Our “Astronomical” Debt - Not really, at closer look.

National Review ^ | 6/9/03 | Bruce Bartlett

[Tauzero]

Yes, unfilial.

The most seductive aspect of social security is not that Uncle Sam promises to take care of you in your old age. It is that he promises to take care of your parents. Just one of the many ways in which government undermines and displaces civil society.

Yes, barren.

Declining birth rates are a direct result of redistributionist taxation, particularly the kind that taxes the young to subsidize the old. In order to maintain the social ranking into which they were born despite increasing taxation, the middle class has fewer children. ( Which erodes the future tax base, necessitating tax increases, resulting in fewer middle class children, i.e. a death spiral.)

[Jack Black]

Thanks for your clear and well thought out response. I would not have looked at it that way, but now that you've explained it, I agree. FR is a place I learn things every day.

[Jack Black]

Why? I don't get it. The GDP is approximately the national equivelent of your income. If you were applying for a loan, say of $500,000, you could not answer if that was an outrageous amount. If you income is $250,000 a year it's probably not. If it's on a $40,000 one it might be aproblem. Doesn't debt as a percent of GDP make sense?

[ContentiousObjector]

The GDP might be the national income, but the debt should really be qualified as the federal debt.

Do you personally send the Japanese a cheque each month?

by the same logic you could say $40,000 of creditcard debt isn't a big deal because it is a trillionth of the GDP... but the entire GDP isn't available to you to pay off your creditcard bill.

The GDP is it income of the entire American economy, it isn't the income of the federal government. And I don't see many of the people dismissing the size of the debt in favor of 100% taxation.

[piasa]

.