The Obama is proposing a $1.5T deficit for 2010/11.
That’s $5000 per citizen per year.
Crunching the math for my family sans details...
That’s $80,000 _I_ will have to earn to pay off my at-gunpoint “fair share”.
The deficit only gets bigger every year (clever accounting included).
That’s $80,000 for _every_d@mn_year_ I’m responsible for my kids’ “fair share”.
That’s $1,600,000 I’ll have to earn before I retire - not for existing debt, not for unfunded liabilities, just to cover the deficit starting today.
Maybe we could arrange for me to pay off this year’s $20,000 to avoid interest accumulation over the next couple decades.
‘cept I don’t have an extra $20,000 to get it over with now.
I won’t have $1,600,000 to spare in the future.
I don’t have $20,000 to pay off my family’s share up front this year - nor will I for years to come.
I don’t have $5000 to spare now for my own share for this year.
It’s gonna break.
The money just ain’t there to the tune of $1,500,000,000,000 per year for ever.
Not to mention whatever must-spend future additional deficit tacks on.
Forget 75% tax rates for the kids.
Forget whether or not there will be health care (gov’t-supplied or not).
The money _just_ain’t_there_.
I know when debt hits the tipping point. It’s a lot lower than optimistic statistics declare. A LOT lower.
It’s not a matter of balancing the budget. It’s a matter of cutting the budget by _at_least_ 2x the deficit _JUST_ to tread water, and 3x _JUST_ to START paying off that debt in anywhere close to the time it took to accumulate it.
Translation: we’ll have to dump the entire federal budget into paying off the debt, starting now, just to START cutting it down at a rate comparable to how it accumulated.
Brace for impact, folks.
Rice is cheap now.
The debt is 75% internal and 25% foreign. Much of it is held by Social Security.
Basically, if we cancel SSI, Medicare and Medicaid we will pretty much close the deficit.
SSI seems hard to get rid of, but we can raise the retirement age and start shutting it down slowly.
Medicaid should simply be ended. We are broke, and should not borrow money to create charitable entitlements.
Medicare, I don’t know.