I think we all need to go back to the politics at the time the Affordable Healthcare Act was passed. The Democrat's had just lost a midterm election and had they wished to change even one word in a terribly flawed bill, it couldn't be passed. Yes, it was badly flawed, however it was far better than doing nothing, so it was passed precisely as it existed to cobble together a vote.
I think it's time the Democrat's made a case for it's the Republican's who have refused to fix it. We need compromise in Congress to fix what's wrong in Washington, and I believe that Obama truly was willing to compromise. I'm not so certain that Democratic Leadership was as willing as the President.
I believe it's time to push for parties that put Country above Party, and that starts with leadership on both sides of the aisle. Trump, if he got one thing, it was that many Republican's were tired of the Republican Leadership. His nomination was largely based on his targeting that leadership. The same may not be true for Hillary, but if she wants to be an effective President, she needs Congress working together more than they work on their individual party agendas.
It's time to re-write healthcare, immigration, etc. It's also time to redefine how we budget, and likewise how we look at debt and worth. The U.S. has probably never been worth more than it is today, if we had an honest assessment of what we're worth. Yes the debt is greater, but by far, so is our net worth.
As an individual, if you come into life with nothing, and you leave owing lets say a million, are you a total failure. If all that can be said is you owe a million, perhaps that's the case. But what if your estate, real estate, stocks, assets, etc. add up to a few million. I'd hardly call it a failure. I believe the same should hold true of our country. If the debt goes up, but the true net worth goes up more during an administration, I'd say that administration was positive. The problem is, how do you determine the true net worth.
I've looked at estimates that range from saying we're worth ten to perhaps one hundred times or more what our National Debt figure is. What's most important is that none say our debt is greater than, or even close to what we're worth. To me our real worth is what something could sell for today, not a depreciated value placed on it by accountants who depreciate practically everything.
Certainly many assets of the Govt. like our National Parks ought never be sold, but they can be valued. Other assets could be sold if we chose to, and frankly if we wanted to pay off the debt, we could. I'm not pushing for that, but what I am saying is, let's stop making it a crisis to spend money. I believe if we spent trillions on infrastructure, our net worth might very well go up far more than our debt. Furthermore, the employment that making all the needed infrastructure improvements might very well pay so much in taxes that the cost would actually be nowhere near the amount of money spent on it after tax revenue were considered. I believe it's clear that States cannot maintain the infrastructure properly, they just keep applying band aids to it. We need massive improvement, it needs to come from the Federal Govt.
Gary |
