by Tom Koecke

Created on: November 09, 2008

About fifty years ago John Kennedy challenged the nation to "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." In that relatively short lifespan since, America recently was choosing between candidates who were bellowing various slogans the gist of which were "Ask not what you must do for yourself; ask what your government will take from others and give to you."

From promises for free health care that will not be free and removing the risk from risky investments, to undisclosed plans to change the American nightmare back to the American dream, voters turned out in record numbers to cast about ninety-nine percent of their votes for one of the two party candidates whose policies have virtually collapsed the American economy. It is as if our cars have four flat tires because of the nails we left in our own driveways, and we voted for the candidates who promised us better cans of Fix-a-Flat at someone else's expense.

About the only thing not being proposed to fix the US financial sector is allowing the US financial sector to heal itself.

However, that is understandable since we Americans have grown accustomed to buying homes with no money down, and the latest technology on promises to pay with future income. We are, after all, prudent as demonstrated by our shopping savvy of making sure we pay the lowest price, and then complaining about dealing with outsourced customer service. After all, placing the blame on ourselves means that we may have to change our habits, and why should we do something so difficult when someone else is promising to allow us to remain ignorant even if we do not understand what the plan is? Folks, that is not resolution; it is compounded ignorance.

When AIG was given an $18 billion bail out, my inbox was flooded with forwarded e-mails suggesting that amount of money divided by one hundred million people was $180,000 per person, and how much more we each could do with that amount of money. I replied to the first few to ask them if they checked the math, but it works out to $180 per person. Soon I was dumping those without reply along with the promises to enlarge part of my anatomy.

So what is the answer? To determine that, we must first understand the problem.

If we were to use a story problem, we might consider it like this: if the government were to bake ten pies, and cut each into eight equal pieces, how much pie would be left if they gave equal pieces to 8,000,000 people?

And therein lies the problem. We have consumed

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