February 21, 1984
The mood of the country is up. Joyful Americans are thumbing their noses at despair, shouting “up yours!” and other patriotic and bullish slogans. If neither the economy nor the President collapses this year, we can expect to see more bull in the market, or at least in the press. But for the moment, even though the Business of America is none of your business, let us discuss the President’s proposals for the Fiscal Year 1985 Deficit.
Ron proposes cuts of over 300 million workhours or 150,000 work years from the Federal Fat. Just think about what good use value you could get from all that time saved. You could see the rise of new civilizations, replacing the ones rendered extinct by modern technology. And with a fresh start, you could hold down all that paper work to a moderately oppressive level. But the Administration will not wait idly: Ron will be introducing a constitutional amendment to freeze paperwork at the current levels and reduce it to zero by the Year Zero. I urge all concerned Americans to support the Freeze.
Some honest people have questioned, independent of and coincidental with Soviet manipulation, why defense spending is so high. Quite simply, it’s because domestic spending is so low. As a result of spending sprees by previous administrations, spending on social services had ballooned all out of proportion, as if the Congress thought that people mattered. But when we cut the fat out of these programs, those who merely think they are poor will get truly unruly, and then we’re going to need those increases in conventional arms and other peacekeepers. At that juncture we will take a bold humanitarian initiative and Bring the Boys Home from Lebanon, Guatemala or wherever.
The Department of Energy will not be abolished, but to make up for this shortfall, Prez R has given over one half of its budget, $7.8 billion, to a truly progressive energy program: nuclear weapons. Following the lead of the Texaco-Getty merger, the Energy Department will eventually be entirely merged with the Defense Department.
The President has reserved only $1.2 billion for solar energy research since the sun has been doing fine without our interference for some 300 million workyears.
Now a lot of you are probably wondering what exactly is a billion? Wellfolks, a billion dollars is what it costs to buy one province in El Slaveador (we will be bringing this cost down by encouraging private sector support to that country’s military program for civilian pest control). A billion dollars is also the amount spent world-wide on armaments every three days, which is why we have so much peace.
You haven’t heard too much lately about the Misery Index, because it was created by former president Mr. Carter as an attack on Former Prez. Jerry (not Brown). However, the Misery Index now looks good for Ron. The Index is a computation of the public’s expectation of trends in inflation and unemployment. The Index now stands at 13.7%, as against 20.7% four years ago. This means that fewer people now think that things will get more worse than they did before, or than people thought they would before.
The public’s views are said to be colored by their political allegiance and by articles about public polls that they read in the newspapers. More Republicans believe more things will get better sooner than less Democrats. Unless of course the Democrats should win the election, in which case they would then be free to draw up their own Misery Index to create a new Current Public View. (Independents and members of other parties, who constitute .0004% of the population, generally believe things will get worse before they get even worse. So much for so little.)
We will continue to doctor the nation’s economy back to health, just as Doc Stockman doctored the economic indicators back to health. The bottom line is that the virile recovery continues pumping the economy. We will continue to bring down unemployment, but in the meantime will redeploy it to Oklahoma and the District of Columbia. Inflation is being relocated to Israel and the surplus to Chile. The data are not adjusted for seasonal factors, but unemployment is generally in season. Season’s greetings!