How big is the U.S. Debt?

[Feuer Frei!]

May be slightly outdated but:




Instead of listening to the warnings of our founding fathers, now we are in debt hell....
#1 The Obama administration is now projecting that the federal budget deficit for this year will be an all-time record $1.645 trillion dollars.
#2 The budget deficit for this year alone will end up being well over 10 percent of GDP. That is an absolutely nightmarish level.
#3 Currently, the accumulated national debt of the U.S. government has reached a grand total of $14,123,589,307,190.53.
#4 If you divided the national debt up equally among all U.S. households, each one would owe a staggering $125,475.18.
#5 The federal government has borrowed 29,660 more dollars per household since Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus law two years ago.
#6 During Barack Obama's first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.
#7 In the new budget that the Obama administration has proposed, the U.S. government would spend 3.7 trillion dollars in 2012 and by 2021 the U.S. government would be spending a whopping 5.6 trillion dollars per year.
#8 The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.
#9 The total compensation that the federal government workforce earned last year came to a grand total of approximately 447 billion dollars.
#10 The U.S. national debt is currently rising by well over 4 billion dollars every single day.
#11 The U.S. government is borrowing over 2 million more dollars every single minute.
#12 The U.S. national debt is over 14 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.
#13 Unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are estimated to be well over $100 trillion, and nobody in the U.S. government seems to have any idea how we are actually even going to come close to meeting all of those obligations.
#14 If you were alive when Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.
#15 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.









SOURCE

[Betonov]

Someone please explain to me how can one country have more debt than the GDP of the entire world. Economic wise, not political

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Betonov

Someone please explain to me how can one country have more debt than the GDP of the entire world. Economic wise, not political

By making living on tic a way of life and delaying the start for paying back of debts to the next administration.

Or in other words: by biting off more than one can swallow.

Problem is the shortsightedness of people, which in our species seems to be by genetic design.

The US is not alone in the debt-making business, though. It just is the biggest, most dependent and effectinbg others as well offender. In %, Britain and Japan are much worse off.

Germany was on the way to a truly balanced fiscal budget some years ago, but then came the global crisis and next the bailing out of European mismasnagement that turned the currency union into an effective transfer union. Calculations done by government-indepedent fiscal analysist and economic experts show that the Merkel government in this and the past two years have set the course for the future fiscal ruin of Germany by still sticking with bailouts for the Euro crisis - no matter the cost.

The Socialists would not do it even better, but would sink even more money and make even more debts for social issues to buy voters' sympathy - ahte cost of destroying the future. And that is true for America as well. It makes no sense to now bash only Obama, when you see that since WWII governments of both parties set sails for always increasing debts. That starts with the stupidicty of American stimulaus policy (what I cut short by calling it "living on tic"), and ends with the unaffordably high military budgets. The simple truth is that by its own economic and fiscal potency the US in no way can finance the military giant sytructure it is running. It depends on others pumping money into America, and by that indirectly into the US military as well.

Needless to say that such madness cannot work for always. The longer it has lasted, the tougher will be the crash, the harder will be the wake-up call. And many ordinary people will be left at the sideline. It already has started.

America is stupid, and Europe is stupid. Both are stupid in different ways and interpretations of this effort of being stupid, but stupid they are both nevertheless.

[bookworm_020]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The US is not alone in the debt-making business, though. It just is the biggest, most dependent and effectinbg others as well offender. In %, Britain and Japan are much worse off.

Japan is the biggest in the world. I believe that Germany is the biggest in Europe.

I hear here in Australia that they are worried about the level of debt Australia has accrued, but as a % it's still one of the smallest around in the developed world and is managed reasonably well.

Guess we are lucky to a degree. Many retailers are screaming that people aren't buying from them any more, instead shopping on line or going overseas on trips to buy goods. But the reserve bank doesn't care, people are saving again, credit card growth has almost halted and people are living within their means. Even with low unemployment and good wage growth, people are paying off debts and avoiding accruing new ones.

[Happy Times]

Originally Posted by Betonov

Someone please explain to me how can one country have more debt than the GDP of the entire world. Economic wise, not political

Money as Debt


Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve


Basically dont worry about it if you dont have power to change it, just be prepared for when it all comes tumbling down.

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Happy Times

Basically dont worry about it if you dont have power to change it, just be prepared for when it all comes tumbling down.

Better start stockpilling guns, ammo and gold

[Armistead]

Add to that 60 trillion owed in medicare alone to those that have paid in, plus another 10 trillion in SS, that's more money in all the bank and stockmarkets in the world...

Course most of us know the facts, we'll never see either if you're under 50.
Oh, you'll still pay into it of course.

[Sailor Steve]

I remember the panic and finger-pointing when the overall National Debt hit one trillion dollars. Now the annual budget deficit is more than that.

Amazing.

[nikimcbee]

Thank god we have rich people, let's just tax them.

I say we put on our pirate hats and visit soro's bank account.

[gimpy117]

2 wars (that were the most expensive per troop ever) and then an economy that needed saving what else do you expect?

but it really shows you what happened. Clinton had it leveled out. that lasted long didn't it?

Curious... what happens if a country like the US is just unable to pay its debt?

[Skybird]

When an aircraft at high altitude runs out of fuel, there are only two options, both of wich result in the same outcome.

Either you refuse to accept your status, try to hold altitude no matter what, by that you become slow, air finally stops flowing over the wings, you stall and fall down in an uncontrolled way, nose first.

Or you start looking for a place to conduct a controlled emergency landing, start to glide, trading altitude for sufficient speed to prevent stall, and that way go down - but hopefully without crashing, but doing a rough landing.

But anyway - down your way goes, this or that way, in both cases. America's current belief that it just can carry on like it always did, and that the old familiar ways will keep the plane in ther air, are illusory this time. It is a major turning point in American (and global) history, the end of a taken-for-granted part of American self-description. American optimism will not pull the car out of the mug this time, like it did so moften before. I do not have the impression that much of America already has fully realised the full historic dimension of this turning point. America will either fundamentally change - or break.

What current politicians in America do is to pull the stick to the max to not lose altitude, and making the people believe that one can keep altitude and speed with empty tanks by just imagining that there will be a magical in-flight fuel-up by magical fairy-tanker-flight 001 who does not even charge you for the costs of the magical fuel.

The AOA is becoming steeper and steeper, and the airspeed drops and drops further. Guess how that stunt necessarily must end.

One does not need to have a academical degree in economics in order to forsee the future. And economics is no science anyway.

[Oberon]

TLDR - It's Starfighter time.

Originally Posted by Skybird

One does not need to have a academical degree in economics in order to forsee the future. And economics is no science anyway.

I get that whole analogy and what not and I know what the government is doing in regards to this... however my main question is what happens when this plane smashes into the ground? Besides everyone blaming the Lolwaffles.

[krashkart]

I hope I'm not being an ******* by saying this, but:


Give the government any kind of money and they will spend it on *cigarettes and beer. To hell with paying the power bill for the month.


* Some countries can still afford to pay for their weapons (and other assorted worthless bull**** items). Other countries have to reign it in a bit to keep their workforce from starving to death.

Nothing ever really changes in human history.