AFP News Agency: 'Greeks Protest Against Austerity Measures'

Source:AFP News Agency- Greeks taking advantage of their free speech rights.

"Thousands of Greeks took to the streets again on Wednesday as a general strike shut down the country against a new raft of government austerity measures designed to forestall a costly debt overhaul." 

From the AFP News Agency

What is happening in Greece right now could be in America's future as well if we don't get our deficit and debt situation under control and borrow money every time the Federal Government decides it should do something, like the no fly zone in Libya right now. I support our involvement in Libya but but I don't think we should be borrowing money to pay for it. 

If all the Federal Government had to do was to borrow money to pay for it operations, then we wouldn't need taxes because the Feds could just borrow from another country to pay for its needs. But you don't hear anyone except for perhaps some fringe Libertarians, calling for eliminating all taxes. Because most people understand that when government's borrow money, they are borrowing from other countries or banks. Which means other countries own a piece, or in China's case a big piece of your country. 

And when government's borrow from banks, it limits how much the private sector, business's can individuals can borrow. Which limits their economic activities as well, because banks only have so much money that they can lend. Well, government's only have so much money that they can borrow and so much money that they can put on their national debt card before it limits what they can do, because once they borrow so much money it hurts their currency and their currency loses value which has happened to the American dollar, which makes things more expensive for everybody. 

Which is why governments collect taxes to pay for their operations. Money thats paid into their treasury's by individuals and business's, domestic and foreign to pay for the government's operations. Money thats created in the country and paid into the government to finance the government. And when they have an idea to create another government program or increase spending on another program. They increase taxes or cut somewhere else thats not important. 

The Federal Government will have an opportunity to start to get its deficit and debt under control with the debt ceiling extension in August . I believe it should be raised but not for free, because if your going to request to borrow even more money then you are already borrowing and you are already starting off with a huge debt, you should show some willingness and ability to at least start to pay it back. 

The good news is we have several good ways to get this accomplished that actually won't hurt anybody if we do it soon. But if we keep putting it off, then we will turn into Greece with the IMF or somebody deciding how we pay our bills. We can get our debt by increasing taxes on high-earners who can afford to pay it. Draw back our forces and bases oversees that are in developed nations that can afford to defend themselves, and reform our entitlement programs. 

We wouldn't have to hurt anyone in entitlement reform either just reform it by requiring high-earners to pay more for their benefits and take less out. Reform our public assistance programs and design them in a way that moves people off of them and into self-sufficiency. And reform our disaster relief by paying for it and not declaring every disaster as another opportunity to borrow more money. 

America has a choice become another Greece or be better than Greece. Throw people off of entitlement programs or reform them in a way that doesn't hurt anyone. But the choice is still our in how we pay down our debt at this moment but it won't be our choice indefinitely if we don't move to get it under control.