US national debt tops $34T for first time in history

None of those proposals were serious. They were floated until their protagonists came into power, and then they disappeared. The GOP had the opportunity several times in the last decades to cut spending, when they had the WH and both houses in Congress. Did they cut spending? No, they rather cut taxes, making the problem worse. Priotrities, you know...

Here is why: Let's look at 2019, before the pandemic. The deficit was almost $1 trillion, or 4.6% of GDP. Now, what would happen if the powers to be had decided to balance the budget, i.e. cut $1 trillion from spending? Yep, those $1 trillion would have been removed from the economy, and instead of a 2.3% GDP growth, we would have had negative growth and a recession. And that's why no politician will attempt this, because it would be political suicide.

Thus, the GOP candidates all talk a good game when they run for office, pretending they are fiscal hawks, but when they are elected, they see the cold hard reality, in other words, it's a much harder problem than it seems when relying on empty RW rhetoric.

And, then, of course, there is the GOP "starve the beast" strategy. Thnaks, Reagan. That's a whole other can of worms to get into.

 

I don't know but a lot. True of every president since Coolidge.

 

Never said they didn't, my point is low income and subsidies of ghettos and dependencies are a Democrat thing..

 

the Republican goal is to raise the interest we pay on that 34T

 

Americans are addicted to government spending, but they don't want to pay for it. Republicans don't want to pay for it at all, and your typical Democrat wants 50% tax increases on everyone who dares earn more than they do to pay for the government that they wont.

I also don't understand the necessity in qualifying it as being the first time every. Every trillion dollar mark we hit is the first time ever. Do we need a thread when we reach $35 trillion next year?

 

Sometimes it's good to look at other countries for examples of what works.

 

What countries are you referring too? The US is unique on multiple fronts and trying to fit our round peg into a European square hole doesn't necessarily work. Allot of European countries pay vastly higher taxes, but everyone above the poverty level have skin in the game. Also... our poor generally have more disposable income than most all other nations.

 

Mikhail Gorbachev ended the Cold War Provoking the leaders of the Soviet Union with a nuclear arms race when they felt their power slipping away was catastrophically dangerous.

This was Trump's response to the Covid epidemic:

 

after the Bush tax cuts, the debt climbed and climbed - trickle down is a failure, time for the right to admit that

 

It's not about 'punishing' anyone. It's a universal truth that everybody resents paying taxes whether they're Joe Average working as a cashier at Walmart or Jolene Rockefeller with a 5 million dollar share portfolio! It's also a universal truth that everybody expects access to the infrastructure & services those taxes pay for. Everybody want's to use them, nobody wants to pay for them. The maths never adds up. Taxes are not a punishment they are an essential element in the continued existence and prosperity of the United States and every other developed nation on the planet as are effective controls and oversight of government spending. If you disagree I can suggest several countries with chronically dysfunctional revenue collection and spending systems you might like to try moving to. Argentina or Pakistan spring to mind as examples.

Secondly the disparity in earnings from capital vs income starts waaay below the 1 million dollar per annum mark! Again the tendency is for people, even if they do concede that tax increases are necessary to mysteriously pick a tax bracket above their own as the starting point for those increases. Go figure! For the rest? There are lots of propositions for rendering the system fairer. But I would suggest more transparency/clarity around how much different groups are paying as a % of their total earnings is also important because it would help undermine the constant calls by different sectors of the market for ever more subsidies, write offs and deductions.

For me? Perhaps the simplest system would be to reduce headline tax rates and broaden their base i.e, more of less equalize tax rates across both both income and capital gains and then cap deductions in line with the new nominal tax rates so that someone who earns say 100K as a salary and another 100K from capital gains pays about the same rate of tax on both sources of income can access any type of deduction their entitled to - up to the cap specified for their tax bracket. In a fair system Joe Average the Walmart cashier should be paying no more of his 50K salary as tax (expressed as a %) than Jolene Rockefeller with her 5 million dollar share portfolio does. That's not the case now.

 

I don't think anyone is suggesting knocking it out it in one year.

