We must elect the Romney/Ryan ticket Nov. 6, to correct the failed economic policies of the last 35 years. Look at this graph of the amount of United States Public Debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 1900 to 2011: www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm
We paid off the debt of two world wars and might have become debt free by 1990. However, the '60 and the children of the greatest generation adopted a liberal attitude toward debt. Look, the line begins to slope steeply upward in 1981, which meant that we were willing to assume more debt than we were able to pay off. Almost everybody: Homeowners, consumers, financiers, businesses, and governments - Republican and Democratic - all borrowed long when income was short. We promised ourselves increasing benefits: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and no poverty.
As a result we began to accumulate debt until 1994 when Republicans in the House of Representatives working with two moderate presidents during an economic expansion leveled the line out somewhat. However, Democrats returned to Congress in 2006, the housing bubble bursting, and stimuli and bail outs, soon created 2011 level close to that of WW II.
Wealth is created by the private sector. The economy grows when the private sector grows. Taxation extracts current wealth and borrowing extracts future wealth from the private sector. The economy shrinks when the private sector is taxed.
Obama's progressive economic policies promote a "fair" redistribution of wealth and of increasing "improvements in the lives of his subjects." His plan is to extract wealth from the private sector and stuff it like filling into a middle class, public Employee Bismarck. Obama will continue the line from 1981 to 2011; until the United States runs out of wealth.
Romney and Ryan understand that the private sector is the only source of prosperity and wealth for our economy. Therefore, the solution to increasing prosperity is to extract less from the private sector. Money that is not taxed will be used by citizens for their own purposes and the economy grows. Almost all new jobs are created by first year start ups and the best source of investment funds is private money that has not already been taxed by Government.
Unfortunately, we Republicans have the politically unpleasant task of asking the voter to demand less of government. It will take a long time to repair the damage done to the economy by many years of progressive economic and political policies. Little by little and more by more we citizens will have to learn to make do with less "government services." Initially unpopular, we will increasingly take pleasure and pride in our own accomplishments.
Romney and Ryan are our best chance to heal an ailing economy and put the United States on a new path to prosperity. They will take steps to reverse perhaps a half century of misleading Keynesian economic theory which has been married to over ambitious government activism.
Richard G. Briggs
Belpre
