Posted on 07/21/2020 6:49:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
I am not in the habit of quoting leftist Noam Chomsky, but this line seems relevant when one considers our growing national debt: "When you trap people in a system of debt, they can't afford the time to think."
Perhaps now is not the time in the middle of a pandemic, job losses and threats of even higher unemployment, to mention the national debt. Or, perhaps it is.
One of the common characteristics of the fall of past empires and superpowers is massive national debt. Ours is currently at $26.5 trillion and growing by the second. Americans should regularly consult the real-time debt clock and ponder the future. The interest on the debt, which also grows daily, is higher than the nation's gross domestic product for the first time since World War II.
With more borrowed money going out the Treasury Department's door because of the pandemic and Joe Biden promising to spend additional trillions should he become president the debt will become an even greater economic albatross.
One year ago when the debt was "only" $22 trillion, I wrote a column about what the Founders thought of debt. Their words are worth repeating:
Thomas Jefferson said: "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." Alexander Hamilton added: "Nothing can more affect national prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possibl(e) the incurring of any new debt."
We have this from George Washington, whose statues are being torn down by people who appear to know nothing, or care, about history: "Avoid occasions of expense ... and avoid likewise the accumulation of debt not only by shunning occasions of expense but by vigorous exertions to discharge the debts, not throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear."
If that's insufficient, consider James Madison: "I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other."
Finally, hear John Adams: "The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own."
Our modern leaders are not listening.
Citizens Against Government Waste (cagw.org) has just published its annual "Pig Book," about some of the government's wasteful spending and earmarks Republicans promised to eliminate. Earmarks are spending added to bills that have not been authorized, approved by any committee, or voted on by members.
From the booklet's introduction: "A January 2020 Congressional Budget Office report forecast an average annual deficit of $1.3 trillion between fiscal years 2021 and 2030, rising to $1.7 trillion by the end of the decade, adding $12.4 trillion to the national debt and bringing it to $$36.2 trillion. That estimate was made prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent health care crisis and economic shutdown. One estimate suggests that the pandemic will add $8 trillion to CBO's fiscal year 2030 projection, for a total of $44.2 trillion."
The Pig Book documents what it says are slightly fewer earmarks this year but notes the amount of spending on them has increased.
In 2010, then-House Republican Leader John Boehner praised his fellow Republicans for adopting a ban on earmarks in the 112th Congress: "This earmark ban shows the American people we are listening and we are dead serious about ending business as usual in Washington."
If only.
While earmarks are a fraction of government spending, if Congress continues to spend money as if there is no tomorrow, there may not be a tomorrow. America will drown in debt with no one to rescue us from our folly.
If public debt was a problem we’d see rising rates on government bonds. That’s not happening — mainly because an empire like the U.S. can force almost any country in the world to buy our bonds.
There’s going to be a tomorrow? I can’t think that far ahead.
this DNC/Xi/FauXi/PeloXi/WHO/Gates-manufactured
pandemic is an Atrocity created by them, funded by them,
moved along by them, introduced into the USA by them,
moved by helicopters, planes, buses and cars by them,
and THERE IS NO ACCOUNTABILITY.
Very few have any interest in this at all.
The new generations don’t even care for themselves instead of saving and realizing the value of early time dollars they ponder a diminished lifestyle of semi-early retirement. Making hay while the sun is shining is not very important to what looks like a lot of them.
As for the rest of us, it is either too late to do anything or we are too few.
“Spreading the money around like the Russians are in Jersey”
Popeye Doyle
The sickening part of this is that we are “borrowing” money from people who don’t even exist yet. Our children. And grandchildren. And their children.
There will be major economic consequences from this growing mountain of debt. But consider that the national debt is but a small percentage of the total U.S. unfunded liabilities of $153 TRILLION!
That liability — per citizen — now stands at $464,000.
The weight of these obligations is eventually going to crush us.
Globalism, offshoring, unbridled legal immigration, illegal immigration and the death of unions have suppressed wages to the point were wage inflation is not really possible. That’s the “good” part. The bad part is that stagnant wages , reduced expectations, hatred of capitalism and no general prosperity and debt have been the driving engine of the socialist take over we are seeing now.
That is exactly what our politicians are doing — stealing from future generations.
Now that is something that the younger cohorts ought to be protesting over.
Free ! Free! Free just means let the kids pay for it
Where’s the commercial or video showing a toddler happily playing suddenly being demanded to pay its thousands of dollars share of the national debt ? When the toddler breaks into screaming” HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO ME ???” in tears
Maybe they already know there is no tomorrow. Amateur astronomers will eventually confirm it long before the government ever admits it.
That’s what I was thinking. Tomorrow will not be the tomorrow that we know of.
Let the good times roll!
This video from 2013 covers that and never gets old. It is hilarious but nails our conundrum. And the zinger is at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlN28DoL5qA
I think that is what’s really going on. They are just trying to kick the can down the road for as long as they can get away with. See the video in my post above.
Priceless. How do we get that into the cell phones of those pukes protesting for Socialism across America?
And yet we STILL give out BILLIONS in foreign aid.
We are borrowing money so that we can give it away for free!
And yet we STILL give out BILLIONS in foreign aid.
We are borrowing money so that we can give it away for free!
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Exactly, conservatives used to get duped into the “Oh no! We’re running up debt hand-wringing. To be hyper-concerned with debt given everything else that’s going on in the U.S. is either ignorance (which I doubt from Cal Thomas) or a subtle Never-Trumper tactic (much more likely).
“Americans should regularly consult the real-time debt clock and ponder the future.”
Why should we? Nobody is going to do anything about it until it reaches some crisis to which there are no good solutions.
So why should I worry myself about it until that happens? Life’s too short.
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