OCR Text |
Show A Republican Says We Owe It to Ourselves But Why? At the start of 194-1 our federal debt amounted to $1560 per person. per-son. The share of this for a family fa-mily of five was STSuo. Since the beginning of the year it has gone much higher. To the extent that this is an internal in-ternal debt it is true that we owe it to ourselves. There is a great difference, as Mr. Eccles says, between be-tween our situation regarding the federal debt and the situation that would exist if we were a small nation na-tion owing the debt to one of the great powers. Still, we can hardly hard-ly dismiss the debt as of no consequence conse-quence just by saying that we owe it to ourselves. If it were such a trivial matter, so easily dismissed, why shouldn't we pay it to ourselves oursel-ves and be done with it? Why pay billions of dollars a year interest to each other to maintain the debt? At 2, the 250 billion debt costs 5 billion a year for interest. And if we are paying that interest to ourselves, let's get down to individual in-dividual cases and determine who pays whom, and for what. Are you, Mr. Voter, on the receiving end of that interest, or the paying end? The subject of the federal debt is immensely complicated by the fact that it concerns not only wealth squandered, but also our medium of exchange and the price level. Without going into these subjects at length which heaven forbid! I will say that the science of currency management should be far enough advanced by this time to show that we don't need to pay interest forever on borrowed money in order to maintain main-tain our economic equilibrium. The "forward looking liberals" who regard re-gard the debt as an unmixed blessing bless-ing have overlooked some important impor-tant points. The cost of the war has increased in-creased the debt. And here again I want to ask why. In the economic econo-mic sense we are producing our war materials as fast as we use them. We are not borrowing either raw materials or finished products from other nations. On the contrary, con-trary, our allies are borrowing hem from us. And it is absurd to consider that we are borrowing war goods from the future, to be epaid in the future. Unless we can imagine some process of physical phy-sical replacement of the natural resources which are being deple- ed, there can be no was repaying repay-ing ourselves what the war is costing. cost-ing. Actually, we are paying for the war as we go. Our national economy is producing what is being be-ing consumed, currently. The federal debt, then, appears as some sort of financial juggling. Maybe we are being led into debt deliberately, with thhe idea of thus destroying the economic system, to clear the way for statism. We know from experience that for each dollar the government has 'given" us we have had to forfeit ome degree of our economic free-om. free-om. It is as if we were being un into debt so the money bor- owed could be used to "buy out" our economic freedom. I maintain that our nation can be prosperous, debt fr.ee, and eco- lomically free. However, it is evident evi-dent that the new deal cannot bring about that happy condition. And that's just one more reason for turning the leadership of our nation over to a new administration. administra-tion. "A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation" James Freeman Clarke. E.S.M. Aug. 20, 1944 |