Scott Adams on the Fiscal Cliff

Congress is a bunch of useless pieces of shit:

I'm impressed by the trigger that Congress included in the Budget Control Act in 2011. The idea is that if Congress can't agree on a better way to balance the budget by year end, automatic and painful spending cuts and tax increases will go into effect. The hope was that members of Congress would act responsibly if there was a gun to the head of total strangers that they don't give a shit about.

I've never wanted to run for Congress until now. The job looks boring, but I'm attracted to a system that punishes total strangers for my bad performance. I assume this is some sort of "best practice" that our government is borrowing from a successful system elsewhere. So starting today, if you tell me you don't like my blog, I will pay a stranger to kick another stranger in the nads. If Congress is right about the trigger concept, you should see a big improvement in my blogging performance. I'm all about incentives.

There's a Wally-esque genius to this budget trigger concept. It actually solves Congress' biggest problem, namely that doing anything that is balanced and appropriate for the country renders a politician unelectable. Republicans can't vote for tax increases and get reelected while Democrats can't cut social services and keep their jobs. But don't cry for Congress because this isn't the sort of problem that can thwart a building full of lawyers. They put their snouts together and cleverly invented a concept - called a trigger - to take the blame for them. This way, both sides can screw their supporters while still blaming the other side. No one has to take responsibility for anything.

I couldn't agree more.  Republicans won't admit our economy will tank worse without the social programs they hate, and don't seem to realize that the "capitalist" system would be an even more complete disaster right now without what crappy government redistribution programs we have.  Democrats are too of cowards to come up with a functional system to pay for those programs, or ones which were actually even more effective.  Both parties are hung up on killing people on the other side of the world for no apparent reason and spying on us, apparently "for our own good."  Something will end up being done, but I'm pretty sure who will get hurt and who won't be affected.