What would you think of a person who earned $24,000 a year but spent $35,000? Suppose on top of that, he was already $170,000 in debt. You'd tell him to get his act together -- stop spending so much or he'd destroy his family, impoverish his kids and wreck their future. Of course, no individual could live so irresponsibly for long.
It's not just Republicans who are unhappy with Obamacare. Labor union leaders have been complaining too.
In July, the presidents of the Teamsters, United Food Commercial Workers union and UNITE-HERE (combined membership: 2.9 million) wrote a letter to congressional Democrats saying that Obamacare will "destroy the very health and well-being of our members along with millions of other working Americans."
California has found a formula for ending the partisan warfare that once paralyzed its government: Get rid of one of the parties, in this case, the Republican. The state's famously dysfunctional government now hums with calm efficiency.
Democrats there hold a supermajority in the state Legislature, making it well-nigh impossible for Republicans to gum up their plans. The governor, Jerry Brown, is a Democrat, as well.
If Americans learn anything from this month's shutdown-and-debt-ceiling debacle, they ought to realize that political extremism brings real costs -- denominated in dollars and jobs, as well as national cohesion and prestige -- and that those costs are not small. As long as the tea party faction continues to wield its malign influence over the Republican leadership in Congress, the threat of further and even worse damage will not subside.
Amid all the tussling over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling, a couple of bombshells went off in the blogosphere that may prove of more enduring importance.
I never cared much for the tarted-up Burberry. The upscale British clothier sells its wares at prices for which one might reasonably demand a classic style lasting through several monarchies. But that's just me talking. Burberry is said to have turned its traditionalist label around thanks to fashion innovation. So that's just me talking.
Apple Inc. has hired Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts to apply her fashion smarts to updating its 400 stores and online shopping experience. On this I feel better equipped to predict success or failure.
A number of tech businesses are now getting mixed up with fashion. That's a dangerous trend, for tech.
These days, being seen as a victim can be useful. You immediately claim the moral high ground. Some people want to help you. Lawyers and politicians brag that they force others to help you.
This turns some people into whiners with little sense of responsibility.
The baby boomers are not dead yet. Someday they will be dead, as will be Generation X, the millennials and all the above' great-great-grandchildren -- barring, of course, a medical cure for mortality.
But you'd think the large cohort born between 1946 and 1964 were already consigned to American memory, given man members' oozy nostalgia and declarations of surrender to younger folk. If your time warp is 1968, that's your call. But 2013 is also an interesting time.
Some bad news for America, not on the political front this time, but on what corporate executives call human resources.
America's great minds of business and finance have reached a consensus on the government shutdown and worse, the prospect of a debt default: While the latter is worse, both are bad. Those same great minds are well aware how the shutdown came to pass and why default still looms on the horizon, whether next week, next month, or next year.
What to make of all the polls on the government shutdown? You know, the ones that say that, to varying degrees, congressional Republicans are being blamed more than Democrats and Barack Obama.
Fans of representative democracy know that there are ways to advocate one's beliefs short of threatening and delivering harm to the larger society. It used to be that one could blame the parade of manufactured crises not on the whole Republican Party but on its unruly tea party faction. That's becoming less and less so as what remains of the pragmatic leadership caves in to the extremists' demands.
The GOP's perspective on governing seems to have moved from enlightenment to medieval. It's become the party of pain.
Government wants you to play a role in the "shutdown" of the federal government. Your role is to panic.
"This book is far from all good news." So writes Tyler Cowen at the beginning of his latest book, "Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of The Great Stagnation."
Cowen is an economist at George Mason University who is generally classified as libertarian and whose interests range far afield. His most recent books include "The Great Stagnation" and "An Economist Gets Lunch" (his advice: skip fancy downtown places, eat at restaurants attached to Pakistani-owned motels).
In an era of finicky foodies and celebrity chefs, Marcella Hazan never troubled herself with the rough-and-tumble of branding. Not sexy like Nigella Lawson, not colorful like Emeril Lagasse, not adorable like Rachael Ray -- not even eccentric like Julia Child -- Hazan nailed Italian cooking in a uniquely grumpy way.
By Washington standards, the current government shutdown is an everyday disaster -- of a kind we are gradually learning to expect whenever the Republican Party controls Congress. The impending breach of the nation's credit, however, when those same Republicans refuse to raise the debt limit to cover the funds they have spent, threatens a singular catastrophe: unpredictable, global, yet entirely avoidable.
Note how tea party politicians routinely start their remarks with "The American people want." And what "the American people want" conveniently coincides with their ideological preferences.
Many Democrats are genuinely puzzled about Republicans' continuing opposition to Obamacare. It is the law of the land, these Democrats say. Critics should accept it, as critics accepted Medicare.
People say public schools are "one of the best parts of America". I believed that. Then I started reporting on them.
Now I know that public school -- government school is a better name -- is one of the worst parts of America. It's a stultified government monopoly. It never improves.
Most services improve. They get faster, better, cheaper. But not government monopolies. Government schools are rigid, boring, expensive and more segregated than private schools.
Not long ago, an important New England Patriots game failed to appear on my cable lineup. There was a way to pay extra for it, but the heck with that.
