Ten Reasons I Hate Politics and One Reason I Don’t - Part 5

5.  Sure I Take Donations From The Rich, But I’m Really For The Little Guy

Being a politician is like being a tightrope walker. The difference is that most people want to see the politician fall. While tightrope walkers have to balance their bodies, the politicians have to balance a couple of things. On one end of their balancing poles is the money to conduct an effective campaign; on the other ends are the votes they need to get elected. Here’s the problem. Rich people have the kind of money a politician needs for campaigning, but not enough votes to get them elected. The poor and middle class have the votes to get a politician elected, but not enough money to conduct an effective campaign. (Although, I have to hand it Bernie Sanders, who recently ran an effective presidential campaign with only money from the poor and middle class. But this is rare.) So, what are politicians to do?

Well, typically what happens is they take the money from the rich and promise them certain favors, usually covertly, once they get elected. Then, to actually get the votes they need, they pander to the poor and middle class, promising to do great things for them after they take office. In either case they are engaging in a Quid Pro Quo. In the former case they are exchanging favors for money. In the latter case, they are exchanging benefits for votes. So, what’s the problem?

The problem is that a politician does not pay back those rich donors or those poorer voters with their own money. They use taxpayers’ dollars for that. You see, the government does not EARN money by providing a service like a business does. They TAKE money by force via taxes. Now of course the government does provide services to the nation with that money, such as protection via the military or the police, building roads to ease travel across the nation, and having courts where disputes can be settled peaceably. But since the money used to pay for those services is taken by force, we have to be very careful about how many things we task the government to do lest we find ourselves taxed to death.

In a dictatorship, the leader gets to decide what powers he wants and how much to take from the citizenry. But in a Democratic Republic such as the United States of America, the people get to decide those things. This is accomplished in two ways. We have a Constitution that limits the scope of the federal government, and we have the right to freely vote for the people who will represent us in the White House and the Capitol. Theoretically, the people will vote for representatives that will effectively carry out the mandates set forth in the Constitution without going outside its bounds. But because of the tightrope walking politicians engage in, that doesn’t always happen. Some rich people want laws favorable to themselves, even if they are not Constitutional, and are willing to pay for them. Other people like getting “free” stuff from the government and are willing to vote for it. These forces put a lot of pressure on politicians to go outside the bounds of the Constitution to ensure they have the necessary money and votes to get elected. Typically, they will justify their actions by saying, “I can’t do any good for our nation if I don’t get elected.” Thus, a politician starts down a crooked path that only tends to get more crooked the further he or she goes.

So, we need to ask the question: will we citizens continue to vote for politicians that hand out favors and goodies thus requiring them to walk that tightrope, or will we begin to vote for principled politicians who want what’s best for the country as a whole so they can scurry back down to solid ground?

Ten Reasons I Hate Politics and One Reason I Don’t - Part 4

4.  I Bet You A Trillion Dollars I Can Spend More Money Than You

At one time, it seemed there were at least a few politicians who took balancing the federal budget seriously. Today, those type of people would be laughed out of DC. “You believe WHAT?” To be fair, much of the problem stems from the citizenry. People want way too much from their government and aren’t willing to pay for it. We want low taxes and high spending. Hey, I want that too, but you know what, IT WON’T WORK! And because we want so much for so little, oftentimes the candidate that gets elected is the one that promises to provide the most. Basically, we have become a nation of debtors, living beyond our means in so many ways.

Think about it. What does it mean for our country to be nearly $20 trillion in debt? Well, at its base level, it means that our country has bought $20 trillion of stuff that we couldn’t afford.

In 2015, our federal government took in about $3.3 trillion in revenue; the highest amount in history. This would be like a person who makes $33,000 a year owing the bank $200,000. You might say, “There are plenty of people like that given many people have mortgages, car loans, and credit card debt.” Yes, but hold your horses, partner. Most people take out these loans and then start paying them back out of their income stream without borrowing any more. But not the federal government. In 2015, they borrowed $440 billion to make up for their shortfall. That would be like our theoretical person who earns $33,000 and owes $200,000 borrowing another $4,400. And then continuing to borrow that much year after year.

But wait, you say. The federal deficit is coming down. Eventually it will be zero and maybe go into a surplus. THEN, we can start paying off that debt. To that I say in a gravelly Steven Tyler voice, “Dream on.” When has THAT ever happened? Well, actually it did happen to a small extent back at the end of the Bill Clinton presidency and the beginning of the George W. Bush presidency. We actually ran a modest surplus for four years. But the problem is that when politicians get a whiff of extra money, a spending zeitgeist kicks in and they start adding new programs or spending more on existing ones rather than paying down the debt. Then suddenly, to everyone’s seeming surprise, all that extra money is gone and they have to start borrowing again. It seems to be a never-ending cycle. A deficit reincarnation scheme. Each time our leaders are naughty, they are reincarnated as even naughtier leaders. Given this scenario, our nation will never reach debt-free Nirvana.

