Several thousand years ago, the Greeks decided to institute an idea of one of their popular philosophers, Democritus. They finally concluded that even though the idea of government run by the people was a wonderful idea, the major weakness was that the people rapidly ran the government into bankruptcy by voting in every luxury they thought of. It didn’t occur to them that if they generated more promissory money, they could run up trillions of debt, so they abandoned the wonderful idea.
Today, due to a lot of bad government, we are on the edge of bankruptcy. As long as we can print money without collateral, we can support any bad idea our representatives come up with.
The two parties fighting for control are very different. The Republicans, called conservative, want to run the country like you must run a family to survive, living within your income and means.
The Democratic part of the people’s party wants to solve everyone’s desires and therefore is very popular, especially with those who expect to gain from it.
Both parties are so intent on making the other look bad, they resort to the meanest slander.
All you have to do, if you have money, is find out what is the latest, most-popular want and promise it. Our current president spent $90 million doing that.
This article appears in May 13-20, 2010.