National Debt

Is anyone else alarmed about our huge national debt?

Here are some facts:

The national debt is currently a little more than 11 trillion dollars. That's about $36,000 per citizen of the United States. This isn't credit card or home loan debt. This is the debt that the federal government has run up through operating the federal government and its various departments and services.

The total US debt (federal, state, and local governments, plus businesses, and private debt like credit cards, mortgages, and car loans, is about 57 trillion dollars). That is $190,000 per citizen.

To put that in perspective, in 2008 the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the United States was 14 trillion dollars. That's about $47,000 per citizen.

So, on average, each person makes $47,000 per year, and owes $190,000. Wow.

I understand that some debt is necessary to build buildings, start businesses, obtain education, and even to boost the economy at times, but I think America borrows excessively.

Currently, the plan is to expand that debt by trillions more dollars in the next few years. This has already happened with the bailout and stimulus bills, and will continue to happen as the federal government expands socialist programs.

The purposed federal budget is 3.4 trillion dollars for fiscal year 2010. Two thirds of that are paid by taxes. The remaining third will be borrowed.

Where does all that borrowed money come from? The government borrows money from everyone; us citizens, foreigners individuals, foreign governments, basically anyone that wants to buy treasury securities.

Asia holds about 60% of the public debt.

I don't really see how running the government like this is sustainable. Right now, about 9% of the annual federal budget goes to pay interest on borrowed money. 9 percent of all the taxes the federal government collects goes to pay interest! It goes down the tubes!

Wouldn't it be better to save money, and earn 9% interest per year by loaning that money to other countries?

This problem will never be solved, or even seriously addressed in the current system of government. Politicians have no motivation to balance the budget. In fact, if they tried to do so by cutting spending and raising taxes, we'd all vote them out of office!

I think that passing an ammendment to the constitution which requires the federal government to balance the budget and pay off the national debt is the only way to ever solve this problem. It would hurt. All of us would pay a lot in taxes. The government would have to cut spending. We'd probably go into a huge recession. But, right now we're just making the problem worse by borrowing more and more money to pay for what we can't afford. Interest payments as a percentage of the federal budget will only increase.

This plan would at least cut the political adgenda out of the picture. All politicians would be unpopular because they'd have to cut spending and increase taxes. Right now, there is no incentive for any politician to address this issue.

Maybe we should turn the whole mess over to Google. They'll be running everything soon anyway :)

Brian