there to catch them because it too will be on the ropes. Nobody by that time will be willing to lend to a government that is already massively in the red.

The government will probably react to the crisis with massive new income, property and excise taxes. This will cause business to flee overseas and the tax base to evaporate.

If you have significant assets, you had better think of an overseas investment plan or you will lose them to a ravenous government that is ready, willing, and able to nationalize everything in sight.

Now that is an issue! We need to stop fooling around with the Ten Commandments in court houses, gay marriage, school prayer, etc. Your kid’s morality is your responsibility. Other people’s morality is none of your business.

We can solve the debt issue that I have outlined above with a switch from income to consumption-based taxes, a federal balanced budget amendment, and massive new import tariffs (which will start a trade war, but who cares? We are getting the short end of that stick anyway.).

We can’t put debt reform off. Why are gay marriage, Vietnam War records, and Iraq the issues in this campaign year? We are oblivious to the most dangerous issue before us. The party is over, we need fiscal responsibility in this country and we need it now. Wake up.

Bill Gilmer

wmgilmer@mindspring.com