On 11-Nov-07 6:11, Matt Whiting wrote:
Jay Honeck wrote:
There was a national debt of 3.7 trillion in the late '70s?

Nope.

Just like the sub-prime mortgage lending debacle, our national debt
WILL collapse. It's as inevitable as sand through an hourglass.

What makes me sick is that both the Democrats and the Republicans
(formerly the "balanced budget champions" of my youth) now run up the
deficit as a matter of course, but feel it necessary to blame each
other for the problem. Actually, the only difference between the two
parties is the *reason* they run up the debt. Democrats blame the
war, Republicans blame "entitlements" -- but neither side has ever
seen a tax they didn't adore, or a spending program they wouldn't hump
dry.

I say throw them all out, and start over.

Maybe its less about the parties and the reputation attached
to them, and more about people on the top and their teams?
I read Alan Greenspan's comments about Clinton and his fiscal
discipline. There was this democratic government, making
actually profit, what a concept, and as a sideline, spoiled
its own legacy by personal misbehavior of its leader.

In a long run I always prefer the team with the eye on the
ficus, the rest is barely a sideline.

Thomas


I'm game, but it will never happen. Remember the old quote about the
fatal flaw of democracy:

Scottish professor Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1714-1778) of the University
of Edinburgh: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of
government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote
themselves largess from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates
promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result
that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always
followed by dictatorship."

And I think we are in the next to last stage outlined he
http://www.apatheticvoter.com/Articl...emocracies.htm

Nobody will vote out THEIR congress critter as then someone else would
get more of the money. Everyone wants someone else to vote out their
congress critter first.

Matt