The most important part of solving a problem is to correctly identify it.  However, some “problems,” such as impending catastrophic weather/climate conditions, are almost entirely imaginary.  They are actually a cynical political tool, intended to further enslave the toiling masses.  After all, if carbon is the problem — then why is all life on planet Earth mostly composed of carbon?

Some of the other problems may be either misunderstood or intentionally misrepresented, such as the Third World–like encampments of vagrants that litter our environs.  Their advocates keep harping on the insufficiency of affordable housing as the root cause of this problem.  I am never reluctant to say that all housing is affordable, or else it is vacant.  California has the largest share of this (ahem) phenomenon, both because of a conducive political climate and the mild weather necessary for living outdoors year-round.  The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that squatting vagrants can be legally removed even when other accommodations are not made available to them.  Hence, even the People’s Republic of Berkeley, California has engaged in clearing out the most annoying of these situations.

It used to be that drug- and alcohol-addled vagrants were largely confined to a low-rent part of town nicknamed Skid Row.  As such, they were also inclined to feel at least somewhat ashamed for being losers.  Now, due to modern progressive ideology, they tend to feel entitled to their parasitic lifestyle.  Places such as San Francisco have employed a small army of social science graduates to counsel the local “unhoused residents.”  These facilitators are ironically called “navigators.” 

Perhaps, to actually solve this problem, a more hostile attitude toward these bums would be beneficial to everybody.  The term “tough love” comes to mind.  Comedian George Carlin long ago proposed the formation of “Drug Cities,” where the street bums were relocated to some remote place.  While being humanely sustained, they would also be contained, so they would no longer be able to bother the rest of us, who just happen to provide for ourselves by participating in just about the most productive economy on the planet.

There may also be a generational lapse in having the proper mental attitude necessary to solve problems.  I once went to an ATM to deposit a check, and there was a young lady at the other machine.  She was trying to deposit several checks that had been folded up together to fit in her wallet — nothing unusual here.  But she was feeding them all together into the machine, which kept spitting them out, because it couldn’t separate them in order to read each one individually.  And yet she kept feeding the same tangled group into the machine over and over.  Had she just fed them in one at a time, folds and all, the machine would gladly have let her do so, and she’d be long done.  As I drove away, I could see her in my rearview mirror, still trying to get the machine to accept them in a bunch.

Then there are the problems that are visible only to some, and not to others.  I’m referring here to the federal deficit.  To Democrats, the primary purpose of government is to redistribute “resources” to politically useful constituencies.  Where these resources come from is not all that important.  First, there are those nasty, greedy taxpayers, who often need to be threatened with imprisonment so they can be separated from what they mistakenly consider their own money.

Then there’s the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, where paper and ink are combined to create “legal tender.”  Add to this the issuance of federal debt — which doesn’t exactly increase the “official” money supply — unless you count leverage.  As the federal debt increases, the cost of this borrowing also increases, since the various lenders need greater compensation in the face of the increasing risk of default.

True Republicans, on the other hand, yearn for the dollar’s value to stabilize, making all forms of commerce able to flow more freely.  But how?  One way would be to stop increasing the money supply by curtailing both printing and borrowing.  The other way would be to put real value on the printed money.  We used to have “silver certificates” and even “gold certificates,” meaning that such a slip of paper could be redeemed for its face value in gold or silver.  Now we have only Federal Reserve notes — promising the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government.  There is actually some substance to that statement, meaning that the awesome global presence of the U.S. military stands behind the value of the paper money, which is, however, still subject to interpretation.

In the political world, many problems are really not supposed to be solved.  This is so professional demagogues can keep using them to cling to their positions of power.

Image via PickPik.