For four decades we the American voters have asked our politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, to rapidly increase federal government spending, increase deficits, borrow more money and increase the national debt. We've asked our politicians to take from our Social Security trust funds and pay these out to present recipients (us) so that our children will have nothing.
We've asked them to put us into wars that we cannot afford, with decades of future veterans' benefits that we haven't computed or set aside.
We've asked them to create whole classes of dependency in our corporations and in our individuals.
We've told them that we don't want to compete in the world marketplace, to produce anything, but we want cheap foreign products and foreign oil that will increase our trade deficits.
We asked our politicians to push housing loan programs that people could not pay back, with low temporary interest rates.
We've created dysfunctional families at alarming rates, and this dysfunction affects everything in America, from schools, to crime rates, to welfare dependency.
And our politicians said: Yes, yes, yes. Just love me and re-elect me.
Now we are surprised that we can't compete, that we are bankrupt, that we don't produce anything, and that our foreign creditors are close to cutting us off. We are surprised at our present economic meltdown. We don't understand why this happened to us.
We look to our civic and political leaders and ask, "What is your plan to get us out of this mess?"
They give a dazed look and say, "We don't have a plan."
President Obama's stimulus is not directed at curing our economic meltdown. It is only designed to throw money at the symptoms. The problem is that we superheated our economy with unsustainable spending, and we created increased populations of people who cannot support themselves.
Borrowing and printing money may help us through our period of credit contraction and deflation and recession, but it does not solve this underlying problem. Once we've spent this $2 trillion of stimulus money, these problems will remain unsolved -- only we'll have another $2 trillion of debt and more interest to pay on that debt.
If there ever had been a time to elect a businessman (Lee Iacocca) and a fiscal conservative economist (Milton Freidman, deceased, or Walter Williams) president and vice president, it was 2008.
Most Americans don't understand how we got into this meltdown mess, and so don't know what to ask of our political leaders. Polls show that, at present, we will still vote for politicians who will spend the most federal money, and we'll believe them when they say, "Don't worry." If we don't educate ourselves about macro-economics, how can we make an informed voting decision?
Deficit spending may soften our current meltdown, but it won't fix our real, long-term problem. This requires tightening our belts, saving, learning how to be productive and competitive, and reducing dependency upon government spending.
We voters don't want to hear this message, and so we tell our politicians not to say these things. "Give us a different solution." There is no different solution.
Our civic and political leaders are paralyzed. They have no idea what to do. The answer is going to have to come from Middle America, the guts of Americans. It will take a Ross Perot, with charts and graphs, and a plan to get us out of this mess. Otherwise, we aren't going to recognize the America we're going to see a decade from now.
Dave Cuddy is a lifetime Alaskan, holds an economics degree and an MBA, and is a former Alaska bank president and Alaska state legislator.
By DAVE CUDDY