Well, I DO like Dilbert

Over the weekend, Scott Adams, creator of the HIGHLY entertaining and usually all-too spot on Dilbert Comic Strip, had a humorous opinion piece run in the Wall Street Journal. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703293204576106164123424314.html

In the article, Mr. Adams clearly lays things on the line:

The U.S. is broke. The hole is too big to plug with cost cutting or economic growth alone. Rich people have money. No one else does. Rich people have enough clout to block higher taxes on themselves, and they will.

Likely outcome: Your next home will be the box that your laser printer came in. I hope that you kept it.

Mr. Adams uses the article, not to solve the problem, but rather to offer up some 'bad solutions' which he hopes might prompt 'good solutions' from people.  A lot of the article revolves around the idea that rich people are the ones that have the money to bail out the country, but they aren't going to do it out of the kindness of their hearts...they need to feel they are getting something as a return on their investment.  

Now, what struck me was at one point in the article, when Mr. Adams is talking about how extra time might be a sufficient reward to rich people, and hey, people might be willing to pay taxes above a certain level to get to use the carpool lane.  

Truth being stranger than fiction, this has already been going on in Washington for a while.  Solo drivers are able to put an electronic doohickey on their car, and it charges them an amount of money to use the HOV lanes on SR-167 between Auburn and Renton.  The amount charged depends on the preexisting flow in the HOV lane.  So...yes time is important enough to people that they are willing to pay extra government to the get to the office and home again 5 minutes faster.  

Finally, Mr. Adams ends the article with two of the best paragraphs I have read in a while:

I think I've given you enough bad ideas to prime your imagination. Now it's your turn. If you think that solving the nation's fiscal problems is the job of elected officials, you have to ask yourself how that's working so far. The solution, if it exists, won't be anything that looks like normal business. The rich have the money, and they aren't going to give it up for nothing. I know because I am one, and yes, we do hold meetings.

The way our political system is designed, politicians are not free to float bad ideas. Doing so is a sure way to lose an election. Politicians aren't even free to support good ideas if they are too far from the norm. But as citizens, we're free to speculate all we want. And if some new and better idea gains popularity at the grassroots level, our elected leaders would then be able to embrace it. In other words, it's literally your job to fix the budget problem because your government isn't equipped to handle it. The ideas I've mentioned here are bad by design. But if a few million people start brainstorming their own ideas for solving the debt problem, someone might come up with a winner. And if that idea gains popular support on the Internet, it frees politicians to consider it. I have no problem imagining that something along those lines can happen, and the thought feels delightful.

He's got my vote whenever he is ready to run.