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WHY THE NATIONAL DEBT DIDN'T MATTER THEN, BUT DOES MATTER NOW
The Cypress Times ^ | 3-16-12 | David Barker Ph.D

Posted on 03/16/2012 10:11:54 AM PDT by redstatesrule

Democrats and Republicans take turns condemning and piling up debt. For example, while Franklin Roosevelt was president, Democratic Party platforms were mostly silent about government debt, while Republicans regularly condemned it. In 1960 Democrats criticized President Eisenhower for failing to reduce the national debt, but avoided the issue during the 1960s and 1970s.

(Excerpt) Read more at thecypresstimes.com ...


TOPICS: Government; Politics
KEYWORDS: deficit; nationaldebt; politics

1 posted on 03/16/2012 10:11:57 AM PDT by redstatesrule
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To: redstatesrule

I think that complacency, due to having successfully paying it down prior, is part of the problem.

America has always paid down its debt, so why worry?


2 posted on 03/16/2012 10:16:27 AM PDT by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults.)
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To: redstatesrule
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39

"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322

"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23

"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40

3 posted on 03/16/2012 10:21:47 AM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: redstatesrule

Very convincing article in the “We’re Screwed” category. I don’t know enough about economics to know if his numbers are all accurate, but I do know that the debt is very large.


4 posted on 03/16/2012 10:23:22 AM PDT by douginthearmy (Obamagebra: 1 job + 1 hope + 1 change = 0 jobs + 0 hope)
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To: redstatesrule

Uh, when was the last time it was $16 Trillion, sir?


5 posted on 03/16/2012 10:46:19 AM PDT by MNnice
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To: redstatesrule
I say, don't worry about the debt.
It's just numbers on a computer screen.
We are transitioning into a moneyless society.
Your government wants and needs this.
Every time you use a debit card you are becoming exactly what the government wants.
When Obamacare is enacted all of your personal information will be under government control.
They are doing this with government payouts,IE.Social Security, Medicare,and any other government program.
When everyone is “nudged” into using web payments for everything, money will become a thing of the past.
Moving a few zeros into another column will be no problem at all.
It won't happen tomorrow but it will happen and until then the government can borrow all of the virtual money it wants.
6 posted on 03/16/2012 10:50:49 AM PDT by lucky american
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To: MNnice

In 1945 debt as a multiple of GDP was bigger than it is now. Back then we did not have the overhang of huge Social Security liabilities, government pensions and other “entitlements”. If you add in unfunded liabilities, national debt is several times larger than it was in 1945. As James Manzi says, millions of people are counting on promises that cannot possibly be kept.


7 posted on 03/16/2012 11:23:48 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets ("Jihad" is Arabic for "Helter-Skelter")
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