Barak breaks the bank

Did you see Obama's acceptance speech? Powerful stuff, great speech, well delivered. I can see why people think he's so good. What was there not to like? The American dream? A chicken in every pot? No, it was all there.

It was not until I stopped, thought & analyzed that I realized that his economic program was folly. It truly would break the bank. Just look at what he wants to spend:

• 150 Billion on alternate energy. Worthy no doubt, but a lot more bucks following the largely ineffectual money already spent.
• A tax break for everybody except the rich. That's nearly 300 million of us versus maybe 3 million of the rich depending upon how you do the definitions. Just give each of us a $1,000 break & you're talking about $300 billion in lost government revenue.
• A University education for everyone who wants one. Hard to quantify without details, but say a modest $30 billion every year.
• Universal health care. Who knows how much. $100 billion a year is probably a vast underestimate.

So just on those major programs Barak wants to spend $580 billion a year. Now remember that on top of a budget deficit which already runs at around $400 billion a year. We're up to a Trillion dollars in round numbers. That my friend is a lot of money!
Obama says he will pay for all this by taxing the rich. Well, no doubt that George gave away far too much to his friends, but no way is it possible to raise that much money from the rich. There just ain't enough of them. Say there are 3 million rich people and you tax them $1 million each. You've only raised $3 billion. A drop in the bucket. It just doesn't work. Leftist governments in Europe tried this for years, but still had to come back to higher taxes on the middle classes to make ends meet.
Ah yes, Barak also says he'll go through the government's budget line by line cutting out waste. A worthy objective and well worth doing, but not credible as a way to save big amounts of money. Let's face it some 75% of government spending is upon entitlements and you can't change those without changing the law. Since when did Congress ever vote to reduce entitlements?

I see one of two thing happening. Either he breaks most of his promises (same as every politician) or the country goes broke in effect. Foreign money finances our deficit to a large extent already, but there is a limit to how far they will continue. The least that will happen is that the dollar will become even more devalued.

Change is Barak Obama's mantra. Well, lets see some proposals for real change in the way we tax and spend. I'll put forth a few of my proposals tomorrow.