Don't Tread on Me

I'm going to take a break from the normally comical, sarcastic, yet truthful notes I normally write and write a serious, political one.

There is a Native American song that says, "We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." When I began to think about this quote at length, I started to realize how much this statement is true, especially when it comes to a lot of the pressing issues of our time. Global warming, national/state debt, Social Security, wars, energy, urbanization, etc.

For too long have the older generations been borrowing the world from our generation and future generations. During the election of 2000, a major focal point was what to do with the budget surplus that had developed within the latter years of the Clinton administration. For the first time in our history, we were finally talking about what to do with extra money the government had collected from the taxpayers. In no other time that we have been recording the national deficit has there ever been a surplus. Each administration, Democratic and Republican, has been slowly adding to the ever-mounting amount of money that someone, someday has to pay back.

Of course, there are circumstances wherein a deficit was necessary, such as the Great Depression, where extra money had to be spent to encourage growth and stimulate economic progress. However, in times of prosperity, there should be absolutely no reason that the country should be borrowing money for its expenditures. After the Dot-Com boom of the 1990s we have seen a see-sawing ebb and flow of the national economy. However, the national deficit has been steady climbing up every year. With the war in Iraq costing the nation around $2,000,000,000 a week we can only wonder not only, "What else could we be using that money for?" but "Who is paying for it?"

Naturally we do not have money in the budget for such extravagant expenses with the lopsided tax cuts granted by the G.W. Bush Administration to the people of America. During Bush's time in office there have been cuts to the Federal Income tax as well as cuts in the Capital Gains tax. With two huge sources of revenue cut, how were we ever supposed to pay for a $2,000,000,000 a week war? Namely the Congress has decided that we're going to put it on a credit card. The creditors: China, Belgium, Japan, and a hole slew of other foreign nations. The United States was once regarded as the creditor nation of the world, giving out aid, loans, and grants to several developing nations. Now, we're the world largest debtor owing more to foreign entities than any other nation, and more than likely several nations combined. Other holders of the United States' national debt do include local sources, such as private individuals (there are many middle-class bond holders, as well as upper-class bond holders) and corporations (who oftentimes will buy U.S. Treasury Notes and Bonds to add a steady amount of income in a stable investment). But there are problems with everyday citizens holding bonds and also with corporations holding bonds.

First off, private citizens holding bonds is basically holding a credit card bill for the future generation. The government says, "We don't have enough money to pay for everything now, so we need you to pay a certain amount now and in about 15-30 years we'll pay you double that amount." Despite the fact that I have seen benefits from my father purchasing government bonds, I still feel that the inherent risk of shouldering debt on others is not as good as a payback. Every time someone buys a bond, the government has to spend a portion of its budget to pay the interest as well as the principal amounts on the bonds every year. When the individual citizens hold bonds, they're usually in the amount of $100 or $200 a bond, a rather trivial amount when compared to our $1,000,000,000,000+ national budget. But when corporations buy bonds, they usually buy them in the hundreds of thousands. Corporations are happy to spend a small amount of their cash in exchange for a promise of future cash flows. They do it all at the expense of our future.

Each time a bond is issued, one generation pledges that it will not bother to pay back a debt today but will instead ensure that the debt will be satisfied at a later date. During the 1980s, under Ronald Reagan's presidency (the love-child of the current Republican candidates), the national deficit soared to nearly half a trillion dollars a year. Eight years of Reagan, half a trillion a year, equals nearly four trillion dollars in debt. The national deficit doubled just in the 8 years Reagan was in office. The Reagan Era was from 1980-1988. Since bonds last for usually around 30 years, guess when those things are going to be due? Somewhere between the years 2010 and 2018, just in time for most of us to graduate college, get a job, and start paying taxes. These upcoming years are the years that the generation named the "Baby Boomers" are starting to retire. Right now, politicians never like to mess with senior citizens and their fixed incomes. And why should we? They've lived a long life, working hard, and contributing to the system. They deserve to enjoy the twilight years of their life in relative peace and harmony without the fear of absorbent taxes breathing down their necks. But along with their massive numbers retiring, they are going to demand money for social security to help stabilize their fixed income and help provide for a better standard of life.

