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IrrationalExistentialist said 03/11, 07:04 PM
No response to original post. Reposting.

The current national debt, not including future obligations, is over $9.34 trillion and is increasing at an average rate of $1.64 billion a day. In order to pay for just future medicare and medicaid obligations David Walker, the US Comptroller General, has determined we needed $8 trillion invested by the end of 2007. As of right now the total amount invested is $0. The income generated by future workers will be unable to cover even 1/5 of the total costs of projected spending. To make matters worse the U.S. is still racking up massive trade deficeits and for the first time ever the consumer savings to debt ratio has tipped in favor of debt. I'm not even going to start factoring the cost of the "war" in Iraq...

We're already beginning to see the beginings of a recession, consumer spending has plummeted, housing prices have collapsed, Jan was the first month since 2001 where the country experienced negative job growth, new car sales have slowed significantly... The list goes on and on and unless government spending is massively reduced and more effort is put into creating a trade surplus the United States will be bankrupt within the

IrrationalExistentialist said 03/17, 02:53 PM
Paying off the debt is easy part, getting enough votes to make the policy change is the challenge. The U.S. could conceivably repay the national debt in 15 years if it stopped borrowing today and started paying roughly $650 billion per year. It sounds like a stretch but then consider how much money has been officially allocated to funding the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2007 and it suddenly seems much more reasonable.