I enjoy reading about health issues and natural ways to stay healthy.  A lot of the reading I do comes from people who are going against what the medical establishment says.

Inevitably, I will read opposing comments by people who say such things as: “Anyone who believes this is foolish.  This is quack science.  Are you a doctor and what are your qualifications?”

These are the kinds of harsh comments I see and I have heard similar arguments in person too.  The defender of the medical establishment will likely pull out the “Are you a doctor?” card.  In other words, if you haven’t been licensed by the government, then your thoughts and opinions mean nothing.

This is using an argument from authority.  It is a methodology people use to debate, but it doesn’t make them right.  Their sole argument rests on the authority of someone else.  Because someone else said something, that automatically makes it so.

The ironic thing is that some of the reading I do about natural health issues comes from licensed physicians.  I am not saying that this makes what I am reading automatically correct, but it refutes the other argument.

How can you have two “experts” who completely disagree on something?  It means that one of them has to be wrong.  It means that one of them is not as much of an expert as we think.

(As a side note, I think it is important to keep this in mind when looking at investments and economic forecasts.  You can certainly have two knowledgeable people who have differing opinions about the economic outlook if only because there are so many variables and it is impossible to predict each one.  But you should keep in mind that just because someone is labeled an “expert”, it doesn’t mean he will always be right or that you should automatically listen to him.)

I think too many people make the mistake of putting all of their trust in experts, especially when it comes to medicine.  I have met some really dumb doctors before.  I have seen many doctors who will just throw antibiotics at patients who have a virus and don’t need them.  I have seen many doctors who will prescribe drugs frequently and almost never recommend anything natural to a patient such as dietary changes or supplements.

You have to realize that most medical doctors go through the same curriculum and take the same tests.  They don’t contain some special powers that others do not have.

I am not saying that you should never trust doctors and to avoid them entirely.  There are some great doctors out there and some of the specialties are simply amazing.  It is incredible what heart surgeons and brain surgeons can do and this really is a technical skill that others do not possess.

The main point is that you should do your own research where you can and you should be strong enough to form your own opinions, even if outside of the establishment.  Just because someone has a government-issued license, it does not validate everything they say.

There is a simple and easy investment that is available to many people that they do not give much consideration.  They probably don’t even view it as an investment.

It will give you a guaranteed return and will not generate any capital gains taxes.

The investment I am referring to is paying down the principal balance on your home mortgage.  While this is not an option for those who rent or those who own their home outright, I find a majority of investors are in a situation of owning a home and also owing on a mortgage.

I don’t think this is a good option for everyone.  It depends on your situation.

But I have seen people who have hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments, with extra liquid money on top of it, and they are trying to figure out what to do with it.  Yet I find out that they have a house in which they owe $200,000 or more on the mortgage.

By paying down the principal balance (any payment above the monthly minimum), you are essentially locking in a return equivalent to the interest rate on your loan.  If you have a mortgage rate fixed at 4.5%, then any payments toward principal would earn the equivalent of 4.5% (by saving your that interest) and that would be with compounding interest.

This strategy is often overlooked where it might serve as a nice complement to an investment portfolio.

I would not recommend this strategy to someone who is short on liquid funds.  If you don’t have an emergency fund or easy access to other money, then you should not use all of your money to pay down your mortgage.  You are locking in this money.

The only time you will see this money again is when you either sell your house or refinance.  Of course, once you pay off the loan entirely, you will quickly see the benefit in increased cash flow without having to make a mortgage payment each month.

If you decide to make paying down your home loan part of your overall financial strategy, then it is important to realize that it is a hedge against deflation.  By locking in a guaranteed rate of return and by reducing your debt, you are protecting yourself against deflation.  Therefore, the rest of your portfolio may want to lean in favor of hedging against inflation.

I think paying down your home loan and ultimately paying it off will give most people a powerful feeling.  It is nice to own your home outright, knowing that you just have to pay your property taxes and nobody can kick you out.

Again, this strategy isn’t for everyone, particularly those low on liquid funds.  But if you have extra money just sitting in the bank, you may want to consider this “investment”, even if it sounds boring.  It can add up to real savings over time.

If you own a house with a mortgage, consider diversifying with this simple strategy of paying a little extra on your mortgage each month or possibly making a big one time extra payment

You can’t find a guaranteed rate of return this high anywhere else.

