If you are a student with a student loan or if you owe a student loan, you probably welcomed the news the president is trying to expunge your debt. That means, I and many other taxpayers will be paying it. Debt doesn’t just disappear. Maybe you learned that in college.
If you have a low credit score, you probably welcomed the news, those with high credit scores will be paying an extra point-and-half for their home loans to make up for your bad credit history. Under the Biden proposal, you will get the reduced mortgage rate to help you recover from your past failures to pay.
Oh, but I mentioned failure. Failure is no longer accepted in life. In this new world, all kids get a trophy and passing grades. Some sports for younger kids never keep score. Such is reinforcing for a successful future. Or is it?
If you agree with the above, welcome to progressive-socialism and a life dependent on the government where you can neither fail nor succeed, unless you become a politician.
If you disagree, may I suggest you begin telling your kids, your neighbors and your politicians you want your world to be based on incentives where one can achieve and succeed, predicated on effort and accomplishment and that not on race, gender or political affiliation.
Ever wonder why the homeless are on the increase? Is it for a lack of opportunity when there are now hiring, help wanted signs up in about every business? In my opinion, it is because some have learned to accept failure as a way of life and bailout as a cure. Sure, we need to treat the addicted and mentally afflicted, but is treatment ignoring the sociological pathology of addiction and affliction? This for another article.
When Silicon Valley Bank failed last month, the president issued an order to increase the FDIC insurance limit of $250,000 per account to unlimited. No one fails and we all pay. No, the government didn’t debit our checking accounts, but it created a debt for each of us, nonetheless. It is called inflation and it is an unlisted tax.
The rules were suddenly changed by a progressive-socialist desire to protect the big, major investors, but us little guys pay their debt. Spread it out over millions of us and we hardly feel it, until it continues to be the practice and then we do in inflation and additional taxation to pay the debt.
Government really can’t control market forces, no matter how hard it tries. That’s why progressive politicians want to destroy capitalism and replace it with the façade of socialism where no one fails. But a public façade only masks the reality of private despair.
Here in New Mexico, our governor met the COVID emergency with spending reductions, a hiring freeze in government and limited pay raises for most government employees. She and our legislators had promised a 4% raise to public employees earning $15 per hour, but that promise was retracted.
An investigative reporter at The Candle reports she then gave sizable pay raises to her personal office staff for a second time in the first eighteen months she has been in office. Those raises amounted to between $7,400 to $18,000 for people who were already being paid high five-figure salaries.
The Candle reports one of the governor’s senior policy advisors, Diego Arencon received a $35,000 pay raise a few months after taking the job as liaison to the labor community. His starting salary was $90,000/year and increased to $125,000/year. In his second year, she approved an additional $10,000 raise bringing him to $135,000/year.
Her Chief of Staff Matthew Garcia received a $45,000 increase for 2019 and 2020. One might note, this is more than some starting salaries for some school and state employees whose salaries are classified by President Biden as below the poverty line.
Yes, politics pays and high-level politicians seem not to care much about the little guy who must absorb the inflationary expense of their spending and broken promises.
The progressive-socialists really do not care for anyone, but themselves and their power over us little people. Again, I say, think next time you vote.
Tom Wright is a Santa Fe writer and investor in El Rito Media, LLC, owner of the Rio Grande SUN.