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Those Dark Clouds Are the Debt
Foundation for Economic Education ^ | Sunday, November 16, 2025 | Douglas Carswell

Posted on 11/16/2025 9:00:26 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum

Mississippi turns a corner, but can the federal government?

The future for our state looks bright. In just the past five years, Mississippi has seen more economic growth than in the entire 15 years before that combined.

We’re on track to phase out the state income tax entirely, allowing families to keep more of what they earn. Mississippi has attracted a surge of new investment, and for the first time in years, our workforce participation rate is finally heading in the right direction.

Zoom out, and the picture gets even better. Contrary to the endless gloom from the pundits, the American economy has consistently outperformed expectations for decades. Since the late 1990s, the US has delivered strong, steady growth that few forecasters saw coming.

But there is one dark cloud on all our horizons that we cannot forever ignore: US national debt.

As of today, US national debt stands at $38 trillion (with a capital T).

To grasp how enormous a single trillion really is, try this:

Now here’s the gut-punch: that $38 trillion mountain of debt has roughly doubled in just the past 10 years.

Costly foreign wars, mega bailouts, COVID giveaways, and all those federal entitlement programs LBJ said would “end poverty” eventually add up. Incidentally, living standards for America’s poorest citizens are much higher than when those programs launched in the 1960s. Today most people have access to indoor plumbing, air conditioning, and smartphones, but the number of people dependent on government assistance is larger than ever.

Rather than pay for all that using tax receipts, the US government has borrowed, issuing IOUs. Today we spend more money servicing all those IOUs than we do on defense.

As my fellow Brit, the historian Niall Ferguson, likes to point out, any great power that spends more on debt servicing than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power. That was true of the Romans and the British, the Habsburgs and the Dutch.

What must America do to avoid a similar fate?

When President Trump was first elected, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy launched the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with an ambitious target: to reduce annual federal spending by $2 trillion.

Because mandatory entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—remained largely untouched, DOGE hasn’t come close to achieving that yet. The federal deficit has barely budged.

Where, one might ask, are all those Tea Party types that railed against federal overspending 10 years ago as the debt to GDP ratio went from 90% in 2010 to 125% today?

If the US cannot rein in the growth of the debt, the only other way to avoid going the way of the Romans is to try to make the GDP part of the equation rise faster. In other words, to try to grow our way out of debt.

In order to stabilize debt-to-GDP at the current 125% of GDP, America will need to achieve real GDP growth of about 4–5% for the next 10 to 20 years. With the advent of AI and robotics, as Elon Musk suggests, it could be done.

Mississippi has shown how it’s possible to turn a corner. Let’s see if the federal government can do the same.

Douglas Carswell is President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Politics/Elections; US: Michigan; US: Mississippi
KEYWORDS: currencydebasement; debt; deficit; gdp; inflation; spammingfr

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1 posted on 11/16/2025 9:00:26 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

The Federal Reserve isn’t federal and it has no reserves.

Our fiat money system is built on the expectation of non-stop ever increasing debt. It’s why we are where we are.


2 posted on 11/16/2025 9:03:02 AM PST by ClearCase_guy (Democrats seek power through cheating and assassination. They are sociopaths. They just want power.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

If Kamala were President, we could just print a batch of trillion $$ bills, and pay off the debt.


3 posted on 11/16/2025 9:04:27 AM PST by gundog (The ends justify the mean tweets. )
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
No, those dark clouds are the $3+ trillion unconstitutional portion of the federal gov't causing economic dearth and weakness.
4 posted on 11/16/2025 9:04:56 AM PST by Jim W N (MAGA by restoring the Gospel of the Grace of Christ (Jude 3) and our Free Constitutional Republic!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Government debt is perpetual - on purpose. The financial system is specifically set up this way.

They Designed a System You Can Never Escape (19 minutes):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlnWVq_I800

5 posted on 11/16/2025 9:12:30 AM PST by yelostar (The media exists to present narratives, not necessarily truth.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

He’s right. However, there is way more corruption at work in all of this.


6 posted on 11/16/2025 9:21:47 AM PST by Shady (#EnoughIsEnough, and we have HAD ENOUGH!)
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To: ClearCase_guy

What you are seeing is the massive financial tidal wave that is coming to wipe out most Americans in early 2026..


7 posted on 11/16/2025 9:22:17 AM PST by dpetty121263
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

The nation is going to fall because of this. The people living off of the welfare (SNAP, housing, subsidized healthcare, free tuition, etc., etc., ad nauseum) will riot, burn and kill when it’s stopped. That will cause a civil war with millions killed, leaving us weak. An invader will come in, kill every useles, worthless person, enslave the rest, and the nation will be no more.


8 posted on 11/16/2025 9:25:50 AM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin (Freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself so others don't have to do it for you.)
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To: gundog

If Kamala was potus, at least the gop would act like there is a spending problem.


9 posted on 11/16/2025 12:01:08 PM PST by Theoria
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To: Theoria

Yeah...same old same old. Increased revenue to the Treasury, be it from lower taxes, or higher tariffs is just frittered away, or more accurately, was frittered away years ago. Spending is where the power lies.


10 posted on 11/17/2025 2:05:57 AM PST by gundog (The ends justify the mean tweets. )
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