During the entire time of our parents' and grandparents' working lives, there was always the knowledge that the next generation would be larger than the previous generation, thus allowing for Social Security to virtually take care of itself. As people retired, the larger pool of younger workers would be able to shoulder the load and help pay for the previous generations' Social Security expenses. As many of you may be aware, this is the first time that the next generation is no longer as large as the previous generation. There is a massive swell of Baby Boomers retiring within the next ten years and there are not enough younger workers to shoulder the massive load that will be placed upon the Social Security system. There have been various solutions to this impending problem, such as giving people the ability to have private accounts to invest their own money in, or raise the rate at which the people are taxed for Social Security (FICA), or raise the cap that exists on income earned to be taxed for Social Security (I believe it's currently $97,000). But so far Congress and the President have made vague attempts to solve the problem, go nowhere, and give up on it. Leaving us with no clear solution as to what's going to happen to our future. All of this is compounding upon rising fuel costs and the so-called "energy crisis."

Naturally as the nation's energy needs grow we have to provide for the nation's various needs. Whether it's electricity for new, high-definition plasma TVs or fuel for the newest SUV/Truck/Car, America has always been one of the world's largest energy consumers. With the price of oil rising within the previous months (they say due to the declining value of the dollar, which must have declined a hell of a lot in the past year) we have been looking for various alternatives to oil, which include biofuels, electric batteries, and hydrogen fuel cells. Of course, when your government is run and bought off by the oil and natural gas industry, people tend not to want to race to find a new way to replace oil. Or if they do, they want oil companies to have a huge stake in it so they don't lose a massive amount of money. Also, I constantly hear/see adds on the radio/television that there is no shortage of oil. We just need to find it. The oil is out there and the oil companies are looking for it, and carefully drilling it out so the environment doesn't get all caca-ed up. Of course when you build a multi-story oil rig on top of an ocean, there's absolutely NO WAY that the thing is going to generate ANY polution. You just have to burn off excess oil that's pulled out of the ground (part of the standard safety regulations of drilling for oil) and you have to maintain all the equipment by lubricating it with... oil. But if the oil companies say that there's a lot of oil out there, then why does it cost so damn much at the gas pump? They say, "There's not enough refineries in the United States, so we have to refine it elsewhere and cargo boat it to your shores." That's right. Because having refineries next to the oil fields and shipping it overseas is a very, very expensive process. Most of the refineries that exist in the world are located next to the oil fields. These are notably in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq (although they're not really working right now), Venezuela, Kuwait, and Russia. The United States has a number of refineries also, since we also pull oil out of the Gulf of Mexico and in the Great Plains states. The whole reason you put the refineries next to the oil fields is because it's PRACTICAL! Why would you want to take oil from a field in Saudi Arabia, tanker it over to the United States, refine it in a refinery where the labor is more expensive and the cost of production is higher, and then sell it to a local market? The only reason for that would be so you can mark-up your selling price to the consumer. If it costs (hypothetically) $1 per gallon of gasoline to refine and ship from Saudi Arabia and the mark-up for gasoline at the pump is 100%, then Americans would be paying $2 a gallon at the pump. However, if it costs $2 a gallon to refine and ship a gallon in the United States, then you can get $4 at the pump. A $2 per gallon profit is a lot better than a $1 per gallon profit, isn't it? Also another troubling question to ask, is that if we're so strapped for oil in the United States, then why are we exporting over a billion barrels of domestically harvested oil every year? Refinery problems? No demand? No corporate loyalty to any country?

With the advent of biofuels, the United States, as well as the rest of the world, has had to take food out for the production of the fuels. In Italy, they are having a shortage of a type of wheat that is necessary to make pasta. In the United States we are losing corn, which is used not only for human consumption, but as for feed for most of the livestock that we consume. The world's food prices have begun to rise due to the use of food products for fuel. This was an unintended, but easy foreseen, consequence of biofuels. Our food prices are beginning to rise and the world is starting to suffer for it.

With the slow advancement of alternative sources of energy, biofuels (which are marginally cleaner than petroleum-based products), and the increased need for oil, our generation is going to have to deal with the plight of global warming. Whether or not you believe in the phenomenon is rather irrelevant. The fact of the matter is (pointed out in Austin Powers in 1993) that there are holes in the O-Zone layer. This has been directly attributed to man-made emissions from factories, vehicles, and various other chemicals. Again, the government has attempted to make a stab at correcting this problem, but they have made little headway. American car manufacturers complain that fuel standards that are set by the government are unrealistic to achieve by the scheduled date. Most foreign automakers have already achieved or exceeded the fuel standards. Why do the American Automakers complain? It's mainly because they're stuck in the archaic world of producing SUVs and over-sized trucks. These vehicles rely on a heavy chassis, large frame, and huge engine. None of these things are good for fuel economy. Sure, they've developed a couple of hybrid SUVs, but these get about as good of gas mileage as a standard sedan, that's 10 years old. American automakers haven't quite realized that the future of auto-sales is not in SUVs but rather in fuel efficient vehicles. So then they whine and bitch when auto sales are down because no one wants their 10 mile-per-gallon vehicles, at least no one sane.

