I Am Very Tall

It's been a while since I've written anything about politics or the economy, mainly because I'm trying to pull away from that sort of thing. But I am in a rant-ish mood, and since no one really reads this (except for Hoodie Allen, who responded to my last post), I feel like it's not a big deal if I just go off on something that I don't understand.

So, the debt ceiling. I have been thinking about it recently, because it is everywhere on the news, to the point where people that usually aren't even interested in this kind of shit have been asking me about it. Moreover, I also was passed this hilarious piece in the Onion that sparked my current brainfart on the subject.

At this point, our nation's politicians are effectively saying that they will not raise it unless they get this chit or that chat included in their new budget. What I don't really understand is this: the reason that these chits or chats are ostensibly important to these parties, is because they think that these items are a key element to our nation's overall economic health. Democrats, in a turn towards the center, are now leaning towards having a more balanced budget. As such, they want to raise tax revenues, so that the government will have more tax dollars flowing in to help, well, balance the budget. And they won't go along with any plan that doesn't result in higher taxes.

Republicans, led by a very vocal set of Tea-Partiers, are totally against raising taxes. For some of them, they basically think that an increase in taxes will hurt our nation's economic recovery. Dollars in private hands will have a more felicitous impact than a dollar in the government's hands. For the Tea Partiers, who seem to be militantly clinging to a very strong libertarian ethos, they don't even really give a shit about that. They hew to an approach known as, "Starving the beast," in which the aim is to deprive the government of tax dollars, to the point where the only viable approach is for the government to shrink. Smaller military, fewer schools, smaller FDA, etc. Better, right? Because everything the government does must automatically be shit, as a wise man known as Ronald Reagan once said.

I clearly have my leanings here, but that's actually somewhat inconsequential. What bothers me is that these things that the two parties are holding out for might possibly have a positive impact on our economy. Economists have been debating this shit for decades, and still cannot agree on what is the right recipe for economic growth and prosperity, which is the one thing that everyone seems to agree is the most awesome thing ever (except for hippies). So, in order to make sure that these things that might be good get passed, they are threatening to sit on their hands and let the U.S. default on its debt, which will absolutely have a disastrous effect upon our economy. Financial crisis, v2. Massive upheavals in the debt market. Soldiers and states going unpaid. China being pissed as fuck, and possibly taking military steps to make sure we actually pay their asses. Revocation of the dollar as the global reserve currency.

To me, I think of the two parties as basically being parents who have differing ideas of what school their kid should go to. The Democrats want the kid to go to a Montessori school, and if that means that they have to work some extra hours to pay the bill, then so be it. It'll pay off in the end. The Republicans just hate spending so much damn money, and won't even think of working any harder. Fuck Montessori, they'll just home school the kid, like their parents did for them back in the day. They turned out alright, didn't they? Neither side will back down. Now, it's to the point where unless they get what they want, both parents are willing to toss the kid into an orphanage in a third world country rife with genital mutilation and child soldiers. At this point, it just sounds like the parents are more concerned with being proven right than with being good parents. Which I just don't understand. Rant off.