Good morning, class. I’ll be your substitute today.

Let’s do a quick refresher on some basic concepts that may help us all to better understand the current state of our country. Believe me, I hate math more than most of you, but just bear with me for a few minutes and then I’ll roll out the TV cart and we can watch the first 35 minutes of a movie.

Ready? We’ll start with the easy stuff.

Addition
We’re great at addition. Our national debt has reached $38.5 trillion. That’s more than twice what it was 10 years ago. It’s $10 trillion more since just 2020. Yes, COVID happened, and we know that added a lot of debt. But what in the hell are we doing? 

It’s probably the democrats who continually add programs without considering how they’ll be paid for in the long-term. It’s reckless and irresponsible. But at least we know where to point the blame now, right?

Let’s move on.

Subtraction
To fix this problem, we need to tighten our belts. Government spending is out of hand. Enter the Republicans.

Republicans hate government spending so much that it’s one of their main war cries every election season. Surely they’ll evaluate all these programs and find areas where we can cut and save. No? Instead, their go-to move is tax cuts. It’s the equivalent of emptying your bank account and letting your overdraft keep paying your bills. Sure, your account is now -$38.5 trillion, but at least you didn’t actually have to pay for it! Wait… you still have to pay, only now there’s interest?? Oooof.

It’s reckless and irresponsible. But at least we know where to point the blame now, right?

That brings us to our next lesson.

Division
Instead of actually solving problems, wouldn’t it be easier to just point the finger at the other guys? They’re the problem. 

So politicians do what politicians do. They’ll share talking points which paint them as the heroes and the other guys the villains, oftentimes lacking any basis in reality. They’ll take to the Sunday political roundtables and echo the same rhetoric they’ve been spouting since you were born. All the while, our debt grows.

It’s a tale as old as time. Only something has changed.

Multiplication
Thanks to 24/7 news, social media and the internet as a whole, these divisive comments now proliferate every aspect of our daily lives. They spread quickly, and thanks to highly advanced algorithms, are shown mostly to people who already agree with them pushing you further down whichever rabbit hole you were already calling home. You see a post saying exactly what you think and say “Aha! I’ll share this to show it’s not only me who feels this way.”

Only everyone who follows you mostly agrees with you already. They like and share the post, and this assures you that you were right all along. It’s Confirmation Bias 101, but we can save that course for another day.

It’s the division by multiplication that’s distracting everyone from the real problems. We all have more in common than politicians would have us believe.

How do we solve for X?
Let X=Paying down our national debt and let Y=The government must keep operating.

It’s like trying to paint a train while it’s moving.  

We all know that tariffs have been the buzzword of the year, but oftentimes Americans are the ones paying. It’s simply another tax on an already overtaxed middle class. 

Last week, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times which basically said ‘rich people, like me’ should pay more taxes to fix the debt. It’s in stark contrast from the typical GOP messaging, but Romney makes a strong case.

"Typically, Democrats insist on higher taxes, and Republicans insist on lower spending. But given the magnitude of our national debt as well as the proximity of the cliff, both are necessary," Romney wrote.

Without touching programs like Social Security, removing loopholes and tax cuts for the very wealthiest in our country is a much more responsible way forward.

"The largest source of additional tax revenues is also probably the most compelling for fairness and social stability," Romney wrote.

You might be saying "But… it’s not fair! I work hard. Why should my money go to fund all this government spending?"

The truth is it’s not your money they’re talking about. They’re talking about the mega rich. People who make tens of millions of dollars a year. Not small business owners. We’re talking about the Musks of the world. The problem is, everyone thinks they too could one day be some uber-wealthy billionaire. It’s the American dream. Work hard. Make money.

Well, I hate to be a downer, but you will never be a billionaire. Millions? Sure. Tens of millions over a lifetime? Absolutely. But come back to reality and realize that the difference between tens of million and a billion dollars is wider than most realize.

Worse? These billionaires don’t do anything without having a potential profit at the finish line. These aren’t the Carnegies or Rockefellers. There’s no Elon Musk public libraries or research hospitals. Sure, Elon wants to go colonize Mars. But while average Americans are struggling, perhaps there’s more that the richest man on the planet could do back here on Earth first.

I’m all for making money and hope some day, one of you reading this writes to tell me you made it to a billion and I was wrong. But as uncle Ben once told Peter Parker “With great power comes great responsibility.” Don’t be an Elon. Be a Tom Golisano. Don’t be a Jeff Bezos. Be his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott who has already given away over $26 billion to more than 2,700 non-profits.

When it comes to making our country great for everyone, the most responsible thing to do is to make the rich pay their fair share.

"I believe in free enterprise, and I believe all Americans should be able to strive for financial success," Romney wrote. "But we have reached a point where any mix of solutions to our nation’s economic problems is going to involve the wealthiest Americans contributing more."

Maybe Bezos will have to go down to one single super yacht, but I guarantee your neighbors will be better off.