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A Santa Fe reader recently had a letter published in the Business Outlook in which he claimed that fiscal conservatives believe in a “myth” that government, like households, must operate within its means.
Yet he believes in his own myth that the money supply is only limited by big government’s ability to find goods and services it deems worthy of buying. Such thinking got us the Solyndras of this economy — just one among far too many examples of how poorly Washington makes decisions on winners and losers.
The writer of that letter also ignores some basic economic truths. The money supply as a store of value is directly affected by Washington’s ability to manipulate it. When the supply goes up, existing value is reduced by inflationary pressures. Nothing is created by printing more money in search of the next big thing.
That leaves only one other method by which the government can increase the amount of money it has to spend: Confiscation of the wealth of its citizens, involuntarily of course, since no one really pays taxes willingly — or there’d be no IRS. Take wealth from one person, pass along to another. Nothing is created. The same belief in myths can also be said of the wealth transfer advocated by union-driven supporters of private-sector wage manipulation: Taking wealth from some to put in others’ pockets for some perceived social injustice creates absolutely nothing. We, those of us who have accumulated some wealth, are just as willing and able to spend our money as anyone else, thank you very much.
We get it, right now the other side believes it is winning — but we generally don’t care. Between 8,000 and 10,000 baby boomers are reaching age 65 seven days a week, and there are millions and millions of us still to come. When we retire we no longer contribute to society as we did when we were employed. Eventually our system will run out of other peoples’ money and collapse just as it is imploding right now in Europe and South America. Someone else will have to pay the bills, likely the current generation of children, and I personally won’t care what burden is placed on them even if you think I am selfish. The socialists did this to themselves, and we won’t bother to say we told you so. Some of us will be too busy playing golf.
Frank Bagnato
Albuquerque
