Posted on 07/28/2011 4:11:11 PM PDT by taildragger
If you think the current debt ceiling circus is bad, just wait for the real debt crisis. Peter Coy at Businessweek writes today that the debate over raising the debt limit ignores just how ailing the nation's fiscal health really is. Here are the highlights from his piece: The national debt is only a small part of U.S. liabilities. Failure to raise the debt ceiling would hurt the global financial system, but the threat is minimal compared to the real danger: Sharply rising healthcare costs combined with the aging baby-boomer generation. The U.S. is in danger of reaching a generational tipping point at which older Americans have the clout to vote themselves benefits that sap the strength of the younger generation—benefits that can never be repeated.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
It denotes the numbers Peter Schippers and Glen Beck has noted, i.e. all Liabilities are in the 211 Trillion Dollar Range.
I am not sure we can get out of this....
At some point you simply walk away.
The country just say NO; the country breaks apart and dissolves itself, the country just rewrites its charters and erases its debts.
Thats what is going to happen, not just here but world wide.
The video says if we halted ALL spending, and made daily payments of $100 million per day, we’d need 400 years to pay off the debt now.
By 2046 EVERY dime collected would have to be spent on ONLY interest payments; no SS, no defense, no medical, etc. —NOTHING.
Or do we have the Old Testament / Jewish concept exercised, i.e. the Jubilee and forgiveness of all debts? With "forces" working against Israel, I can't see a concept like this taking hold in certain quarters....
Yeah, we can. But it requires cutting government deeply. And it requires privatizing and phasing out social security and medicare. And, obviously, repealing ObamaCare!
We need to do a constitutional audit of the federal government. All federal departments, agencies, programs, commissions, etc, that are not explicitly enumerated and authorized by the constitution as valid functions of the federal government need to be abolished and their functions, if truly needed, returned to the states and the people. The federal government needs to get its nose out of the people’s business. Literally! And all remaining constitutionally authorized departments need to be stripped to the bare bone. No pork! No fat!! Cut the taxes appropriately. Get our economy booming and put our people back to work!!
I’ve wondered if the Obama/socialist plan all along was to force the dollar into oblivion and begin issuing a new currency with a much tighter government control, a prelude to the end times prophecy that people could not buy or sell without the “mark of the beast”. The technology is already there to make this happen. All they need is someone evil enough and powerful enough to force us into a global currency which they will be able to control.
The debt is not going to be paid.
Look @ my tag line, Mulally has done this fat cutting @ Ford, Man would I love o see Sarah pick him. Dem's that know business would reach for the Kaopecate if she did, he knows how to get a team working and get-r-done !
Sharply rising healthcare costs combined with the aging baby-boomer generation. The U.S. is in danger of reaching a generational tipping point at which older Americans have the clout to vote themselves benefits that sap the strength of the younger generation -- benefits that can never be repeated.Hey, Zero's transformation of Medicare into official euthanasia will take care of this.
There comes a point where everyone is forced to look at the uncompromising despotism of the physical world and basic arithmetic, without feigning ignorance or smoke and mirrors.
I have been meaning to post the following for quite a few years now.
The following was written in the late 70s, and published in 1980, 31 years ago. More than a generation now.
See if any of it sounds familiar today, only worse than then. Multiply everything by 7 and if you can stay away from the vodka, you are a better man than I am.
One chink in the armor of any democracy is that, when the Plebs discover that they can vote themselves Bread & Circuses, they usually do . . . right up to the day there is neither bread nor circuses. At that point they often start lynching the senators, congressmen, bankers, tax collectors, Jews, grocers, foreigners, any minority-take your choice. For they know that they [themselves] didn’t do it. The citizen is sovereign until it comes to accepting blame for his sovereign acts then he demands a scapegoat.
...
Social Security taxes go into the general fund and are spent. If Social Security were in fact insurance (the basis on which the gimmick was sold to us by FDR’s “New Deal”), the receipts would be segregated and invested and not shown as income . . . OR a competent insurance actuary with staff would calculate the commitment and it would show in the National Public Debt.
The fact that a debt is amortized over the years doesn’t stop it from being a debt. It was an amortized mortgage that got me into this racket. The prospect of years and years of future monthly payments spoiled my sleep.