To see the problem, all you have to do is listen to a typical politician’s speech. It will go something like this: “Yes, we need to reduce the nation’s debt. (blah, blah, blah) We need to have free college for students. We need to have free healthcare for all. We need to have the most powerful military in the world. And so on, and so on, and so on, almost ad infinitum.

Occasionally, some spaced-out reporter will actually challenge these politicians by asking how they will pay for all those programs while at the same time paying down the debt. And the answer is almost always, “Well, under my leadership, the nation’s economy will grow by leaps and bounds, increasing the tax base, thus bringing in more revenue. Why, we’ll have so much money flowing into the federal treasury, we won’t know what to do with it.” Uh, we all know that’s a lie. Politicians ALWAYS know what to do with extra money.

If asked whether it’s a good idea for the federal government to get involved in all those new programs, the answers will be something like this:

“The American people deserve it.”

“It is every American’s right.”

“We can’t afford NOT to pay for those things.”

"We're the richest nation on Earth. Why not?"

“We’ll save so much money having the government manage this program rather than the private sector, it’ll pay for itself.”

To all of those statements I respond with that famous double positive that means a negative, “Yeah, right!”

Folks, nothing is going to change until “We The People” begin to realize that we can no longer live beyond our means and start voting for fiscally conservative politicians. Otherwise, bye-bye country.

You Should NOT Build a New House if… (Part 1) You Are Tight On Money

Recently, my wife and I completed the building of a new house after having lived in our previous house for almost 31 years. After many months of slinging a hammer, plumbing, and electrifying, we are tired…very tired. Just kidding. We didn’t actually build the house, we hired other people to build it for us. We took an existing floor plan and modified it to fit our needs. The whole process of designing a layout and then having it built was, to say the least, an interesting experience. Actually, some parts of the process were fun while other parts were frustrating. We ultimately came to the conclusion that building a new house is not for everyone. However, we survived and have now been in our new house for about three months. I decided to put finger to keyboard and create a series of posts entitled “You Should NOT Build a New House if…” Here’s the first one.

You should NOT build a new house if…

 ...you are tight on money.

You’ve probably heard it before from people who were suckered into, uh, I mean convinced that they should build a new house rather than buy an existing one or just stay put. Yes, I’m talking about these dreaded words: “It’s going to cost more than what you estimate. Budget accordingly.” I know, those are not the words anyone wants to hear. I kept talking to people who had built in the past and was waiting to hear, “Oh, our contractor greatly overestimated what our new house would cost. It ended up costing $50,000 less than we anticipated. We bought a Lexus with our savings.” But guess what. No one ever said that. I suspect that no one has ever said that in the history of mankind. I can hear the cliff dweller now. “Yeah, we thought it would cost 10 wild boars to have a living space carved out of that rock face, but it turned out that the rock was so hard they had to design different carving tools and it took several months longer to complete. It ended up costing us 15 boars.” And indeed, one friend told me to plan on our house costing 1.5 times more than the contract estimated. I began to sweat since I had already signed the contract at that point.

Because of the stories we had heard from experienced house builders, we started our planning early. We actually began talking to the builders about a year before we thought we’d be ready to build. We knew that we would need some of our retirement money, and it was going to be a year before it would be available without a penalty for early withdrawal. We settled on a house plan and then picked out a lot that would accommodate it. The builders said they would put the lot on hold with no money down. The only caveat was that if someone else came along wanting to build on that lot, we would only have a couple of days to commit else we’d lose the lot. Fortunately, during that following year no one else wanted the lot. And as it turned out, neither did we. As we neared the date for signing a contract, we realized that there were a few downsides to the lot we had chosen, so ended up switching to another one.

During that year of waiting, we did not remain idle. We actually began picking out, or at least estimating the cost of, various items. Things such as hardwoods, tiles, cabinets, countertops, appliances, and the ever important front door. By the time we signed the contract in October 2014, we had been able to revise the cost estimate the builders had given us so we were pretty sure the cost would not rise much during the construction phase. Nevertheless, we still built in a 10% contingency just in case we got a wild hair and decided to put in 18 karat gold bathroom fixtures or the like. We hoped that this contingency would not be needed for the actual house since we had some new furniture we wanted to buy also.

Well, the good news is that the actual cost of the house came in only about 4% over budget. Most of that was due to buying more expensive appliances and front door as well as wanting customized cabinets in our closets rather than the standard shelves and hanging racks. This left us some budgeted money for buying the new furniture we wanted.

So, I was happy that the house was only 4% over budget, but still it was over budget. I missed my goal of being the first man in the history of mankind to be able to say that we came in under budget. Oh, well. Perhaps it’ll happen for the next house we build. Yeah, like we’re going to go through that again.

The lesson for you, the reader, is “don’t build a house if you must stay on budget.” It’s not going to happen! And if for some reason you build and it does happen, be sure to contact the Guinness Book of World Records. They will be very interested in you.