Posted on 06/14/2010 7:41:06 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
I try to count up the real national debt, i.e., all the money owed by the federal government, state and local governments, entitlement liabilities, government retiree pension obligations, etc. The number I came up with: about $130 trillion, which is to say, nine or ten times the "national debt" we usually talk about.
(Excerpt) Read more at corner.nationalreview.com ...
The patient is terminal.
Not to put too fine a point on it — but those are technically “unfunded liabilities”, not debt.
It’s beyond obvious to me that one way or another the government will have to welsh on those obligations. There is simply no other way to deal with the problem. (If you see some way to pay out all of that dough that I’m missing, please let me know.)
We’ve been discussing this issue here as well :
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2534133/posts
Prognosis does not look good.
As Groucho Marx used to say in the film AT THE CIRCUS:
“Let’s analyze the problem in some other way -— he owes $10,000. Or, you could also say — $10,000 is owed by him. Whichever way you look at it, he still owes $10,000 !”
In our case, you can replace $10,000 with $130 Trillion.
Bush, Hasteret, Lott, the RNC/GOP says we can ‘grow our way out of it’.
Dems say we can tax our way out of it.
I feel it wins.
Let’s not forget the almost 14 TRILLION that consumers owe in residential mortgage debt and other consumer-credit related debt.
That combined total was less than $1 trillion in 1975.
One trillion, just ONE, is $1 per SECOND for 32,000 YEARS... and that’s without interest!
Mortgage debt stats:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s1155.pdf
Consumer Credit stats:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s1153.pdf
Ten years worth of work (GDP), give or take.
If SS doesn't start until you're 75 or 80, a lot of people won't live to see it.
It is a mathmatical impossibility to seize enough money from workers to give everyone over 65 free health care and “walkin around” money for 20 or 30 years.
It’s possible to fix the Social Security problem by taking a few modest steps:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/18/report-tweaks-can-fix-social-security/
I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm, or not.
The “tweaks” in that article are things like taxing 100% of all income — no ceiling.
That is NOT a “tweak”. That’s a huge blow to our productivity. What’s more, you know as well as I that that money will NOT go to social security — it’ll be spent just as fast as it comes in.
Here's another, more conservative approach to the problem:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2004/11/How-to-Fix-Social-Security
Sure, that's always the answer. You can just raise taxes "a little bit' and all our problems disappear.
They've been feeding us that line for 80 years...when will people catch on!
bm
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