It is that time of year when people decide to make their resolution for the new year.  Eating healthier and exercising is a popular one.  For students, a resolution might include studying more.  Some people have financial goals, such as getting out of debt or saving more money.

If you belong to a gym, you will probably see an increase in the crowd during January.  This will likely taper off in February and you will start to see the “regulars” again, perhaps with a few new regulars.

It is said that it takes doing something every day for three weeks for it to become a habit.  This doesn’t always hold true, but it is a decent guideline for making sure you get past that three-week mark and into a new habit.

I think many people go wrong with their New Year’s resolution because it is too drastic of a change in lifestyle.  Unless they are really motivated, it will be hard to stick with it.

If you are used to eating junk food most of the time and you all of a sudden try eating everything healthy, it will be a difficult transition.  This may not be true for someone who just suffered a heart attack or someone who was just diagnosed with a disease.  There is strong motivation there.  But for someone who just wants to lose a few pounds, it may not be enough motivation to change everything.

So here is my suggestion when making a New Year’s resolution.  Unless you are really highly motivated, take small steps.  You can do something small every day to move in the right direction.

If you are trying to eat healthier, perhaps it is best not to give up all junk food at once and deny yourself.  Instead, make small changes.  Maybe you can cut back from two sodas per day to one soda per day and replace it with water.  Maybe you can avoid snacking on potato chips in the afternoon and instead choose some carrots or an avocado.

The key is to do something that you can stick with.  If you are still allowed to have dessert after dinner, maybe it won’t be as hard giving it up after your lunch.  Or maybe you can cut the dessert portions into smaller sizes than what you would have typically consumed in the past.

I think the same strategy can apply to your finances or almost anything else you want to improve.

If you want to spend less and save more, maybe it is best not to eliminate cable television, your cell phone, and your daily trips to Starbucks all at the same time.  Unless you are in dire financial circumstances, perhaps you can eliminate one thing, or cut back on it.

Perhaps you could pack a lunch for yourself a few times a week instead of buying from a restaurant or cafeteria.  Perhaps you could stop your daily trips to Starbucks and just limit it to twice per week starting off.

This strategy isn’t for everyone.  Some people are better going cold turkey.  For most people though, it is quite difficult to make drastic lifestyle changes all at once.  Eliminating Starbucks every day may not seem like a drastic lifestyle change, but habits can be hard to break, especially when you are getting instant gratification.

In 2014, do something small for yourself every day that is achievable and will help you towards bigger things down the road.

There is no question that we live in an inflationary environment.  Since World War 2, prices have gone up almost every single year.  Some years are worse than others.  But even if prices are going up at 2% per year, it still eats away at your savings.

I will sometimes hear advice that it is financially savvy to take on debt because you can pay back the debt with dollars that have depreciated.  This can be right at times, but we also need to understand that it can be very bad advice in certain situations.

First, we live in an unpredictable world.  We also live in a world with booms and busts, courtesy of the Federal Reserve and other central banks.  While the general trends may be inflationary, we also see times when prices are stable or even pulling back in some areas.

Imagine the poor person who took this advice of taking on debt in 2005 in regards to buying a house.  He thought, “I will just buy a house and pay back the loan with money that is worth less in the future.  As long as it is a fixed rate loan, the interest rates won’t matter.”

But things wouldn’t have worked out too well with this strategy.  It would have become evident in 2008 when everything came crashing down.  In some areas of the U.S. you could have bought the same house for half the price in 2011 as would have been paid five years earlier.

The point here is that it is very hard to predict and time the market and the economy with any certainty.

A second factor to consider is interest rates.  Right now, the Fed is creating new money out of thin air at an unprecedented pace, yet interest rates have remained low.

If you have money available, why would you take out a loan and pay interest when you are probably earning less interest with the money you have?  In other words, it doesn’t make much sense to take out a loan at 5% interest when you have money sitting in the bank earning one-tenth of a percent in interest.

A third factor to consider is the type of debt you are taking on.  This can be a major difference.  I strongly advise against any credit card debt (that isn’t paid off each month), unless it is for an emergency or it is a special rate of zero percent.

Even if prices are rising as fast as the interest rate on your credit card, which is highly unlikely, it still doesn’t make much financial sense.  Also, most credit card purchases are for consumer goods and services and not for investment purposes, which is all the more reason not to have any credit card debt where you are paying interest charges.

