Comment of the week

"It sounds like a game where people pass around a dollar bill in a circle, and every time it passes through their hands, they think they've earned another dollar. "

Kudos to Pentamom for pointing this out. All too often, we cite aggregate economic statistics as some kind of sign of our prosperity, and in reality these statistics indicate only our poverty.

All those wages for working wives and single moms? Half to taxes, and the rest to daycare and the costs of working. All those new homes? Don't forget what percentage of them are occupied by single moms and mortaged to the hilt. You're paying to keep a lot of them occupied with welfare spending.

Bright & shiny new school? Don't forget that we're spending about an order of magnitude more per student today than a century ago--for the amazing result that a college degree confers about the same amount of knowledge as last century's 8th grade education.

Prosperity? Let's try "Potemkin Village." I'd guess we could cut the size of our economy by 20%-30% without any citizen being one iota poorer in any real sense.

What can you do to stop it? Look for ways that you can refuse to keep passing that dollar around. A great place to start is by loving your wife and paying off debt, and encouraging your friends to do the same.