The Golden Ticket

My latest opinion piece in the Marina Times, in which I probably anger some well-paid people and their enablers.

At least the original Robin Hood was
into forcible trickle-down economics. Photo: andscene

OPINION
The Golden Ticket
City's reverse Robin Hood spending
By John Zipperer
December 2012

For years, there has been a movement to convince cable television providers to charge for their channels on an a la carte basis. You can select each of the channels you want and pay for only those.  

If we took that same approach to public budgets, what do you think would be the result? It’s not an entirely serious question; there are certain things that people don’t like but that need to be paid for

Read the entire article ... 

We're No. 2

According to the IMF and the CIA, in 2011 the GDP of the European Union was about $17.5 trillion and the GDP of the United States was about $15.1 trillion.

The Nation's Fiscal Challenge

David M. Walker, the U.S. comptroller general, discussed America's spending/saving/payment problems during a September 14, 2007, panel at The Commonwealth Club of California. The panel was part of a bipartisan Fiscal Wake-Up Tour.

Sobering stuff, this. I appreciated the fact that there were bipartisan views on the panel -- joining Walker was Alison Acosta Fraser from the conservative Heritage Foundation and Isabel V. Sawhill of the liberal Brookings Institution (and a former Clinton administration budget official). Both parties got us into this mess, and most Americans have participated in trying to vote ourselves rich.

And our children and grandchildren will rue the day they ever let us borrow the national credit card and hit the mall.