There are thirty or forty candidates declared for the Presidential follies next year. It is a great demonstration of our democracy- or better said, our Constitutional Republic, not to put too fine a point on why we do not understand each other as citizens anymore.

There are some extraordinary proposals, among them being the New Green Deal, which proposes free just about everything for everybody, whether they are here legally or not.

President Trump says there is a national emergency down at the Mexican border, and the congress demurred. The President then vetoes the bill and has commissioned some earnest bureaucrats to look under all the seat cushions in the White House for loose change to fund the border- Barrier? Wall? Enhanced Fencing? Welcome Wagons?

I don’t know what we are calling it these days. But I do suspect that 73,000 new voters each month will be sort of inconvenient after decades of this chaos for people who actually are citizens. And a lot of folks want to end the Electoral College, which is inconvenient to the people of New York, California and Illinois who seem to think it is their right to tell all the rest of us how to live.

That is precisely why the founders established the College. This is not a pure democracy- not that pure democracies are pure- it is meant to be this way so the smaller former colonies could not be bullied.

We also appear to be contemplating lowering the voting age to sixteen- an age known for its wisdom- and taking on $93 trillion in new debt over ten years.

The smart people have articulated a way to pay for the whole deal. It is called Modern MonetaryTheory (MMT), a heterodox macroeconomic concept that terms the currency- money in all it’s manifestations- as a public monopoly, and current low unemployment as the evidence that a currency monopolist is restricting the supply of the financial assets needed to pay taxes and satisfy savings desires.[

MMT posits that the US government can create its own money by just printing more. It cannot default on debt denominated in its own currency. But like they say on late late television, “Wait! There’s more!”

The answer is as simple as just printing more money. apparently we can pay for goods, services, and financial assets without a need to collect money in the form of taxes.

I know, it sounds marvelous, but I think we have seen how this works in practise. Ask the citizens of the Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe and Venezuela how they liked hyperinflation.

Thanks for reminding me- I should go down to the Lowe’s and get a wheelbarrow to be ready to push a load of my worthless Benjamins to the store to barter for bread.

Oh well, it was a great Republic while we had it.

In the meantime, it is finally Spring, even if it is chilly out here above the pastures. The Big Pink pool opens in six weeks. That is something to look forward to. The rest of it, well, you can’t say it isn’t entertaining. And it will get better as we get closer to the election.

Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here!

– Vic

Copyright 2019 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com