One of my favorite authors is Ron Chernow. He has written several very good historical biographies. I strongly recommend his book, Alexander Hamilton (818 pp. The Penguin Press, $23.10 hardcover from Amazon)
Hamilton is frequently mistaken for a President because his face appears on the $10 bill.
Of course, Benjamin Franklin is on the $100 bill and he isn’t a President either.
The fact that these two illustrious and important Americans are confused with Presidents is a serious indictment of the teaching of American history in this country but that is a subject for another blog (and trust me, I will get to it).
Hamilton is my focus now because of our bloated national debt.
Hamilton is an often overlooked founding father.
He is a flamboyant, colorful and controversial character.
He would make good television material.
He was a member of the Constitutional Convention, our first Secretary of the Treasury and co-author of
The Federalist Papers.
He was also dead at age 49 from a duel with Aaron Burr.
Now, just as devotees of Stephanie Meyers,
Twilight, series are either Team Jacob (werewolves lovers) or Team Edward (vampire lovers) so devotees of American history are either Team Adams (2
nd President of the United States) or Team Hamilton (the two despised each other).
Chernow is a clear member of Team Hamilton [Yours truly is Team Adams, but I am nothing if not broad minded.]
As such he is sometimes a little too emotional on his guy’s side, but that doesn’t mean he is not an excellent biographer.
Hamilton created public finance in the
United States.
He told George Washington that public debt (and we had plenty even before the ratification of the Constitution) was, “the price of liberty” and, “the natural disease” of government.
He not only approved of debt, but also said we should pay it.
Now that second part implies that our debt would always be payable.
PAYABLE!
Folks, did you hear that last word?
Just as John Maynard Keynes postulated, a sustainable debt on the part of a government can have a stabilizing effect on an economy.
Just as a family can take on the debt of a car and house and improve their lot in the mean time, as long as the payment of that debt can fit into their budget, a government can do the same.
Of course, governments seldom stay within their payable budget.
I don’t entirely blame the legislature for that (they are the ones who spend the money).
Frankly, if you gave me their money I would misuse it, too; count on it friends, I would spend like a drunken sailor.
It is our debt that is now the center of a justifiable storm in Congress.
In the June issue of the AARP Bulletin, editor John Toedtman points out that in 1790,
Hamilton directed the nation to take out our country's first loan.
It was for not quite $20,000.
Toedtman then points out that the government increases its debt by that much in a third of a second!
The fact is that our national debt ($14,300,000,000,000—I like to write it out in numbers rather than the simplistic $14.3 trillion) is slightly less than this country’s GDP for a single year.
Think about this.
We are actually making more than we owe, but just barely.
We ought to be able to nibble our way out of this, but we have to start some where and I know where.
When I was a principal and we had budget hearings, the rule was that we could only suggest cuts in our own budget—not someone else’s. Every Congressional chairman needs to meet with a plan to cut his budget, not just by its rate of expansion, and not a whole lot, but just a little. And all of us who are going to face less governmental goodies should just shut up about it. I don't care if you are old, disabled, cute or cuddly and thus entitled--just shut up about it and make do. This is belt tightening time folks. We are all in this and we are all going to have to feel the pain. It’s big girl panties time.
Here endeth the sermon.
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