Overall, I think it is best to avoid most debt, even in an inflationary environment.  There are exceptions of course.  Taking on debt may be ok for buying a house, as long as you realize that the house you live in is a consumer good.  Generally, I think a home loan is ok as long as it is the same as what you would have paid for rent anyway.

Car loans are ok as long as it is needed transportation.  I don’t think it is smart to take out a big loan for a car that costs more for its luxury than its ability to transport.

Student loans are a tricky subject, but this could be a good form of debt in some cases, particularly for high-salaried occupations such as a surgeon.  But student loans can also be the worst form of debt too, particularly if it doesn’t lead to a high income.

In conclusion, I think it is best to avoid debt as much as possible, even in an inflationary environment.  If you are going to hedge against inflation, don’t do it by paying interest on a loan.  That isn’t going to make you money.

Instead, invest your money in inflation hedges.  In order to get wealthier, you need to collect interest, not pay it out to someone else.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) wrapped up its latest meeting on Wednesday and released its latest statement in regards to monetary policy.  For the last several meetings, the statements were very similar, reading almost identical at times.

The latest statement was different.  We finally saw the beginning of a “taper”, something the markets have been anticipating for many months.

Starting in January, the Fed will “only” create $75 billion per month out of thin air, instead of the $85 billion per month we have seen over the last year.  So instead of buying assets at an annual pace of just over $1 trillion, now the pace will be $900 billion per year.

To put this in context, the adjusted monetary base was around $800 billion in 2008 before the major bust became evident.  So the Fed will still be creating more money on a yearly basis than all of the base money that was in existence just over 5 years ago.

The Fed is currently buying $40 billion per month of mortgage-backed securities and $45 billion per month of longer-term Treasury securities (government bonds).  With the Fed’s taper, it will decrease $5 billion per month for each.

This means that the Fed will continue to bail out banks (buying mortgage-backed securities) and will continue to help Congress fund the deficit (buying U.S. government debt).  It will just be at a slightly slower pace.

The other news making headlines that the markets seemed to like is that we could see the federal funds rates stay low for longer than expected.  Before, the FOMC statements said that the current rate of between 0 and .25% would remain as long as unemployment remained above 6.5% and inflation expectations stayed below 2.5%.

In the latest FOMC statement, this portion changed.  It says, “The Committee now anticipates, based on its assessment of these factors, that it likely will be appropriate to maintain the current target range for the federal funds rate well past the time that the unemployment rate declines below 6-1/2 percent, especially if projected inflation continues to run below the Committee’s 2 percent longer-run goal.”

While this may seem like a big deal, it really isn’t at all.  The federal funds rate has been kept below .25% for about 5 years.  But it is almost meaningless right now.  It has nothing to do with the Fed’s monetary policy at the moment.  The Fed has gone through periods of “quantitative easing” and periods of relatively stable money in the last 5 years.  It doesn’t matter what the Fed does with the monetary base.  The federal funds rate stays about the same.

The federal funds rate is the overnight interest rate for banks to borrow money.  But since the huge expansion of the monetary base in 2008, we have also seen a huge increase in excess reserves held by banks.

Since most banks have reserves far above their minimum requirements, they have little need to borrow money overnight.  They already are way in excess of their reserve requirements.  Since there is little demand for overnight borrowing, the rate stays low.

For that reason, I wouldn’t focus too much on the FOMC’s policy of keeping the federal funds rate low.

The last interesting thing that deserves mention of the FOMC’s latest statement is how the members voted.  In recent past meetings, we have seen one dissenting vote by Esther L. George with concerns over long-term inflation.

In the latest statement, there was also one dissenting vote, but it was a different person.  Eric S. Rosengren dissented, believing that changes in the purchase program are premature.  In other words, $75 billion per month in new money is not enough for him.

We are in for interesting times ahead.  I don’t know if anything will change once Janet Yellen takes the helm.  I do know that we are living in unprecedented times and I don’t think the Fed members really understand how to get out of the mess they have created.

I recently saw an article that discussed the economic conditions in Washington DC as compared to the rest of the country.  Personal income and wages were far higher in DC in comparison to any state.  In 2012, wages were 79 percent higher in DC than the national average and employee benefits were 102 percent higher.

Meanwhile, the middle class in the country continues to struggle, seeing real wages staying stagnant, or even declining.

There was never a bust in Washington DC.  Most of the rest of the U.S. saw increased unemployment, a bursting housing bubble, and overall tough economic times.  But DC has managed to escape most of that up to this point.

