I’ve got a whacky idea that might just work. I know, I know, some of my ideas are pretty far out there. But I think this one’s a winner.
Instead of increasing taxes, how about if the government just spent less money? I think this is one of my better ideas. Sounds simple, right? We just need to come up with a way to make it easy for the government to reduce spending. I have a suggestion for that too.
The problem with today’s cashless society is that it’s too easy to spend money. For the average Joe, credit cards give you instant access to money you don’t have. With a credit card, you’re spending someone else’s money. And they make it easy to keep coming back for more.
People who run up unbearable credit card debt typically do so because of how easy it is to get credit, and, because they have no real concept of how much money they’re spending. After all, a credit card doesn’t get any smaller as they spend money, so their wallet is just as full before their shopping trip as after.
So, sometimes people who are bad with money will cut up their cards and pay with cash. That’s really the only way there is to prevent spending money you don’t have. Paying with cash forces you to really look at what you’re spending your money on and helps you eliminate any wasteful and extravagant spending.
Likewise, in a cashless society, it’s too easy for politicians to spend money. With a signature and a click of a mouse, they can spend as much money as they want. In just a few seconds, they can add trillions of dollars to our national debt. So that’s what they do.
It’s obvious that the politicians on both sides of the aisle don’t appreciate the money they’re spending. Let’s fix that.
Since the people in charge of running the country don’t seem to understand they they’re not playing with Monopoly money, I say we should force them to pay for everything in cash. That way they’ll have a better (or at least some) appreciation for the vast sums of money they’re pointing at and clicking on.
The Congressional Budget Office says the United States is projected to take in $3.5 trillion in taxes for FY 2021. We will be spending $5.8 trillion. For those readers who were taught Critical Race Theory instead of basic math skills, I’ll do the work for you. The U.S. is planning on spending 2.3 trillion dollars more in 2021 than they’re going to take in. That’s trillion. With a “T”.
If you only take one thing away from the previous paragraph, let it be this: The government doesn’t “make” any money. They only “take” it from all of us. The money they’re spending isn’t their money, it’s ours.
Here’s the problem. We can’t use actual cash because there isn’t enough. According to the Federal Reserve, there’s “only” about $1.2 trillion U.S. dollars in circulation…in the entire world. Besides, even if we could use Benjamins, it would take a train six and a half miles long to carry $5.8T of them. And that’s not really practical.
So, actual cash is out. Maybe gold would work. Nope. The U.S. gold reserve is currently valued at approximately $11 billion dollars. To cover the budget, it would take 527 times more gold than all of the gold currently held by the U.S. Government. And that’s just for one year.
OK, maybe my cash-and-carry idea for reducing government spending isn’t doable. Not because it’s a bad idea, but because the numbers we’re talking about are unimaginably large. There is literally not enough gold in Fort Knox to cover even a tiny fraction of what is being spent on so many wasteful and extravagant things.
Our “elected” officials are spending money like it’s going out of style. And that’s the problem. Money, real money, has gone out of style. One-click spending with nobody holding anybody accountable makes it ridiculously easy for the government to spend trillions of dollars of someone else’s money. And it’s your money they’re spending.
The wallets of Congress are as full before their shopping trip as after, so they have no real concept of how much is being spent. They’ve already spent the trillions of dollars they took from us. And now they want more.
