Damage to Future Generations

Spreading fear about the national debt laying great burdens upon the children of the future makes for salacious reading but it is bull. That is not to say there are not tremendous things threatening the future of our children, just not that one.

Paul Krugman points out that the rhetoric on this has died down as of late largely because folk are beginning to see the numbers just don’t work. President Obama says there is little likelihood of a deficit crisis, but he’s the president. However, John Boehner is saying the same thing when he was on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” (I like to use George’s name as much as possible to try and teach myself how to spell his name.) Boehner said, “We don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt.” Boehner still disagrees with how to deal with the debt; that his job as the loyal (or disloyal) opposition.

Krugman says that debt doesn’t make our country poorer, it is essentially money we owe ourselves; though it would be problematic if it lead to big or bigger trade deficits, and more overseas borrowing, lessen investment or reducing future productivity. It is just these things are not happening.

But Krugman does say there is truth in that we are cheating our children and I agree with him for the same reasons.

This is how it works. Education of our children is extremely important to our children and we are making education more and more expensive, firing teachers and putting our college graduates under huge debt loads. We will end up with poorer educated children less able to compete in the world. That is a real debt.

Our infrastructure is a mess with a grade of D+ by the American Society of Civil engineers (I’ve written about this before.) Again this put our country at an economic and competitive disadvantage. Here is where a stimulus package and government hiring could really give the country an important push. We have history to show this works. Yet we keep cutting public works projects. Another debt we put on our children.

There are those who make the national debt a moral issue. But what about the morality of a congress that sells itself to the highest Wall Street or corporate lobbyist? CEO’s and others that pay themselves huge salaries while holding common salaries and minimum wages down. All that pushes personal debt up and makes the driving force of the economic, the middle class at more and more of a disadvantage. The inequity of income is a huge debt to most folk who are not born will silver spoons in their mouths. Those are moral issues.

Then there is the blatant immorality of congressional members who take the winner-take-all position and refuse to cooperate to work for the common good.

Yes, there is a great debt we are leaving our children and it is a moral debt. For the nay sayers of cooperation and compromise they should listen to the words of Jesus who said, “He who is without sin can cast the first stone.”