A Way Out of Debt for the USA

I am happy to have read some very good news today. I needed it. I’ve been reading That Used to be Us by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, a depressing and I’m afraid mostly accurate explanation of what is wrong with the good old USA. According to authors Friedman and Mandelbaum, a great deal of what’s wrong with us is that we are so deep in hoc that we are paralyzed. We can’t fix our infrastructure. We can’t improve the quality of education. We can’t even afford another war against a tiny country.
Then this afternoon I picked up this month’s AARP Bulletin and saw 5 ways Americans can help trim the national deficit. Never mind ways one through four. It’s the fifth step that made me jump for joy. Ready? “Give Uncle Sam a Gift.” That’s right, make a taxpayer gift to the US Treasury. Before you say, “Don’t be ridiculous Len! Who would ever do such a thing?”
Listen: According to the AARP article, taxpayers have already given the US Treasury $2,429,800.03 in gifts this year. (Would someone please make a Freedom of Information Act request to find out who gave the 3 cents?) So why is this good news anyway? It’s very simple. If enough of us give money to the Federal Government, we can solve the debt crisis. In fact, if every man, woman and child gives just $46,666.67 to Uncle Sam, our deficit would be zero. Imagine that! Free and clear! USA! USA! USA! Based on what’s been done already, 52 Americans have already ponied up. Who’s next?
Of course I realize it’s not entirely realistic to expect every man, woman and child to fork over that much money all at once. Take my daughter’s family of seven for instance. They would have to come up with almost $327,000 to do their part. With 5 growing children, their annual grocery bill is higher than that. And let’s face it, not eating for a year is improbable. Trust me, my grandson would rebel. Not to worry. There is another way for us to get this very important job done. If we can pull it off, historians will forever more consider us an all star, triple-crown, greatest generation. Not as great as The Greatest Generation but nothing to sneeze at. Here’s the plan. What if every American, including those of us who may be here illegally, promises to send $1.00 a week to the treasury? With 300 million of us we’ll have our national debt paid off in just under 90 years. It sounds like a long time considering it only took us about twenty years to dig this hole. But think of it this way. If you’re reading this the chances are excellent that you won’t be here for the last 45 years anyway. So it’s not really that long.
One thing I am a bit worried about is that we could wind up with something that looks sort of like Social Security in reverse. After all if we make a promise to the Treasury department they will surely depend on it. What happens if some of us start buying too many café lattes? Suppose some of us decide to get that pricey navigation system in our next new car? Will we find ourselves having to borrow to live up to our commitments? Will the nice people running the treasury begin to feel insecure as people start blogging that they might have to renege on their promise or reduce the size of their contributions? That would mean stretching out the payoff date well beyond the 90 years. I wonder, could the treasury plan for the future in that kind of environment?

Multitasking: Hazardous to Your ...What was that?

I was thirsty. So I stopped at a convenience store this afternoon to get a bottle of water. I reached for my money and noticed immediately that I didn’t have as much as I thought I had. I could tell without looking there was money missing. How could that be? Only this morning I went to the bank, inserted a card, and punched a few numbers into the magic machine that dole’s out the amount I request. Happens every time.
So where was the money? I dispensed a twenty into the hands of Connie at Nucci’s Café at lunchtime. Okay, I remember doing that. Did I drop a small wad of cash, $120 to be exact in the process? Nothing to do but take a ride over to Nucci’s. I had to stop there anyway because I forgot the Italian ice I ordered for my wife. When Connie’s husband Steve saw me walk in he assumed that’s why I was there.
Of course I asked him if anyone turned in some money that might have been left lying on the floor in front of the counter where the cash register sits. He assured me that no one did. I couldn’t be sure, but the look on his face seemed to suggest that I was losing it. I mean who would turn in $120 in this economy right? Well, yes you would. I know that. But some people, the kind of people that aren’t reading this column, might be prone to keep the dough.
Flummoxed again, I went home and asked my wife if she saw my money. Perhaps it was resting comfortably on my desk or on the kitchen counter. No dice. I wondered about that to be honest. If she didn’t take it I was out of options. I am not a careless person. The money was only in my possession for a few hours. It’s not that she’s been known to rifle my wallet in search of a little mad money while I’m napping, but there is a first time for everything. I was getting desperate. $120 is nothing to sneeze at. As I weighed the merits of demanding that she take a polygraph test, something odd happened. I remembered what I did with the money.
Just before lunch I was sitting in my home office browsing thru my inbox and chatting on the phone with a colleague. The doorbell rang. It was Mark, the guy who cuts our grass. It seems that I owed him some money for services rendered over the last several weeks. So I paid him the $120 I owed him, handing him six crisp twenties fresh from the money machine at the drive thru.
Is it an age thing? I mean at 62 has it come to this? Not more than three hours after I paid Mark it seems I had no memory of the transaction. Now it’s true that I would rather forget that I’m paying someone to manicure my lawn. That was probably why I fell behind in my payments in the first place. But having no recollection of the transaction so soon after it occurred?
There may be another explanation: Multitasking. Yes according to David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, chronic high-stress multitasking also is linked to short-term-memory loss. And an article Sue Shellenbarger in the Wall Street journal points out that a growing body of scientific research shows that multitasking can actually make you less efficient and, as she said, “stupider.”
Now that’s just what I need at this time in my life. After all the years I spent studying, taking classes, not to mention all that reading, a simple thing like talking on the phone while I read emails, Twitter and eat a number 11 sub from Jersey Mike’s, is making me dumber. Worse, I probably won’t even remember that I was once at least a little bit brighter than I am now.
As if that’s not enough, Katy Read, writing for AARP, reports that information overload is tough on people. This is “especially so for people over 50 because normal brain changes – including small blockages to the brain’s blood supply and a drop in nerve signaling chemicals – can make it harder to tune out distractions.”
Apparently, even if I wanted to ignore the doorbell and hold on to my cash a little longer, I wasn’t capable of tuning out Mark. I had no choice but to pay him. I have only one thing to say. Would the colleague I was on the phone with call me please and identify yourself?

Copyright 2010 Len Serafino. All rights reserved.