It is not surprising when we think that the federal government collects nearly $4 trillion a year.  It does not have to worry about balancing the budget like state and city governments do.  The politicians in DC can keep running huge deficits as long as the Federal Reserve is willing to fund them.

I think more Americans are waking up to the reality that they are getting the short end of the stick.  They struggle to find work, and when they do find it, they are often required to work overtime or do stressful jobs that don’t pay a lot.  But they can see that many government workers are not under the same pressure, particularly those working for the federal government.  For this, I do not include the military, which can obviously be stressful.

I sometimes hear liberty advocates write off government workers in terms of making allies.  They are sometimes painted with a broad brush.  Obviously, most government workers do not want to give up a good job.

We do need to be careful in how we stereotype people.  I don’t think we should assume that most government workers will never be friends of the liberty movement.

In fact, some government workers may be even more prone to the ideas of liberty because of where they work.  If you see the bureaucracy five days a week, you probably aren’t going to constantly defend it.

Most government workers aren’t in their job because they love government and the way it operates.  In most cases, it is simply survival and out of self-interest.  How many people do you know who would turn down a job that is less stressful and pays more and has great benefits?

Some people take government jobs because they are otherwise limited in their field of work.  If you are a teacher, you are sometimes quite limited in working outside of government.

There are many government workers who understand that government is too big, too wasteful, and can’t solve our problems.  They understand this because they see it for themselves.

There are some people in the military who become anti-war after fighting in one.  They see the horrors of war and realize it isn’t all glamorous as they once thought.

It is the same with many other government workers.  They see the red tape.  They see the inefficiency.  They see the wasted money.  Sometimes they even see the corruption.

Many of these workers are just playing along.  They want to collect their next paycheck, so they don’t rock the boat.  But this doesn’t mean they support the whole system.

There will come a time when you see more government workers turn against the government itself.  There will eventually come a time when there are cuts made in DC too.  It will rain on the party there.

It is likely not sustainable for a group of people to keep living at the expense of others, particularly when it is so obvious.  You will either see some people revolt, or you will simply see a drain on wealth where there is no longer enough to be taken.

As Margaret Thatcher pointed out, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.  Yes, that is a problem for those on the receiving end.  Either the middle class will run out of money to fund DC or they will run out of patience and put an end to it.

I was recently in a dollar store where everything in the store has a price of one dollar or less.  I bought 17 items.  With sales tax, the total was 18 dollars and change.

I bought a few things for Christmas like boxes and tape, a few toys, some plastic utensils (for those moments when the dishwasher is full and you are short on time), and a bunch of other random stuff.

I have a few thoughts on my shopping experience and the whole dollar store concept.

First, it simply amazes me how so many things can be priced at a dollar.  While some of it may be junk, it is still inexpensive junk.  But a lot of things are quite useful.  And even if some things don’t have great longevity, you are still only paying a dollar.

I bought a stapler there because I couldn’t find a little one that we have at home.  I just need the stapler for a little project with my kids.  It really only needs to last a day.  Even if it is a cheap stapler, it is really incredible that anyone could sell a new stapler for a dollar.

This just shows that we live in an advanced civilization with an advanced division of labor.  I would never be able to make a stapler or anything close to it.  I don’t know if anyone could.

It reminds of the little story called I Pencil by Leonard Read, first published back in 1958.  There is nobody on earth who could make a pencil from scratch, yet they get produced all the time.  And not only does the division of labor make it possible, it also eventually makes it inexpensive for others.

This leads me to my second point about the dollar store.  It is a great benefit to the poor.  We hear about government welfare and even voluntary charity, but it is really dollar stores and the like that keep people out of absolute poverty.

I don’t typically buy much in the way of food at the dollar store, but if you are poor and really in desperate need, you can always go to the dollar store and get a decent amount of food for just a few dollars.

While I am not a regular at the dollar store, I saw a few people in there with carts full of stuff.  They were buying food and household supplies.  I don’t know if they are poor or just really frugal, but how great is the dollar store for these people?

My third thought about dollar store shopping is just how productive the free market really is.  In spite of huge inflation by the Federal Reserve, the market is still able to keep production high enough and cheap enough to keep many things priced at a dollar.

Here is a whole store full of items that are priced at a dollar or less.  Despite all of the roadblocks by government and despite massive monetary inflation, the market still finds a way to function at a high level.

