Horse Sense

On Horse Sense

“We've got to have a balanced budget amendment” he said. “It works for me and it works for you. Right? If we don't have the money we don't get it”. I happened to know this person pretty well and I am fairly sure he had to borrow money to buy his house. I know I did. But, whatever the case, I figured that reason and logic were not going to win the day so I just told him he was wrong and left it at that.

Later I got to thinking about it and I'm not so sure it is entirely a bad thing. The way I understand it is that the United States would not get into anything it could not pay for. I remembered that we haven't budgeted for a war since Vietnam and if a balanced budget amendment would keep us from running off to war every time we wanted to shock and awe someone it might not be a bad thing. Of course, we would have to use some common sense and not believe those guys when they tell us they think we can do it for six dollars, ten tops like Cheney and Rummy did. The bills for those cost overruns are still coming in and will until the last soldier on disability is dead. Some estimates expect the total cost to run in the neighborhood of ten trillion dollars. I would say that Cheney and Rummy missed it a bit but who's counting? Now, anyone with any common sense would know better than that but there are a lot of people saying that we are sorely lacking in common sense and if some people, I won't name names, would just ask they could get an earful of common sense.

Common sense tells us that the federal budget is just like our checkbook. You keep track of the expenses and don't let them get past the income. I'm pretty sure that there are others besides me that have trouble keeping a checkbook to where it says the same thing the bank does and I don't think we would say we don't have any common sense. Anyway, anyone with common sense could see these things and all those Harvard and Yale educated economists and their eggheaded theories are just lacking in good old horse sense.

Most of us aren't quite sure what macro-economics is and what a credit default swap is but common sense tells us that if we leave the heavy thinking to the business people that they will take our money and spend it wisely on creating good jobs that we don't have to be educated for. And that brings up another issue. What do we need the Department of Education for? Won't people get educated if they think they can get a good job and become one of the heavy thinkers? Everyone knows that good old fashioned hard work is enough to get through high school and to pay your way through college even if it does leave you in debt so deep you never see the principle go down. Uh oh? I got fouled up on that balanced budget thing again. So, on second thought you aren't going to be able to borrow money to go to school so you should be able to graduate when you are 35 or 40 if you work full time. Of course, common sense will tell you that you'll have to put off getting married and having children until you are about 50 or so. Then you can buy a house without blowing that blasted budget. Ladies, if you've got kids in mind then common sense will tell you that you don't need that education.

Well, anyway, you can see that a person doesn't need to listen to those smart people if he has common sense on his side. Problem is that those guys that make money just aren't that interested in people with good old common sense unless it's to mow the lawn or do those jobs that don't pay enough to ever make it to their class of people.

We need to let the rest of the world in on this simple piece of discernment that we have found. Here we have every other country in the world sending their kids here to get an education. Boy, have we got them fooled. Here, we take their money and when their kids are graduated we send them a letter telling them they can't stay here any longer. You'd think China and India and all those other countries would catch on but boy are they dumb.

At least it's a growth industry. Maybe we can maintain our superiority by creating a global shortage in common sense. Someone help me figure out how to do this while keeping the budget balanced and without a Department of Education. I know this will work with just a little good old common sense.

That's my take on those pointy-headed perfessers and their fancy shmancy education and theories. What's yours?