A pile of used bandaids

I'm way behind in all the things I want to blog - I hope someday I can blog straight out of my brain, because a lot of my best writing ideas come when I'm not by a computer.

I really need to start reading more fiction and less history, biographies, and especially news, because, even though I find them fascinating, I also find them frustrating. (I believe I get my fascination with history and humanity from my dad...)

Today I read an article in "Time" (one of the few news magazines I find to be the most objective) about the economic situation that states are in right now, having to look at cutting all sorts of stuff. I didn't know that only the federal government is allowed to run a budget deficit, states are required by law to balance their budgets. I guess most of the time, the normal ups and downs of the economy balance each other out and usually don't cause problems. Apparently this "down" has been a lot longer and deeper than most and states are having to make what they call "real cuts" now - into services that are ingrained like education, medicaid, etc.

The situation the state governments are in sucks, and I don't really know how they're going to deal with in the very short term. But I don't understand why no one will stand up and say out loud what the truth really is about all of this. We have overinflated and artificially grew our economy for many many years (not just one president and congress, but many) and now we're going to have to pay for it. And that means if we want to continue some of these fundamental services that make our country good and strong and secure (and I'm not talking militarily secure, but secure and "sound" as a society) we are going to have to pay more taxes. Stuff costs money. We can pay less in taxes and have lesser quality of everything and have stuff run down, or we can pay more in taxes and have higher quality public services and infrastructure. It's not rocket science.

Most people probably don't want to hear that from the guy with a good job, but they should hear it from the guy that pays more in taxes as a single (at least from a tax standpoint) person in a higher tax bracket. Certainly I'd rather pay less in taxes and keep more money for myself, but if paying taxes means better education, better infrastructure, better stability, etc. then I'm willing to do it. Certainly that means our governments should spend wisely, not be wasteful, and get the most value out of our tax money as they can. But in the end, stuff still costs money.

What we seem to be doing now (getting to the explanation of the blog title) is that we keep altering laws, doing magic with budget numbers and the money supply, etc. to band-aid whatever the problem of the moment is. But we're getting to the point where all we have is a pile of used bandaids.

For example, just on the way in to work this morning I heard a commercial advertising a firm that can help you "settle" your credit card debt, and how if you have over $10,000 in credit card debt, there are government programs that can settle it for a fraction of the cost. Seriously? This is an example of another bandaid - banks get their money, and people who were irresponsible (yes, I'll say it out loud - an individual who charges up more credit card debt than they can really afford cannot just blame bad bank laws and deregulation) get set back to $0 and get to start spending more money and buying things which artificially stimulates the economy again...until somewhere down the road we have to pay for that bailout.

I realize that every situation is different, and someone who buys a house and then loses their job a few years later was not being irresponsible. But that is not everyone. I guess I've always been under the assumption that if I take out a loan for something, or charge something on a credit card, I actually have to pay for that at some point.