We are here in beautiful downtown Flalaland preparing for our journey to Ireland. I am fairly organized which is unusual. We will be visiting cousins, joining a golf group from Harbour Ridge and of course a trip to Dublin and the Bushmill’s distillery. I wanted to start off there but the lovely Kathy wants me to pace myself. 

All this should make one giddy and I am, but the world at large gives me pause. Pictures from Maui are not only devastating but haunting. We walked down Front Street in Lahaina a few years back. This was the heart and soul of the island and it is gone! Not damaged but gone. How do you come back from that?

I look at our political landscape with not only wariness but foreboding. On the one hand we have a choice between Biden and Trump and that can’t be good. It is not just the clash of personalities but such distinct schools of thought on what is good for us. I don’t have much faith in either side. 

We have many serious problems and I wonder where to start.

Immigration jumps right up there. We need immigrants. Hopefully we all know that. Smart ones and not so smart ones. Yet we can’t even put a pen to paper for a solution. It has been over 35 years since we have done anything. It is causing grief to every city in the country. To call it chaos would be too kind. 

Fitch brought a wisp of reality to our finances by lowering our credit rating  and it was brushed off as absurd. The Federal government spent $6.5 trillion in 2022 and took in $5 trillion in revenue. That is a deficit of $1.5 trillion. Our national debt is at $31 trillion. 

How did this happen? Probably a combination of factors. It is not just Dems or Republicans. It has been thirty years, of financial crises, pandemics, wars and yes, tax cuts. The last time we were close to break even was while Clinton was president. What do we do now? 

To get the budget in balance we would have to cut 25%  of every department of government, including defense, medicare and Social Security. If you think those areas are sacrosanct then would have to cut 85% of every departmental budget. And we would still have a $31 trillion deficit! 

If we had adults in the room I would not be so pessimistic. The right wants to cut taxes and the left wants to give more to the masses. That cannot work either but they have dug in their heels. And the village idiots go home every Wednesday afternoon only to return Monday. Ah yes we are in a one month summer break for Congress. We have hearings on the Bidens and Trumps but are too busy to get more pressing matters done. This is insane. 

I deal with people at the end of their lives. Many of them arrive at our door, beaten and broken. Not from thugs but our medical system. They have had chemo, procedures of all sorts, replacements, hospital care, home healthcare and pharmaceuticals galore. I honestly wonder if things are better or worse for them. 

That budget item called Medicare is only going to balloon higher as more people retire. Our systems of healthcare and security never could have imagined the implications of an aging populace. I wondered aloud if we should think about rationing some of this. Holy Shiite, did I get pushback. What was I thinking? I can guarantee you there is not a soul in any branch of government that wants to touch that third rail. Am I so off base?

The swamp is great at playing with numbers. Biden tells us he lopped off over a trillion dollars from last year’s deficit. That’s because it was high to start with. Tax cutters will  tell you it’s  great for the economy. Trickle down. Maybe that worked for Reagan but studies have shown people in upper brackets are not spending more but putting it away for their kids. I am not economist but I have had to figure out a way to make this work for the Kenny family over the years. Where are the gurus? I wonder. 

There was an interesting piece on NPR the other day. It had to do with Rust Belt cities.

The question was, “Why do people still live there?” At first I said because they like it. But upon further thought I really wondered what one does with a place that was built around manufacturing, or rail transportation? Now we can live off the government’s largesse and build convention centers or a new home for an IRS office but does this in any way seem practical?  

Now you are saying where is this whack job going with this? My thought is simple. We need some serious out of the box thinking. Not just dreaming. We allocate money to go to Mars and yet we have so much to do here. I am talking about grassroots revolutionary thought. Say the unspeakable. Think the unthinkable. Come at things from totally different direction. 

Elon Musk is part genius, part fruit cake. But take a look at what he has done. Not Tesla. Not X, aka Twitter. Look at SpaceX. They have blown the doors every government sponsored program with the likes of Boeing, Amazon et al. They launch rockets weekly not every quarter. They bring them back to land on a launchpad. They do things differently. 

Simply put I would love to see us look at everything we do as country and say is this really, necessary, efficient and plausible? That goes for everything including the sacred cows. We would need some creative and flexible minds. We would need dedication that would call for 10-12 hour days. In short we would need a different mindset for each and everyone of us. Note the emphasis on us not me. Ok I am out of here. Please come back. 

As always

Ted The Great 

Factoids:

Since found in 2002 SpaceX has had 254 launches,216 landings and 189 reflights. At 394 feet of height and 11,000,000 pounds of thrust it is larger than our Saturn V rocket and anything produced by Russia.

 

Over ten years raising income tax by 50% would bring in $13.3 trillion and increasing the cooperate tax to 35% would bring in an additional $2.2 trillion. Of course this would lower standards of living,GDP etc. This ain’t easy. 

The Medicare bubble will continue as more get older. Right now 65 million Americans are on Medicare. By 2060 that will be 95 million. This eats up 13% of the federal budget and around 21% of what we spent on healthcare. Healthcare costs go up around 5% every year. 

We have five air forces in our Department of Defense. Air Force.Army,Navy,Marines and Coast Guard. All with training, staffing, maintenance, and housing. Maybe we could start there? Silly me.