On top of all of this national and international discourse on our national government doing nothing to address the nation's problems while footing us the bill for later, we have our own Californian government to worry about. If you've even watched about 5 minutes of news that isn't sports or the weather, there's always a story that talks about the state's looming budget crisis. Some estimates say we're only $10,000,000,000 in debt, others say it's higher (around $14,000,000,000 or $15,000,000,000). What does the government do about it? What they've always wanted to do about it: cut spending and raise bonds to pay off the immediate debt so the government can keep functioning. "What's wrong with that?" you might ask. Let me tell you what's wrong with that. Right now, 11% of the California state budget goes to paying interest on bonds. 11 out of every 100 dollars we spend pays other people for helping us not pay for things. The government of California is fickle to the point that when the Democrats even just mentioned that they should raise taxes to generate some extra revenue, the Republicans immediately said they would filibuster any budget proposal that would include higher taxes. The Republicans' answer for our budget crisis is to just keep cutting government programs, which are already underfunded, and just get the budget back in balance. So where do we cut the budget from? Our underfunded schools? Lower state employee salaries (their union will never allow for that)? Cut back on CHP recruitment and new enlistments? Stop paving roads for a few years? Get rid of some people in every state agency? Give the legislators a pay raise? What? State agencies could become more efficient, it's true. But the problem with trying to correct systems run by the government is that government is run by politicians. Politicians don't like to change. They have their way of doing things and they like it that way. Ever since we made it hard to raise our own taxes to pay for anything, the legislature has gotten into the habit of raising bonds for any kind of expenditure ever. Any new initiative that calls for the funding of improvements to schools, roads, levies, water systems, etc. has always been done through the funding of bonds. And remember what we said bonds were a while ago? Credit card statements for future generations. So the state of California is just wracking up a huge credit card bill for us and saying, "Thanks for taking care of that!" and then laughing as they begin to retire and go live in the Bahamas.

I say it's time we stopped putting up with all this horse manure. People are borrowing our Earth and are unwilling to to pay their fare share. One day this debt will come due and when it does, we'll be living in much more horrid conditions than you will ever imagine. Tax rates will inevitably HAVE to rise. People who believe otherwise are in an imaginary, fantasy world where money can grow on trees or print itself without worries of inflation. We should stop accepting the fact that current generations are unwilling to accept the burden for their purchases and start saying that if you want something, you need to pay for it NOW! We are basically being taxed without proper representation in Congress. Despite the fact that Barack Obama has the following of many youth in this country, what exactly are his policies that benefit us? What is he going to do about the rising cost of tuition in this country? What is he going to do about the deficit? What is he going to do about Social Security? What is he going to do about anything? Sure he does have plans for many of the things I just asked, but when it comes down to negotiating with an archaic Congress, can he really get any of it done? Political change does not begin with one man. Our elective system was made so that way we could get rid of the corrupt, the inept, and the unworthy.

Our politicians need to be made aware that the youth of this country are not here for them to exploit. I would not want anyone to give me their credit card debt for $9,000,000,000,000 dollars, nor would I want to hand mine to my children. I say we start to organize and tell the politicians of the country to not use us as their doormat. We need to recall the spirit of the 1960s youth for revolution and change, and upon the 1770s spirit of revolution about being heard in the government. We should march upon capitol buildings carrying the flags of the revolutionaries that stated "Don't Tread On Me." I would love to organize a protest and I would like anyone who is interested to let me know. I would be willing to file for the permit, pay any expenses that go along with that permit filing, and everything. It is time to not stand idly by and allow the rest of the world to tell us what we should do. Students, young adults, and anyone who is tired of Congress (both state and federal) levying bonds for expenditures should be willing to at least write their Congressperson and tell them that it's ineffective. I have already written to all of my representatives and they have all given me canned responses. I'm tired of receiving the same response for an issue that is not only relevant to our generation, but necessary for the future of the nation.

So rise up! Be heard! And do not let them tread on you!