Name:   Talullahhound - Subject:   No Date:   8/21/2016 10:59:05 PM

Controlling someone's spending is not necessarily Neanderthal and certainly doesn't imply he is controlling his wife.  I think it is fair to say that most marriages are pretty equal these days with many women having careers as well as men.  But every once in a while, one or the other gets into a spending mode and the other person may have to say - wait, we need to get back on track.  I know this is true in my marriage and I don't think my husband considers me controlling and I don't consider him controlling. 

Such is the case with the federal government.  Everybody has a lot of "wants", but there is a limited amount of money available.  If our debt continues to go up, more and more of that money has be put towards servicing our debt.  You cannot continue to print money indefinitely.  So despite all the big personalities and bravado, I think a lot of us think that there needs to be some changes to how we allocate the money.  Yes, I would be the first to agree that all these programs are lovely and a lot of people have become quite dependent on them, but we need to remember that these are "nice to haves" and not necessities.  Now I am not in favor of privatizing SS or cutting it, in fact, I don't consider it an entitlement.  But unending welfare programs and giving everyone a free college education is a pipedream and has no basis in reality.  It was a different time and place in this country when these programs were put in place. We were prosperous then, and now we are not.  We were moving up in the world at that point, and now we are trying to hang on to our leadership in the world.  It's nice that other countries have these great programs, but their tax burden is much different than ours, the population is different, they centalize things much more than we are able to.