By Tom Kiser

It appears that the time may have come for We, the People, to have a nationwide Irish Wake. “Our” federal government has detached from the rest of the nation and in so doing is no longer in touch with its reason for being and thus has likely already committed suicide.

The reason that the rank and file members of the public sector unions won’t except that their gravy trains have been derailed is because, with the guidance and leadership of their union leaders and the encouragement of their political party, it was they who did it to themselves. And yet, as poorly as they have been served by those in whom they placed their trust, they are still listening and still believing. Their condition can be described with the term “motivated reasoning.”

Rank and file members are still being scammed into believing that the only thing needed to keep their privileged existence rolling on is for legislatures and governors to pass and implement tax increases to be paid by the non-privileged private citizens of their states, counties and towns.

Think of this: If you increase the amount by which the grocer is being taxed, then after the dust settles and cost adjustments have been made, everyone, regardless of income, will be paying more for their groceries.

If you increase the amount by which doctors and other high earning healthcare professionals are being taxed, then after the dust settles and cost adjustments have been made, everyone, regardless of income, will be paying more for healthcare.

Then more lower income households will qualify for programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, government subsidized or provided housing, etc., etc., etc., so the amounts that governments will be obligated to pay for the higher priced goods and services that the various programs obligate governments to pay for will increase, likely by enough that even with the tax increases, nominal future budget deficits will be greater than the current nominal deficits.

That same simple rule applies to everything that any of us have to buy. It may be the higher income people who are sending the increased tax payments to the tax collectors, but after the dust settles and the increased costs have been adjusted into prices, everyone, regardless of income, will be paying for the higher amounts of cost-of-governments that becomes embedded in the prices of everything that we buy.

That will mean that eventually the governments who are implementing tax increases plus all other governments will again have budgetary problems because there is a feedback loop already in place that takes some part of any increase in government cost and feeds it back to the governments themselves in the form of higher nominal prices for all of the things that governments purchase or pay for either directly or indirectly.

At that point, predictably, all of the various clans and clavans of political left kleptoparasites and their trolls will again start yammering for increasing government revenues by increasing taxes and/or fees.

Government budgets cannot be brought into balance by increasing taxes when excessive aggregate size and aggregate cost is the cause of budgetary imbalances. The problem is that there are too many people in too many governments who are seemingly unable to understand that there are hard limits to the percentage of a nation’s GDP that can consist of aggregate government direct plus indirect spending.

After government spending passes that percentage point the nation becomes top heavy with overhead cost, tips over and all fall down, go splat with a splat that will be felt and heard around the world.

As I said at the beginning, R.I.P., Uncle Sam. It has been good to know you. Now, let the parties begin and let the bands play on.