What We Should Be Teaching Students. You're in Deep Debt Thanks to the US Government.

Is this the government's version of "truth"?  Our government is promising nothing but unfunded debt for our children.

"Quite simply, the government has grown too big, promised too much, and waited too long to restructure itself. Large and growing deficits represent deferred taxes that will have to be paid. In effect, we have a massive taxation without representation for future generations, the people who are too young to vote.

We have yet to learn how to think of the federal deficit in personal terms. If you constantly live beyond your means by increasing your credit card balance and bank borrowing, eventually your debt rises to a level where all you are doing is paying the interest on your credit cards and loans. Sooner or later, your credit will be so bad that no one will lend you any money. Then your standard of living will decline as you try to reduce your expenses dramatically or alternatively file for bankruptcy. This is what is facing the United States. Unless we make changes, by 2055 interest costs will be the only thing that the United States will be able to pay for with available revenues and resources."

So says Mort Zuckerman in usnews.com, explaining how we are dooming our children to a life burdened by high taxes and entitlements for just about everyone.  Instead of teaching our children sound economic theory, we are teaching them how to live and die in a nanny state.

I wonder if the fall of the Roman Empire will make it into the History/social studies standards and curriculum.    From a commentor at the end of the article:

Mr. Zuckerman has done very well to point out many details of the predicament. He has, unfortunately, enumerated the trees without recognising the forest. Mort, baby, this is what "the people" asked for and got. Now they going to get what they deserve. This republic was intentionally not set up as a democracy. The founders knew that no democracy can endure the stupidity and avarice of the "people". No, it was set up as a broad based aristocratic republic based loosely on the Roman republic. Predictably, the same mistakes made by the Romans have been repeated with the same results. Those of you not versed in the basics should understand that I am not refering to the imperial phase of Rome which gets most of the publicity but was actually a boring residuum of the collapse of the most successful republic in history. Anyway, my point is that Mr. Zuckerman has done a fine job with the proximate causes of the impending collapse but has ignored the distal cause. And again, this repeats a mistake commonly made by the "great men" at the tail end of the Roman Republic. Still, a better effort than his peers.

We only have ourselves to blame.  After all, the GLEs in Missouri for history refer to our government as a democracy and the word republic never appears in the standards. 

Welcome to the demise of the United States as a constitutional republic...maybe that's what we should be teaching students.   And while we're witnessing the fall of the republic, let's watch our president give Congress a raise for the stellar job the lawmakers have done with our money.  It's just more debt.  So what's the big deal?