The Good People Of Youpickum.

Let me tell you a tale of a state called Youpickum. In our story, the good citizens of Youpickum are honest, hard working people who pay their bills, want good services from their government and don't like high taxes. They elect politicians who promise to give better than just good services and promise to keep taxes low. In fact the ones who get elected are the ones who guarantee not to raise taxes on anyone, except, maybe illegal aliens. So, how do you give more and better services without paying for them? Why, the American way. You borrow the money. So, true to their promises, these elected officials of Youpickum borrow money to pay for these more and better services and don't raise taxes. We won't mention the occasional hand in the til funny business. But by borrowing the money, they have to pay interest, which raises the costs, which means next time they'll have to borrow a little more, which means they'll have to pay a little more interest and so on and so on. Well, all goes well until there comes a big bad recession. Suddenly the elected officials have a lot less income from the meager taxes they charge because more people are out of work. Now, since they can't raise taxes, and they don't want to lay off people, although they will eventually be forced to do it, they just stop paying the state's bills. Which means more people loose their jobs, which means less income for the state of Youpickum to pay it's bills, which means it'll stop paying bills, which means it's ratings drop, which means it'll have to pay higher interest rates, which means less money to pay more of it's bills. So, what's the moral of the story about the state of Youpickum? Well, sometimes when times are hard, states have to increase taxes, unless they kept pace with rising costs, by raising taxes. See it's easier for the good folks of Youpickum to pay a little higher taxes during good times, then to loose everything in bad times. But then, the good people of Youpickum didn't know that. But you do.