Posted on 06/06/2010 2:33:02 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand
Go ahead, let it soak in: Thirteen trillion, fifty billion, eight hundred twenty-six million, four hundred sixty thousand, eight hundred eighty-six dollars . . . and ninety-seven cents.
Seen on the “debt clock” in Times Square, that number seems little more than an abstraction, something almost impossible to process. But think about it this way: If you earned one dollar every second, it would take you 416,000 years to earn enough money to pay it off. Or consider: Alex Rodriguez earned $33 million last year, making him the highest paid player in baseball. It would take nearly 400,000 Rodriguezes to earn that much money.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Well, perhaps, but Cuomo isn't the governor of New York, so who gives a rip what he says he "rejects?" What about what our actual governor has actually rejected?
Why does he talk of Cuomo as if he's the governor and not bother to mention the battle that David Paterson has been doing with the corrupt legislation and all their union sponsors to balance the budget in NY state for almost two years now?
What was the debt during Bush? $5 trillion?
2.9. it’s in the article, which was excerpted.
“Bush made me do it!” - Barry Hussein Obama
disagree.
As is your right. Doesn’t mean a hill of beans though, when he has, in fact, not done much more than make a lot of noise, before he succumbs to his inner liberal and goes along.
He is the first and only governor I've heard do so. He is frequently opposed in court -- don't know how much more he can do than that.
Anyone have a current GDP figure? Isn’t the debt getting terribly close to the GDP?
It would take nearly 400,000 Rodriguezes to earn that much money.
I bet we have at LEAST that many here illegally,
and they don't make anywhere near that much money.
If that were miles that would be 35,367 trips from the Sun to Pluto.
I propose the debt clock be superimposed on all tv channels playing Obama speaking about anything.
GDP for 2010 will be somewhere north of $14T, so yes, the debt is growing perilously close to 100% of GDP—roughly 94%.
To take the household analogy, many people have mortgages in excess of their annual income. So per se, this level of debt isn’t unsustainable. If we added no more to it, we could steadily chip away at it and even retire it within a few decades very comfortably (after WWII total debt was about 120% of GDP and by 1980, we’d knocked that down to only 26%:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt).
But there’s 4 problems. First, when you add debt for state & local governments, that adds another 21% of GDP (http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/piigs-europe-debt-eurozone-greece-canada/6/4/2010/id/28598), bringing the total to 115% GDP.
Second, PRIVATE debt already is 113% of GDP, which effectively doubles the burden faced by Americans.
Third, we have a structural deficit that is adding to the public debt year after year rather than retiring any of it, so it will rise by about $9T within a decade.
Fourth, we have a pile of unfunded obligations for Medicare and SS equal to $109T in today’s dollars. Admittedly, these are FUTURE promises rather than past obligations, but to avert them entirely would entail MASSIVE cuts in Medicare and SS, which likely are politically impossible. So even if we have the stomach to cut this burden by 3/4 through cuts, that will still leave $27T to somehow bankroll, i.e., effectively tripling our current national debt. So even under the latter extremely optimistic assumption, our overall indebtedness exceeds 400% of GDP.
If you told a financial advisor you were planning to carry a debt equal to 4 times your annual income, s/he likely would counsel against this. It’s likewise hard to imagine any bank willing to keep lending to a family in this position. To take the analogy further, a mortgage at least has an asset backing it up. But the U.S. as a nation only has a net worth of $53T.
So we’re like a family with, say, $14K in income, a house worth $53K, current debts of $35K (with plans to increase this to about $44K over the next 10 years). We were planning a lavish vacation costing $107K, but have decided to tighten our belts to fit it into a $27K budget. Who would lend money to such a family to bankroll the latter?
lol
That’s petty cash compared to the real debt that includes under funded future obligations with is something like 62 Trillion.
DrC, if you have a ping list, please add me. That was an exceptional analysis that many of us simply cannot find from the “finest” in the MSM. Thank you! -Bill
That is a number that I cannot even fathom.
I like it. Why don't you suggest it to Fox and all the talkers via email!
Well, I hate to contradict presumed omniscience, but Paterson is a different sort of character all together.
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