If we want a chance to turn around the failed economic policies from which we now suffer, we must elect the Romney/Ryan ticket on Nov. 6. Obama will certainly continue his policies of deficit financing for government "investments" so we can expect four more years of slow economic growth.
I studied the U.S. public debt as a percent of Gross Domestic Product from 1900 to 2011. Obama will continue a 30-year deficit financing policy which began in 1981 (31.8 percent). Almost everybody: homeowners, consumers, financiers, businesses, and governments-Republican and Democratic-took on debt. We promised ourselves increasing benefits: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, home ownership, and no poverty. Debt rose sharply to 66.3 percent in 1995.
This sharp rise was interrupted from 1996 through 2006 (63.1 percent) during the time Republicans controlled the House of Representatives and worked with moderate Presidents Clinton and Bush. However, since 2007, the debt line has resumed its 50 degree slope and is now near or over 100 percent. Obama's belief that government creates wealth will ensure that our debt will continue to increase.
In contrast, Romney and Ryan understand that wealth is created by the private sector. The economy grows when the private sector grows. Taxation extracts current wealth and borrowing extracts future wealth from the private sector, so that the economy shrinks when the private sector is taxed.
Unfortunately, we Republicans have the politically unpleasant task of asking the voter to demand the government do less for us. It will take a long time to repair the damage done to our economic attitudes by a century of progressive economic and political policies. Little by little, and more by more, we citizens will have to learn to make do with less "government service." Initially unpopular, we the people will increasingly take pleasure and pride in our own accomplishments.
Romney and Ryan are our best chance to turn our economy around and put the United States on a new path to prosperity and to increase our freedom to run our own lives without government "improvements."
Richard G. Briggs
Belpre
