HAS THE GOVERNMENT STOLEN YOUR IDENTITY?

by j. wright


Readers, please bear with me whilst I indulge in some make believe.

Imagine that when your next credit card bill arrives, you open it and discover that you, your wife and two kids suddenly owe $180,000 more than you thought.

“This is not right!” you say and immediately get on the telephone and call your credit card company.

You get a responsible individual on the line and ask, “What’s the meaning of this $180,000 balance in new charges that I didn’t make?”

“Oh…” the individual responds, “those aren’t new charges, this has been going on for a number of years but we never showed it on your billings. Your Uncle made those charges. He has control of your account too.

“What? Which Uncle?”

“Sam. He said he had control of your family's credit card account and he needed to use your money to help some folks who are disadvantaged and to promote some of his favorite projects.”

“You must be kidding! I never gave him that kind of control!”

“Yes, you did. A long time ago.”

“That’s unbelievable. So what is he doing with our money?”

“Well… unfortunately he mishandles and wastes a lot of it. A lot goes to people who are out of work, or simply lazy, or ill, or dying. A lot of it he spends on himself too, but he hides that from our prying eyes. He says those folks he is helping don’t have a credit card so he uses your money. He says, ‘It’s only fair and you can afford it.’”

“I can’t believe this. How am I ever going to pay this off, or is he going to pay it off?”

“Unfortunately your Uncle doesn’t have any money of his own; he has to use yours. You can’t pay it off either because your Uncle will continue to keep charging to your account. He suggested to us that you could take a second job in order to make more money available to him. Even now he is asking for an increase in your credit limit and we have to give it to him. ”

“Why?”

“Because we always have and it appears now that we don’t have a choice.”

“Well, if I can’t ever pay this balance off, who will?”

“Your children will become responsible for the balance, along with their children, and their children and their children too… unfortunately it’s a never ending cycle.”

“Isn’t there some way to end it?”

“Sure, if you can find enough people willing to replace your respective Uncles. Everyone is in the same predicament; all of you have a spendthrift Uncle Sam.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Then you live with the fact that you and your children’s children will be in debt to us forever, and not just the $45,000 each that everyone in your household owes today. Your Uncle has made promises to a lot of people, financial promises that are as yet unpaid amounting to tens of thousands of dollars; about a half million dollars more that you and every other family are responsible for, okay?”

“Okay? You must be kidding.”

~ ~ ~

So what if you woke up one day and discovered yourself in that financial mess? You don’t need to wake up; you are already there. The reality is our National Debt has surpassed $14,440,900,000,000.00 and is growing (that’s about $46,000+ for every man, woman and child). Our annual government expense will exceed our revenues this year by more than $1.381 trillion and growing and eventually added to the National Debt.

Add to that the Unfunded Mandates as reported recently; promises made by our government to seniors, veterans, the disadvantaged, etc. that stand at a whopping $61.6 trillion.

Do you agree that it may be past time to replace Uncle and get the borrowing and spending under control?

jaq~