This leads me to my final thought about the concept of a dollar store.  Will the Fed overwhelm the market at some point and make dollar stores extinct?  While the free market is really amazing and resilient, it is possible for the government and the central bank to overwhelm it.

You will know that the Fed’s monetary inflation is outpacing the market’s ability to produce when the dollar store ceases to exist, or at least exist in its current manner.

It might become the two-dollar store, or eventually the ten-dollar store.  Who knows how bad it could be?

I think this will be a good test in the future.  If dollar stores are able to continue to exist and price everything at a dollar or less, then the market is still able to function at a high level.

If dollar stores go out of business or start pricing items above one dollar, then you will know that the Federal Reserve is overwhelming the market’s ability to produce at a high level.

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, is making a final mark before he leaves office.  The New York City Board of Health unanimously approved Bloomberg’s initiative to require children under the age of 5 to receive a flu vaccination if the child is enrolled in a city-licensed day care or pre-school.

Bloomberg is the face of the nanny state.  He is well known for his ban on large sodas.  He is a nightmare for libertarians, except for the fact that he shows just how abusive the state can be.

This latest initiative is controversial in many ways.  There are many people opposed to it because they argue that vaccines can cause autism and other health problems.

Ironically, this new law applies to children who are 6 months old up to just under the age of 5, which would actually be the group most susceptible to harmful effects, such as autism.  Most young children already receive a high number of vaccines at an early age.  If the child’s immune system is already weakened, another vaccine could make the difference between a healthy child and an unhealthy child.

The defenders of the nanny state will dispute any link between vaccinations and autism, yet they won’t leave that choice up to the parents.  There is nothing preventing these people from vaccinating their own children.  They just want to control the lives of other people.

Defenders of the Bloomberg measure say that the flu can be quite dangerous and even deadly.  But the opposition who believe there is a link with autism can make the same argument on their side.  Shouldn’t it be up to parents to decide and not the state?

If you live in New York City or another place that has this requirement, my only suggestion is to either move or homeschool your child.  Unfortunately, the state burdens us with so many taxes and regulations that many two-parent households need both of them to work.  One has to work just to pay all of the taxes, particularly in a place such as New York City.

This latest episode of heavy-handed government provides a good example of how some people simply want to control others.  If they are worried about the flu and they think a flu vaccination is effective, then vaccinating their own child should protect their own child.  My guess is that most of the advocates of this measure don’t even have children in the age range affected.

If people are so concerned about the flu, why don’t they start a public campaign to take vitamins such as C and D, and to take a good probiotic supplement?  There are also other herbs and supplements that can be used in helping to suppress viruses and to boost the immune system.

Of course, such an act might actually help reduce the number of people getting the flu, but it would also help reduce the profits of some of the big pharmaceutical companies that push these vaccines.

The politicians don’t care about your health.  They will sabotage your health in a second if it means taking care of lobbyists and special interests that funnel money to them.

Michael Bloomberg is even worse than the average politician.  I think he simply enjoys exercising power over others for the sake of it.

The number of people who enrolled in Obamacare has grown to around 365,000 through November.  This includes those who signed up in state exchanges and federal exchanges.  Some Obamacare advocates are actually touting this as good news.

I saw one headline on a newspaper that read “Obamacare Enrollments Quadruple”.  This is not an inaccurate statement.  The number of people who enrolled in November was about 4 times larger than the number who enrolled in October.

If you take almost nothing and multiply it by 4, you get a little bit bigger than almost nothing.

365,000 people is a significant number if you are talking about a gathering of people in one location.  365,000 people is a drop in the bucket when you are talking about a country of over 310 million people.

One of the reasons given for passing Obamacare was because of the alleged crisis in the number of Americans without health insurance.  We would always hear about how many tens of millions of people don’t have access to medical care (even though people without insurance still have access to medical care).

If there are 40 million Americans without health insurance, then less than 1% has signed up through the exchanges.

But here’s the big problem.  There are more people uninsured now, or soon to be uninsured, than before Obamacare went into effect.  Even though 365,00 people have signed up, there were individual states that saw about that many people lose their insurance because of Obamacare.

If this is considered success by the Obamacare advocates, then I will hate to see a failure.

We are facing a major crisis in this country.  This is having a huge effect on the lives of most Americans.  Even Americans with insurance through employers are seeing huge hikes in their premiums.

While premiums were already rising before Obama ever became president, there is no question that Obamacare has just exacerbated the problem.  And this is one government program where it is easy to pin the blame.

