6 Dark Questions for the Future of the Two Americas

Michael Graham’s op/ed column today considers the future of the Two Americas when those paying no taxes come to outnumber those who do:

I am the 50.5 percent.
I am, according to the Heritage Foundation, part of the lucky half of Americans who pay federal income taxes, so that the other half (technically the remaining 49.5 percent) can pay nothing.

Half of us are paying the whole bill. Somehow that doesn’t seem fair. Folks like Elizabeth Warren and President Barack Obama agree. They think we should pay more.

We’re used to that, we 50.5 percenters. Every time a new “stimulus” is announced, every time a new government program to solve all our problems is rolled out, we know that a) the problems aren’t going anywhere; and b) we’ll be stuck paying the check.

…

There’s a terrifying chart in the president’s new budget showing that, under Obama’s proposed spending plan, federal debt will reach $200,000 per U.S. household by 2020.

Numbers like that simply aren’t sustainable.

By 2020, we’ll be paying more on national debt service than on national defense — and the debt will still be growing.

So why aren’t people panicking? Why aren’t voters demanding serious spending cuts and tax reform?

Once again, why would they?

The half of Americans eating the pie know that they’re not paying for it.

A dark question: how can Tea Partiers explain our country’s fiscal crisis to a population so economically illiterate that more than half cannot manage their own finances? (Related: Andrew Klavan this week on Charles Murray’s Coming Apart.)

Is our federal government’s debt just a reflection of the collective character of our nation?

Do we have the President and the congress we deserve?

If Obama wins in November — thus achieving a mandate to “fundamentally transform” America — what possible excuse will Tea Partiers, Republicans, and Pro-Lifers embrace in their feeble attempt to slow down the coming Big Government Goliath?

That’s when we start having the serious discussions about what Going Galt entails, right?

How come the story of Moses and the ancient Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years keeps popping into my head?

And some T. S. Eliot seems appropriate:

He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand not lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop 357
But there is no water