The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Link: YouTube – GAO: "USA is living beyond its means".

I don’t feature this video to gloat at the financial mess the USA is in. After "the Greatest Generation" came "the Greedy Generation" which lavished unfunded benefits on itself. It happened in Britain even more than in America. My generation has paid, and my children’s generation (if they are foolish enough to stay in Britain) will pay the debts which were run up by our fathers and grandfathers with their unfunded health care, state education and pensions schemes. All were described as "free", but they have cost dearly. The only plan of the people who conceived them was that we subsequent generations would pick up the bill. It was a demographic pyramid scheme, which went hopelessly wrong when the baby boom turned out to be a one off. The frantic attempts to pack our small island with immigrants is a direct consequence of that, as the baby boomers try to create the demographics they imagined when they laid their greedy plans.

I post the video rather to demonstrate – and to honour – how public accountability functions in a real democracy. Anyone who imagines the British Government would allow a public official to give such an honest public account of our national finances is deluding himself. Yes, the candidates in the current Presidential elections are promising to increase public expenditure further, even though present commitments are unfunded to an awesome extent. But the information is there for any citizen – or for any journalist – to call them out on their imprudence. The US press regularly does. In Britain, alas, we have only our dear and worthy friend Wat Tyler.

Our position is every bit as bad as, if not worse than, America’s. Yet our press has utterly failed to hold the government to account. Our journalists have lazily swallowed the myth of Gordon Brown’s "prudence." As for Britain’s equivalent to America’s Comptroller General, what can one say?  He isn’t fit to hold a candle to Dave Walker.

h/t Devil’s Kitchen