[fugazi]

Interestingly enough, our government spends money about as fast as the Voyager 1 space probe can travel (38,000 mph) because if you laid out 136.5 trillion $1 bills, it would stretch 13 billion miles into space. It took Voyager 1 40 years to travel 13 billion miles. "You know you have a spending problem when your debt extends beyond the solar system."

[Truthoverpower]

Growth is the only way out

[DannyTN]

It looks like this...

[DannyTN]

"The dirty little secret is that we are obligated to pay around $115 trillion – on top of the national debt – to programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare."

While these are commitments, we do have associated tax income to help take care of those expenses.

It's kind of like loading my personal balance sheet with actuarial elder care expenses for Mom and Dad. Yeah that was always lurking out there and thank God they bought long term care insurance, but I wouldn't have put that on my balance sheet.

[DannyTN]

"The dirty little secret is that we are obligated to pay around $115 trillion – on top of the national debt – to programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare."

While these are commitments, we do have associated tax income to help take care of those expenses.

It's kind of like loading my personal balance sheet with actuarial elder care expenses for Mom and Dad. Yeah that was always lurking out there and thank God they bought long term care insurance, but I wouldn't have put that on my balance sheet.

[rb22982]

You can’t look at just future liabilities and count that as debt without looking also at future income as an offset. Even the $21 T includes several T that we simply owe ourselves (the SS fund, largely). SS payments could always be reduced or delayed.

[SaxxonWoods]

When we reach the point where something HAS to actually be cut, it will probably be the right things that get cut.

Nothing will happen until then so I don’t worry about it.

[Kozak]

“Altogether, the U.S. federal government has run up a $136.5 trillion bill that will have to be paid, using figures from usdebtclock.org. Accounting for the unfunded liabilities, every single taxpayer in America is currently on the hook for just under $1 million dollars. And that doesn’t count the $10 trillion or so of local and state debt and unfunded liabilities.”

It’s never going to paid off. Unless they inflate the currency to Zimbabwian heights.

[Will88]

The dirty little secret is that we are obligated to pay around $115 trillion – on top of the national debt – to programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.

Meaningless unless they tell us over how many years those obligations will become due. Even if that information is provided later in the article, the writer shouldn't stick that sentence near the top or the article with no mention of when the obligations become due.

Sometimes I wonder if folks who write such things even realize that the obligations become due over many years, or if they just like to write doomsday articles.

Not minimizing the problem, but it's just sloppy reporting to not put our long term obligations in context. And most everything I see on this subject does not.

[Drago]

The author’s statement of “If you are a taxpayer, your share is a little over $58,000.” is misleading (too low) there are about 244,250,000 tax returns filed every year, so the total per family/single return is more like $88,511.00, and with “progressive” tax rates probably more like $200,000. per “real taxpayer” to pay off the current debt.

Debt up $1.66 Trillion so far under President Trump.

https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-number-of-returns-filed-by-type-of-return-and-state-and-fiscal-year-irs-data-book-table-3

https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current

[Pelham]

Look up "Funded Public Debt. Alexander Hamilton"