Out of money? Print more...

So a good friend of mine shared this video with me and I felt the need to verbalize my thoughts on the issue:





This is a topic where I definitely follow a more conservative, even libertarian ideology. You absolutely cannot just print more money without the gold or other item of universal value to back it up. It is idiotic public policy. Here’s the problem in our two party system:

Party 1 = we want public services like schools, jails, etc, but we don’t want to pay much in taxes and we want the government to stay out of things.

Party 2 = we want the government to step in and do more, tax the wealthier people to pay for it, or come up with some other way to pay for it.

For somebody to get elected they have to please just enough of both sides that we’ve ended up with: Government step in and do more while not concurrently raising taxes. People want the government to help them, or help the companies they work for, but they don’t want to pay to do it. So where does that leave our government? Borrow from other nations (who aren’t lending now that the global economy is tanking) or print more money. So what is worse, letting General Motors, AIG, and other multi-million employee organizations shut down or keep those millions of people receiving paychecks that are worth less? Where do we cut funds from? Schools, Universities, Research, Jails, Medicare, Medicaid, Military, Food Stamps, Non-profit grants, Roads, Police, Fire Protection… what deserves less than the others?

Maybe now would be the time for the greatest unification of church and state in American history. What I mean by that is maybe now would be a phenomenal time for the Christian Church to step up and say to the state, ‘we will take care of the poor, the needy, the sick, the hungry. We will volunteer our time to work on infrastructure projects or to police our streets. We will volunteer to help clean schools or make lunches for kids. We will spend our Sunday mornings knitting hats for babies or repairing cars for single moms, instead of just sitting and hearing a sermon we’ve heard 32 times before. Christian kids can bake cookies and make sandwiches during Sunday School for the poor or other workers. Christian executives and wealthy individuals with savings will take temporary pay cuts or cessation of salary for a period of time. Christian doctors will offer an evening a week seeing patients at free clinics. Churches will offer free job re-training, counseling, housing, etc.

Maybe that would be a more Godly, Christ-like response from us than to just be upset about the government printing more money to solve problems we aren’t willing to solve ourselves.