Most of our C-133 Crew Colleagues know Rick Spencer, 39th ATS Navigator in the early 60s, Book Reviewer on this blog, and emcee of our last reunion in Dover. He offers the following thought provoking letter:

Hello C-133 Crewmembers:

Several of you have received drafts of the attached analysis of our $200
Trillion unfunded debt and made some fine comments to help me along. It was
suggested that I pen such by a former colleague in order that we may all
better understand the present nature of our nation’s fiscal situation and
its future generational consequences.

The combined local, state, and federal governments are now our largest
businesses, maybe the world’s largest as they control over 50% of our GDP.
The recent down grading of U.S. bonds suggest the precariousness of our
financial situation when measured against the balance sheet of a commercial
corporation. We are/would be in junk bond territory, especially, if one
takes into account the ‘hidden debt’ of the unfunded liabilities.

It now seems clear; and, no one seems to care that we have put our progeny
at risk with the ’New Deal’ and ‘Great Society’ policies that have pursued
reckless and abstract ideas of ‘social justice’ through the false promise
of a “permanence of plenty”. Social justice of the type that has been
pursued is an “empty formula”: It is the risk of a lesser life for one with
goals seeking personal and economic freedom; for one to be all that he can
be; for one to pursue his own happiness; and, for one to be forced to live
with unconstrained federal power touching all parts of his personal life. It
truly is ‘The Road To Serfdom’.

It may seem odd to the unconstrained utopian thinkers that a constrained
view of government was the Founder’s original intent; a view that accepted
its citizen’s own private stock of reasoning as appropriate guidance for
life’s concerns. That was a major tenet of our revolution, for our
Constitution, and for our nation’s guidance until the Progressive era began
at the turn of the 20th century.

The irony, that seems absurd, if not laughable, is that Europe has long been
infected with ‘the disease of progressivism’ in the form of socialism, but
they are now running from it just as we seem to be embracing it. Large
scale central planning by those who govern has never been the American
approach to achieve an economic independence and it remains to be seen if
our citizenry accept it as a way of life.

I have attached my thoughts, “ Unfunded Liabilities: The Folly of the
Ancient Hope of Mankind, to Live Without Working”. Please note that the
analysis only indirectly speaks to the indiscriminate spending of our moral
capital largely caused by the reckless abandon that we have been spending
our financial capital. The work ends with a challenge to the reader; and, I
now await your response to my challenge. Thanks, RLS

P.S. For those unfamiliar with ‘net present value’, ‘bonds in perpetuity’,
or the ‘PIIGS’ of Europe they are explained in the below links that you can
review before beginning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetuity

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8510603.stm