Even If We Are All On Welfare, Will The Budget Be Balanced By 2002?

L. W. Nicholson

1996

Published in:

Technocracy Digest, 1st quarter 1996, No. 319

So! We are going to balance the budget by 2002? In the United States, the efforts to balance State and federal budgets have only begun. As, and if, their efforts continue, the numbers of homeless, the numbers needing welfare, and the crime rate, will continue to increase far beyond that indicated by an excellent letter to the editor of the New York Times, December 18, 1995.

Shelly Nortz, Director of State Policy Coalition for the Homeless, Albany, wrote, in part, ...``When it comes to welfare grant levels, experts from the Clinton Administration and even some governors have predicted that state welfare officials will compete in a `race to the bottom' in a block-grant environment to avoid `attracting' needy families from other states. ...Selectively quoting Roosevelt, calling `unfettered welfare' a `narcotic' that destroyed the human spirit, N.Y. Governor Pataki, (leading the pack) proposes to eliminate the Home Relief program altogether and cut $153 a month from a family of three so that the `narcotic' welfare benefit equals that of New Jersey. Mr. Pataki also plans to eliminate more than $90 million in court-ordered rent subsidies paid to more than 23,000 New York City families facing evictions because of inadequate housing allowances....The proposed grant cuts will force these families to the edge, with eviction and homelessness soon to follow. ...Only 20,000 recipients would be able to get jobs, another 60,000 jobless recipients would be disqualified from getting any state assistance, and some 68,000 older and disabled individuals would require state disability assistance.

``Should lawmakers approve the plan, only about one in three New York City public-assistance households and less than one in five in the rest of the state would even have a chance at remaining housed by the time the next wave of cuts arrive.

``The taxpayers who will benefit the most from Mr. Pataki's tax cuts -- those with an adjusted gross income of over $200,000 a year -- will realize an average 1996 state income-tax cut of more than $82 per month.'' A continuation of these efforts prove that political ``leaders'' consider the economic system more important than people.

The excuse for such budget cuts? It is necessary to reduce the increasing chances of governmental bankruptcy. And that is certainly correct. The federal debt is, or will be, within the next several weeks, $5 trillion, and is increasing at about one-third of a trillion per year. It adds up to being about $19,000 per capita. To this, add another four to five thousand dollars for State and local debts, plus all corporate debts which are added to the price of products the consumers must buy, and it becomes obvious why consumer debts are, by far, the highest in history.

Now, with all these debts on which the public must pay interest; with prices higher than ever before; with under-employment increasing rapidly; with all the ``downsizing'' now in progress, while the purchasing power of the public has been on the decline for the past 20 years, it should be quite understandable why so many people and businesses need government subsidies of one kind or another.

With such conditions developing and showing no signs of changing -- except to become worse -- there are only three possible options available to the U.S. and Canada:

Governmental bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy for all, including government.
The installation of an entirely new, and entirely different, economic system.

Under present modern technological conditions, the present economic system can no longer operate, so the above-mentioned three are our only choices.

Being patriotic to a system, or to a method, is NOT being patriotic to one's country, and neither is considering an economic system more important than people.

It is time we became able to admit that important changes must be made. We have only three choices and only one solution. That one would be Number 3: Technocracy's Technological Social Design -- the installation of an entirely new and different economic system.