Tax Day 2014

This is how I always imagine the IRS and the bloated government as they cast a lustful eye on the populace's paychecks!

Or perhaps this?

 

Lest We Forget, The Kids Aren't All Right

Yeah, we're all totally screwed:

Washington has willfully ignored the looming crisis of entitlement spending, knowingly consigning young Americans to a future of crushing debt, persistent underemployment, and burdensome regulation. Politicians on both sides of the aisle share the blame.

While we're at it, let's note the particular problem of school debt which is - surprise! - made ever worse by political attempts to "fix" it:

This summer, Congress made a big bipartisan show of cutting student loan rates to 3.4 percent from an already artificially low 6.8 percent. But even that seemingly helpful gesture will wind up hurting the Americans it claims to help. Federal student aid, whether in the form of grants or loans, is the main factor behind the runaway cost of higher education. Subsidies raise prices, leading to higher subsidies, which raise prices even more. This higher education bubble, like the housing bubble before it, will eventually pop. Meanwhile, large numbers of students will graduate with more debt than they would have in an unsubsidized market.

S-C-R-E-W-E-D.

Lest We Forget This Basic Fact

FYI: "The Shutdown Is a Sideshow. Debt Is the Threat."

Of course the shutdown is a cynical political sideshow. (But let's not forget who's culpable here, OK?)  Niall Ferguson has the grim reminder that the real problem is unsustainable debt.  Today's quote of the day comes from it:

"Only a fantasist can seriously believe 'this is not a crisis.'"

Unfortunately, the current political "leadership" is full of fantasists, fabulists, and willful deniers of reality.

Quote of the Day: On the Shutdown Frenzy

Depressing thought:

The current crisis is only peripherally about health care exchanges and spending resolutions and vitriol spewed by the political and journalistic fraternities. The current crisis, at its heart, is about greed and the human lust for authority over other humans.

LOL: Letter to the Editor

Via Powerline:

Hang Onto Your Wallets ...

When the government thinks it can decide how much money you can save for a "reasonable" retirement.

Yep, We're Screwed on Social Security

Basically, I've kissed goodbye to all that money that gets sucked out of my paycheck in the name of Social Security.  I'm never going to see those sweet little greenbacks again.  Bye, darlings!  Look, we all know that Social Security has become an unsustainable Ponzi scheme.  I'm fully expecting the whole rickety structure to have collapsed by the time I get to retirement age.  You'd have to be an economically illiterate idiot if you're my age and still thinking that you won't get totally screwed by this.  

On a personal note, I got into an argument with some elderly relatives not too long ago when Social Security came up in the conversation.  I did not - did not! - want to talk about it, but they kept on and on until finally I couldn't help myself anymore.  There's not going to be anything by the time I retire, I said.  I am flat-out assuming that I won't get any Social Security at all.  But the government promised!  they insisted.  You paid into it, so you have to get something out of it!  I gave up at that point.  How can you be so naive?  How can you be so baffled by the ideas that (a) my generation's going to get the shaft, and (b) the only smart thing to do is to plan ahead as if there won't be any Social Security?  

I knew better than to say that what I'm paying into the thing now is going toward the checks going out now, as in their checks.  Mama didn't raise no fool.

Now my peers and I gloomily wait to see if our pessimistic predictions will come true of the government raiding IRAs and 401(k)s and every other kind of savings so it can pay for its profligate, irresponsibly managed joyride.  Heck, it's like in those old cartoons when a hungry character looks at another character, and that second figure morphs into the image of a delicious roast chicken or something.

Quote of the Day: Government Budget Cuts and Cynical PR

Via Cafe Hayek comes this observation by economist Thomas Sowell:

Back in my teaching days, many years ago, one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency’s budget were cut, what would it do? 

The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place.

Heh.

Taiwanese News Animators vs. Sequester Fearmongering

Gentle reader, in this nightmarish post-sequester hellhole wrought by 2.3% budget cuts, I have taken a minute from cannibalizing my neighbors, burning books to keep from freezing to death, dodging airplanes plummeting from the sky, and fighting off zombies in order to bring you this hilarious video:

"Saturday Night Live" vs. the Sequester

Well, whaddyaknow?  SNL was actually both funny and on point last night. Bonus points for the Village People reference.

Satire Alert: Sequester's Day Speech

Kudos, Dignified Rant!

Mark Steyn, Mark Twain, and the $ 1 Trillion Coin

Do read.  Now I want to read that Twain story!

LOL: The "Mercy" Demotivator

Sometimes it takes a joke to drive home a very serious point, doesn't it?

Rachel Lucas on the Fiscal Cliff Shenanigans

What do you think? Rachel's also running an impromptu poll, where currently the "let it burn" option is winning by a huge margin. 

An additional thought: everyone's howling about taxes, but the bigger problem is the government spending, and that does include entitlement reform.

Meanwhile, I'm sure we're all delighted that Obama's apparently scheduled a 20-day Hawaiian vacation over Christmas, so if we do go sailing over the fiscal cliff in fine Thelma and Louise fashion, he'll be off sunning himself in Oahu or whatever on $4 million of taxpayer money.  "Let them eat Hawaiian vacations"? 

Yeah, that really demonstrates how much he cares for the little guy, the unemployed guy, the people actually suffering from the toxic effects of this craptastic economy.  Hey!  I thought a bunch of people voted for him because you thought he was more "empathetic" or some touchy-feely nonsense like that.  O RLY?  I bet he'll really be feeling your pain when he's out there surfing for 3 whole weeks.  The optics are horrible, but nobody seems to mind. (No, I don't care if it's a habitual place to go for him. I'm talking about right now.)  Meanwhile, the closest your humble hostess is going to get to Hawaii any time soon is this.

RELATED POST: LOL, though it's not funny, not funny at all.  There's no way you can seriously propose $50 billion for another ill-advised round of stimulus spending, much less - well - any of the rest of it.

Fiscal Cliff LOL

I do mean an actual LOL. At this point, incredulous, derisive, "you have got to be freaking kidding me" laughter does seem a fitting response to this completely unserious administration.

It'd Be Funnier If It Weren't So True

Lemmings over the fiscal cliff.

The Des Moines Register Endorses ...

Romney.  For the first time in 40 years, this Iowa paper backs a Republican for the Presidency.  Hope and change, folks, because it's about the ECONOMY.  Anyway, add this to the growing list of papers who went for Obama in 2008 and are now endorsing Romney.  I know, I know, newspaper endorsements in themselves don't really sway the undecided reader, but I find them fascinating this time around as an exhibit of a preference cascade among the editorial boards.  As for the Des Moines Register in particular, I think we all kind of saw this coming.  By the way, here's a piece of its official endorsement:

From Florida: It's the Economy, Stupid

That's the overwhelming reasoning behind every single newspaper endorsement for Romney that I've read, and that is the overriding reason why papers that endorsed Obama in 2008 are supporting Romney now. (A little background.) The latest paper is the Sun Sentinel, and these Florida papers I think may be especially interesting because Florida is the perpetual battleground state. Here's a piece of it:

LOL: Satirical New Look at the $16 Trillion National Debt

Delightfully snarky.  Good job, people.  Behold the tweety conversation that led to the glorious result, or just go here and laugh.  Oh, snap!