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The national debt is now $18 trillion. How would you pay it off?
Penn Live ^ | 12/02/2014 | By John L. Micek

Posted on 12/02/2014 9:51:47 AM PST by SeekAndFind

So here's a positively eye-watering number: America's national debt (not its deficit, which is something different entirely, so stop confusing them, please) is now a gobsmacking $18 trillion or $7 trillion higher than when President Barack Obama took office in 2008, The Washington Post reports.

According to the right-leaning Powerline blog, "41 percent of the national debt of the United States, from George Washington to the present, has accrued during the Obama administration."

(In case you were wondering, the 2014 budget deficit came in at a comparably smaller $483 billion, which "[represented] the smallest deficit as a percentage of GDP since the George W. Bush administration," Powerline also noted).

This begs the obvious question -- apart from, say, selling off Mount Rushmore and turning Wyoming into a giant theme park, how the heck do you pay down an $18 trillion note?

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


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: debt; nationaldebt
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1 posted on 12/02/2014 9:51:47 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

2 posted on 12/02/2014 9:52:57 AM PST by SeekAndFind (If at first you don't succeed, put it out for beta test.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The EXEMPTs’ Homes and Assets shouldbe confiscated
by Constitutional Amendment.


3 posted on 12/02/2014 9:53:59 AM PST by Diogenesis
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To: Diogenesis

Start by getting Al Sharpton to pay his taxes.


4 posted on 12/02/2014 9:55:04 AM PST by Fido969 (What's sad is most)
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To: SeekAndFind

I never agreed to this debt. So don’t look at me. I repudiate it. Any sucker who bought U.S. debt instruments counting on the government stealing from its citizens should be out of luck. They were thoroughly unscrupulous when they expected to be paid back with looted funds.


5 posted on 12/02/2014 9:55:08 AM PST by all the best
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To: SeekAndFind
Print and pay.

If I owe someone ten bucks, guess what gets him off my back ?

Yup .... a ten spot

We owe China x amount of dollars ?

Print 'em up and GIVE 'em to 'em

6 posted on 12/02/2014 9:55:18 AM PST by knarf
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To: SeekAndFind

7 posted on 12/02/2014 9:55:34 AM PST by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
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To: SeekAndFind

This debt will never be paid off with the declining culture we have. I just hope I pass off the scene before the fecal matter hits the rotating oscillator device.


8 posted on 12/02/2014 9:55:34 AM PST by DonaldC (A nation cannot stand in the absence of religious principle.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The first rule of being in a hole is to stop digging.

Even without swinging the budget axe with the furor of a raging barbarian, the course can be easily reversed.

Cap all federal spending at current levels with a maximum increase of 2% per year, or 1/2 of the GDP growth, whichever is less. The budget will balance in a couple of years with no other action, and then move into surplus.

Now, that gets out of the hole, but it would take centuries to pay back $18T at that rate. Then you start applying the axe on top of the hard caps.


9 posted on 12/02/2014 9:57:25 AM PST by kevkrom (I'm not an unreasonable man... well, actually, I am. But hear me out anyway.)
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To: knarf

10 posted on 12/02/2014 9:57:30 AM PST by SeekAndFind (If at first you don't succeed, put it out for beta test.)
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To: SeekAndFind

First stop digging the whole deeper. Than roll back as much spending as possible. Create a flat tax that essentially eliminates the need for the huge IRS. Take all savings and apply to debt. We owe this to our kids and grandkids and great grandkids....


11 posted on 12/02/2014 9:57:54 AM PST by fatez (Ebola, Obama's solution for shovel ready jobs... Bring out your dead!!!)
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To: SeekAndFind

how the heck do you pay down an $18 trillion note?

Break another nation’s/person’s windows and take THEIR stuff?

It’s the democrat way...


12 posted on 12/02/2014 9:58:17 AM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: SeekAndFind
I recall in the 40s after W.W.II (similar debt) that bread was $0.25 a loaf, the average working class family annual wage was $3,600 (single-earner BTW). Ice cold cokes from a machine were five cents each (don't recall the very first time for the machine, it could have been later; but they were a nickel each.) Haircuts fifty and seventy-five cents . . . .

Ans: inflation

13 posted on 12/02/2014 9:58:34 AM PST by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: SeekAndFind

>>how the heck do you pay down an $18 trillion note?

You don’t. You do what the government, Wall St, and Federal Reserve have been doing all along. You keep raising the debt to buy the votes to make sure that no one who is fiscally responsible gets into power and then hope that the the credit cards don’t get maxed out while you are still alive. You wait until the economy collapses and then America can become the third world resource exporter and cheap labor source that the Transnational Progressives want us to be.


14 posted on 12/02/2014 9:58:57 AM PST by Bryanw92 (Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: SeekAndFind
McDonald's hourly wage:


15 posted on 12/02/2014 9:59:07 AM PST by ClearCase_guy (Democrats have a lynch mob mentality. They always have.)
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To: fatez

Than = then


16 posted on 12/02/2014 9:59:19 AM PST by fatez (Ebola, Obama's solution for shovel ready jobs... Bring out your dead!!!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Depressingly, if you look at most “average Americans’” comments on polls like these, you will see that they think that if we just get rid of “waste” and increase taxes on “the rich,” that the deficit will go away and we will be able to pay off the debt. Its why the country is swirling down the toilet toward bankruptcy. No one wants to cut the middle class entitlements that cause most of the problem.


17 posted on 12/02/2014 9:59:27 AM PST by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
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To: SeekAndFind

1. Revive the gold standard
2. Strike the income tax
3. Reduce corporate tax rates to 15% or lower
4. Increase tariffs on foreign goods and services, esp. those from China
5. Increase drilling for petroleum on American soil and shores
6. Provide incentives for manufacturing businesses in the US
7. Shutter the EPA, FDA, and other executive agencies that place undue burden on industry and commerce
8. Shutter the Federal Reserve
9. Replace or remove the IRS


18 posted on 12/02/2014 10:00:20 AM PST by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: rarestia

What about Welfare and the rest of the goodies?


19 posted on 12/02/2014 10:01:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind (If at first you don't succeed, put it out for beta test.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Inflate the currency and destroy the country.


20 posted on 12/02/2014 10:01:10 AM PST by Blood of Tyrants (Good Muslims, like good Nazis or good liberals, are terrible human beings.)
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