The king, however, replied to Araunah, "No, I must pay you for it, for I cannot offer to the LORD my God holocausts that cost nothing." So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty silver shekels.
-2 Samuel 24: 24
I wish I could better appreciate the national debt crisis. I was registering for a workshop recently and there was a link for government employees to click, which I clicked out of curiosity. The workshop was sponsored by Oracle and they were providing a breakfast and free promotional items valued at $75, but they would accept $75 from any government employee that wanted to attend to comply with ethics regulations. Now the comparison between this example and David is not direct, but it made me think of this because debt can be a moral issue.
I'd be uncomfortable cutting Medicare benefits because people depended on those being there, unless there was a way to protect those in the program and pro-rate it for those not yet in the program. Social security isn't one of the hot topics being discussed, but that eventual crisis could also be solved by pro-rating benefits. For example, you expect to get a certain amount when you are 65 and you are 61 now. Since you've been paying into the system for 45 out of the expected 49 years, you should get 45/49 of the old benefits plus 4/49 of whatever the new (less) benefits are calculated to be. Pennsylvania School Employees just worked out a deal like that for our pension fund. If our union representatives could do it for us, our political representatives should be able to do it for all of us. Spending money without a plan to pay for it seems like stealing. If the plan no longer works, not fixing it would also seem like stealing.
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