Uncle Charley and the National Budget

Uncle Charley was reading the paper so intently he hardly noticed me as I sat down across from him with my coffee.

"You read the paper this morning?" Charley asked without preamble.
"A little," I answered. "Lot of politics, lot of bad news."

"Yep," he said. "Kinda proves my point".

"Which would be what?"

He put the paper down and looked straight at me. "No offense, Harry, but you don't read most of the paper, and you're an educated man. How are you supposed to form an opinion to guide your elected representative if you don't have any information?"

"In the first place, Charley," I answered, "the politicians don't seem to care what I think. And in the second place, the newspaper isn't a very good source of information. Mostly talks about local scandals and deaths."

"And that is my point", Charley said. "I'm thinking that we're looking at the coming failure of representative democracy. And by that I mean it's failing now. The politicians feather their nests, and when they do listen to their constituency it's just to figure out how to please them and get re-elected. So we got really a people's democracy, which is a bad idea, because it means that our country is more and more run by the votes of people even less educated than you. Here's the important thing: They vote for what they want, not what's good for the country."

"What's got you so pessimistic all of a sudden?" I asked, pouring another cup.

"No 'all of a sudden' to it," Charley answered with some bitterness. "But what's happening in Greece really got me to think harder about it. You know about the Greek situation?"

"I've read a little and heard on NPR a little more. I think if it weren't for Diane Reems I wouldn't know much at all".

"OK, let me give you a quick summary," Charley said. "They got real far in debt, and they got the EU to help them by buying a bunch of gummint bonds. Basically they got a long-term loan and they're trying to live on that money".

"I read that there's a lot of dissatisfaction with that among the Greek people."

"Oh yeah. Well, the gummint says they all got to cut back and quit living off the gummint and start paying off their debts. They call it a "austerity" program, which means they been living too high off the hog for too long, and now they gotta live within their means, even save some money so's they can pay their debts. Heck, we've all had that happen to us. It's not a big deal for us to cut back when we have to and live within the budget. But gummints don't seem to like to live that way. So the Greek gummint got itself way too deep in debt, and it borried a lot more money to bail itself out, which is kinda like usin' yer credit card to pay your debts."

"So now the people of Greece have to cut way back, and that's what they're protesting about, huh?"

"You got it. They know they gotta, and they don't wanta, so they're mad, and they expect the politicians to cave in and give 'em back their goodies."

"But they can't do that, can they?" I said. "The politicians let themselves get into a corner by pleasing the people, and now they can't get out without losing all those votes by people who are used to being taken care of."

"That's about the size of it," Charley said. "What the people want is what every spoiled child in the world wants. And it's bad for 'em if they get it,and they want it anyway."

"Sounds a lot like us," I commented. "We've been living beyond our budget for years, been borrowing money and going into debt to other countries, like China, and we just keep borrowing more."

"The politicians know what needs to be done, but they don't want to take action in an election year, 'cause all us spoiled brats will get mad. So the debt limit gets raised, and the reckoning is coming due. I'm afraid that when it does hit the fan, we're gonna have a collapse so big we may never be able to recover. It's happened before, but not on this scale. Hell, Harry, we owe most everybody in the world! How we gonna pay 'em?"

"Seems to me that sooner or later we're gonna have to go on an "austerity budget" like we should have been on all along. Our mistake was allowing a negative budget, where we spend more than we're making. That should never have happened. I can't even imagine what we're going to do."

"Probly just what the Greek people are doin'," Charley answered. "We'll go out and holler in the streets because we can't have as much of the goody-pie as we're used to. But tantrums don't solve problems, and even real loud whinin' and bitchin' doesn't make us entitled. Sooner or later, though, we got no choice."

"Charley, you got me worried."

"Yeah? Why weren't ya already worried? This isn't new, it's been coming on for 50 years or more, whenever we stopped stayin' inside our budget. Yer just gettin' worried now because you can see it coming in the near future".

"I hate it when you're right", I said, glumly.

"Bein' right is small consolation," Charley said, and got up to go.

I sat there for a while, but I didn't like what I was thinking, so I left too.