 

Not interested in BS sound bites, this thing evolved in front of our eyes. We literally had daily briefings from Fauci (lefty hero) and Burks for over a year, at the whitehouse. If you guys weren't paying attention to them that's on you. Fauci told us it was like the flu, Nancy told us it wasn't a threat so come to china town, the left told us Trump was racist for shutting down travel from China. Stuff changed we found out more details about the china virus that they initially hid from us. To take one liners as some proof of something, is childish or severely uniformed, we literally had daily updates on numbers, cautions, hot spots, treatments, and vaccine progress from the experts.

 

which means we need an increase in wages, just the reality of it, or we never pay it off

wages should have been slowly rising for years now, but they were not, a big jump is so much harder

 

if we keep shipping our jobs overseas and buying products from overseas, we can not exist as we do today

 

Ok. A couple of things. I am very much against debt, but also realize that in our economy it is beneficial in regulated fashion.

Debt provides economic stimulation and growth in a consumer based society. If the government stopped debt completely, the economy of the US would stagnate and slow to a halt.

Also, growing debt over GDP devalues the dollar. Inflation. An inflation rate of 2-4% is desirable as it encourages investment in real assets since dollars are constantly losing value against time. Again, this is an economy engine and healthy in moderation. Inflation also means that long term loans or other financed debt become smaller in real terms over the years.

Lastly, the portion of our debt held by foreign entities is fairly small piece of the pie. And these foreign entities only invest in our bonds because they are safe and they don't feel heightened risk. All the other "debt" is the US borrowing from itself.

Is it really debt if I take money from my beer fund because I'm a little short this month? It's still technically a liability, but get this.... I can just print more beer money. Of course, I made it all slightly worth less in real terms, but see inflation above.

Again, I dont like debt, but it's an economic tool for us. A necessary evil.

US GDP is, so let's assume comparative annual salary of $230,000, and our total liabilities are $340,000, of which you owe other people $93,000. Panic mode? Not really.

Much of the debt is held by Americans, meaning our people are making money off the government borrowing our money from taxes and programs like social security.

It's not a panic situation

 

I think the US government spends too much money, and as a result has too high of taxes.

Those concepts are not mutually exclusive.

Cut taxes AND spending. Let's start with the taxes side since that's what I'm responsible for.

 

Playing both sides of a global pandemic.

Are you concerned at all with honesty in the discussion?

 

More like, working less hours so your wife doesn't have the money to spend recklessly. Except it isn't shopping, it's heroine.

Trying to get an impoverished heroine addict off drugs by giving them more money makes sense?

 

Except we don’t want govt to not spend anything….you can spend responsibly, cant say the same for heroin.

 

I agree.

I just don't think giving irresponsibly spending individuals more money and expecting a change makes sense.

 

Neither does making it harder for them to pay their bills. Unless your goal is for the country to hit rock bottom.
Republicans always cut taxes, but the spending cuts never come. Hard to take their concern for the debt seriously.

 

Americans by definition is addicted to debt. We always have been and it got easier in the 1980s and beyond. Debt has had both positive and negative effects on our economy. The positive side was that great wealth accumulation increased GDP while interest rates dropped. It became "cheaper" to borrow, especially short-term unsecured debt, aka credit cards. The negative side is that if a person or business is highly leveraged, aka has high amounts of debt, then the person or business is more at risk of declaring bankruptcy to get rid of the debt when revenues don't match the debt payments, plus other expenses.

Until the Average American starts to save more than what our current rate is on average historically, then the government will not do the same. Furthermore, to ask the government to not issue debt while the Average American will borrow until the cows come home is not realistic either.

 

Interest will destroy us. The demographic bomb has ignited and the explosion will last twenty years as the baby boomers leave the job market and begin sucking off the system. Here are the only two numbers that matter.

1. Every citizen has a federal debt of $101,000 compared to a federal debt of $4,400 per citizen in 1980. That is 25 times higher and that is catastrophic.


2. Unless something is done about SS and Medicare, the unfunded liabilities for the baby boomers is $630K for every citizen ($1.7 million for every taxpayer) in America.




Wrapping this up, the average income in America is $33K. Assuming the average person works 40 years, the average lifetime income would be 1.3 million.
Unfunded liabilities + debt per taxpayer = 1.8 million
Lifetime earnings of each taxpayer = 1.3 million

These numbers are Armageddon for America.

 

Are you debating that he spent the money ?

 

MUSEGA!