I really believe we are hitting a major turning point in this country and it will likely happen in the next few years.  The prices for medical care and insurance are simply unsustainable.  We are likely to face one of two options.

The first option is to go to a single-payer system.  That single-payer will be the government.  The government will get this money through more taxes and inflation.

While a nationalized healthcare system sounds disastrous, the system we have now is already disastrous.  I am just not sure if it will be that much worse.  I think it will be worse for sick people, but nationalized healthcare may actually be better for you if you are healthy and you can avoid seeing doctors.

The second option is to repeal Obamacare and then continue to remove government from virtually every facet of medical care.  While I don’t expect a fully free market, I think small steps in removing government funding and government regulations could help free up the market enough that we might one day see prices decline and care get better.

Ultimately, I would like to one day see a medical care system that is completely free from the government and we get results similar to what we see with computers and electronics.  We could get greater medical care every year, while watching prices go down.

Regardless of what happens with the medical care system in America, your best bet is to do your best to get healthy and stay healthy.

The big news out of Washington DC is that a budget deal was reached.  It was Paul Ryan (Republican) and Patty Murray (Democrat) who supposedly came to the agreement.  Murray is in the Senate, which the Democrats control by majority.  Ryan is in the House, which the Republicans control by majority.

Paul Ryan is well known now because he was chosen by Mitt Romney as the vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket in 2012.  While Ryan had a reputation of being a fiscal conservative by some, there should be no more illusions after looking at this budget deal.

Whenever you see something that is referred to as a bi-partisan budget deal, then hold on to your wallet.  Whether it is a budget deal or any other kind of legislation, when it is supposedly bi-partisan, it usually means it is terrible legislation that is taking away your liberty.

While the Republican establishment will go along with this budget deal, some from the more fiscally conservative wing are criticizing it, as they should.  There is a great divide in the Republican Party and it isn’t going to be resolved any time soon.  On one side is the establishment Republicans and on the other side are the Tea Party and more fiscally conservative Republicans.

House Speaker John Boehner is now going up against members of his own party.  Boehner actually said, “If you’re for more deficit reduction, you’re for this agreement.”

The legislation supposedly reduces the deficit by a total of just over $20 billion over a period of ten years.  Just to put this in context, we have been averaging trillion dollar deficits over the last five years.  Two billion dollars per year is a drop in the bucket.

The politicians, and the media who like to cover for them, have this little trick.  They like to talk about reducing the deficit.  But they are trying to confuse people between deficits and debt.

The deficit is the debt over the course of a year.  This gets added to the total debt.  When they say that the deficit is being reduced, it just means that the accumulated debt over the course of a year is less than what was accumulated the year before.

If the deficit is $1 trillion in one year and then $900 billion in the following year, then the politicians will say that the deficit was reduced by $100 billion.  While this may be technically accurate, the debt still went up another $900 billion in that glorious year of cutting the deficit.  So talking about the deficit and how much it decreases is really misleading.

I heard a snippet of Sean Hannity on the radio and he was touting the Mack Penny Plan, named after Connie Mack.  The plan is to cut one penny every year for six years out of each dollar spent and we will supposedly have a balanced budget in something like 8 years.

Hannity compared it to a family budget.  But a family that budgeted this way would be in major trouble.  If your family were running a deficit of $20,000 every year and continuing to accumulate massive debt, I don’t necessarily think a good solution would be to cut back 1% per year for six years, while hoping that you see a good increase in your income.  You will continue to accumulate massive debt over the next eight years and you will probably fall into bankruptcy before you every reach any kind of a balanced budget.

If the Republicans in DC were really serious about getting the debt under control, then they would have simply refused to raise the debt ceiling.  This would have instantly produced a balanced budget.

If this is too radical for the Republicans, they could have raised the debt ceiling by, let’s say, $25 billion per month, and this would at least limit the yearly deficit to “only” $300 billion per year.

Instead, we see the same old games coming out of Washington DC.  It doesn’t really seem to matter which party is in control.  Either way, we get big spending.

I don’t think the spending problem is going to be fixed until we hit a monetary crisis.  When the Fed is faced with higher price inflation and has to stop buying government debt, then the federal government will have to sell its debt elsewhere.

We will likely see higher interest rates and the government will eventually be forced to scale back with less willing buyers of debt at low rates.  At some point, we will see a significant decrease in government spending.  This will be a painful yet much needed time when it finally comes.