Too many takers

“Another day older and deeper in debt.” I woke up after Election Day with that line on my mind from the song “Sixteen Tons.” From the time I turned my TV off on election night at 10:30 p.m., until I woke the next morning at 5:30 a.m., our national debt climbed by about $1,116,360,000. It now stands at over $16 trillion and climbing at close to $3 million every minute.

My wife and I are working five jobs to be contributors and not takers. We could downsize, join the long line of takers, and my kids could then get government money to go to college, but that is not who we are. We are workers. We are contributors, who do not mind contributing to the needs of those who genuinely need it, but that is not where we are as a country. We have become a country of takers because taking is easier than contributing.

The sobering thought is this, which our government does not seem to grasp: Who pays when the shrinking group of contributors can no longer pay for the growing group of takers? What then?

Wayne Smith

Nashville