We now live in a country that is a rival to most other countries, and I call it the unsustainable paradise. Why do I call it this? Let’s start with a few facts concerning the budget deficits for the last six years. The amount is in billions of dollars.

    2010: $1,294

    2011: $1,300

    2012: $1,087

    2013: $680

    2014: $487

    2015: $440 (Note the last three years Congress was in Republican control.)

The national deficit is now near $18.5 trillion and rising. Neither the Democrats or Republicans have come up with a solvable solution. Some will say let’s just raise the debt ceiling. If that’s the case, then our problem with health care will be solved. Our government will just pay the insurance companies $9,000 for every person in the United States. Each individual would have a deductible of $1,000, then in 2017 our national debt would be around $22 trillion. Sounds ridiculous, does it not? But every day, states and cities ask for funding on a much smaller scale. In Minnesota that would be light-rail.

As I was growing up there were two important things that my parents, who went through the depression of 1929, taught me: first, never buy anything except a home unless you can pay for it within a year. Second, there are needs and there are wants. An example of a need and a want could be a car for anybody. A person needs a car to get to work, and another person wants a brand new Corvette. Now in Minnesota we have a group of state senators who want a new light-rail line. Do they really need the light-rail? The easy answer is no.

Finally, if one reads the Sunday paper there is a section where people are losing their homes because they could not pay the mortgage, and if you remember what happened to Detroit, even larger there is Greece. Look at the mess they are in. High taxes and unemployment are near 25 percent. We, as a people, are headed in the same direction. We are a people of 324 million in a world population of 7.4 billion, which is less than 5 percent. How long do you think the rest of the world will let us continual to live in our unsustainable paradise? I doubt more than 10 years.

Philip Kortz

Albert Lea