The only way the Government can go on paying Social “Security” to my generation is by taxing you young people more and more heavily. . . and each year there are more and more old people and fewer and fewer young people. It won’t help to run the printing presses faster; that causes food to rise in price, rents to go up, etc. - and people over 65 start putting pressure on Congress... and there’s an election coming up. (There’s always an election coming up.)
I use the term “Federal Public Debt” because what is usually termed the “Public Debt” is by no means our total public debt. There are also state, county, city, and special-district debts. It is difficult to get accurate figures on these public debts but the total appears to be larger than the Federal Public Debt. I can’t make even a wild guess at the Social Security commitment but our total public promises-to-pay have to exceed two trillion dollars.
How much is a trillion? Well, it means that a baby born today owes at least $4,347.83 to the Federal Government alone before his eyes open. (No wonder he yells). It means that the Zero Population Growth family (who was going to save us all-remember?) of father, mother, and 2.1 children owes $17,826 in addition to private debts (mortgage, automobile, college for 2.1 children).
Of course papa won’t pay it off; that debt will grow larger. But it will cost him $2000 a year (and rising) just to “service” his pro-rata; any taxes for which he getsanything at all-even more laws-is on top of that.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years, 9 months, 5 days, 8 hours, 6 minutes, and 42 seconds - long enough for the precession of the equinoxes to make Vega the Pole Star, swing back again to Polaris, and go on past to Alpha Cephei. Or counting the other way it would take us to 29,708 B.C.. . . or more than 25 thousand years before Creation by Bishop Usher’s chronology for creationism.
I don’t understand a trillion dollars any better than I do a trillion seconds. I simply know that we had better stop spending money we don’t have if we want to avoid that Man on Horseback.
But I don’t think we will stop “deficit financing,” the euphemism that sounds so much better than “kiting checks.” You may have noticed that 1970 figure for public employees (not my extrapolation for 1980, but the official 1970 figures straight from theUnited States Bureau of the Census).
That figure does not include the Armed Forces. It does not include some special categories. It is easier to learn the number of slaves imported in 1769 (6,736) than it is to find out exactly how many people are on public payrolls in this country. And it is not simply difficult but impossible to determine how many people receive Federal checks for which they perform no services. (Or food stamps. Are food stamps money?) But one thing is certain: the number of people eligible to vote who do receive money from some unit of government (aid to dependent children, Supreme Court justices, not growing wheat, removing garbage, governors of states, whoever) exceeds the number eligible to vote but receiving no pay or subsidy of any sort from any unit of government.
Have you read the Federal Register lately? Have you ever read the Federal Register? Under powers delegated by Congress certain appointed officials can publish a new regulation in the Federal Register and, if Congress does not stop it, after a prescribed waiting time, that regulation has the force of law-it is law, [usually forever,] to you and to me, although a lawyer sees nuances. I have vastly oversimplified this description, but my only purpose is to point out that “administrative law” reaches into every corner of our lives, and is the major factor in the enormous and strangling invasion of the Federal Government into our private affairs.
I can’t see anything in the Constitution that permits the Congress to delegate its power to pass laws.. . but the Supreme Court says it’s okay and that makes my opinion worthless.
I’m stopping. There are endless other gloomy things to discuss-the oil shortage, the power shortage (not the same thing), pollution, population pressure, a projected change in climate that can and probably will turn the problems of population and food into sudden and extreme crisis, crime in the streets and bankrupt cities, our incredible plunge from the most respected nation on Earth to the most despised (but we are nonetheless expected to pick up the tab). Bill Gresham was right but he told only half of it: you not only don’t get rich peddling gloom; it isn’t any fun.
So now come with me- “OVER THE RAINBOW-“
Over The Rainbow is a section of the Chapter, The Happy Days Ahead from the Robert Heinlein book, Expanded Universe, which discusses, among other things, predictions made in 1950 and revisited in 1980. Heinlein got a lot wrong, but a few, like the excerpt in this thread, was (is) spot on.
Historically, what follows that immediately, is that the ill-served citizens erase the elected incompetents involved, both current and retired. They have nowhere to hide, the record is there and complete.
I trust that there are enough lamp posts.
$115 trillion visualized: the amount of our unfunded liabilities (Medicare, Social Security, etc)
With all respect, did you say that with a straight face??
If so, you live in a different world than I do. I know few people that understand the problems and fewer that are willing to pay the prices. Those that do are 'digging in & stocking up'!
You are correct, but the voters don't understand.
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