The big lie of the day today, this Friday the 18th, as I work with html canvas code, is the cry all over the news that the United States is broke. In this country millions of people are out at the restaurant; they’re out in their cars buying gas and going about their business; they’re at the store buying groceries (I was at the store today purchasing lettuce, root beer, and tomatoes, and saw them doing this, too, one guy at the meat counter even ordered some deli). Best Buy and the Apple Store are probably packed. If the United States were broke, none of this would be happening.

If we were broke, Congresspeople would be at home guarding their water bottles, hunkering down in their holes. The problem as I see it is that currently budget and other policy insist on the status quo. There’s very little talk of raising top tier tax rates and finding some way to lower healthcare costs, which would probably create surpluses. Politicians know this. But they don’t want to direct their attention to these small matters. In all this mix, the housing bubble and the looming new tech bubble have been shoved under the carpet. Have real wages gone up in this country? Where is the money going? Not, I would argue, to pensions.

The lie of “the busted bank” is argued as having something to do with nature not policy. It’s the alignment of the stars, some argue; it’s the way things are so we must adapt and adopt.

Is John Boehner right when he asserts that Government borrowing is taking money away private interests? How so? Interest rates argue otherwise. But the economists can settle that question. If Wisconsin (and I mean this ironically) could find a way of controlling health care costs, this other budget nonsense about the “only way to solve” the problem would probably go away. Note that was no TARP for the states.