SSssooo China wants a apology

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by yubba

Yep, can you say butt clentch, wow a government that might have to live within it's means socialism it's great till you run out someone elses money, 16 trillion dollars in debt I know none of it has trickled down to me or others I know.

You make a very broad generalisation there, after all this debt did not appear overnight as soon as Obama was elected. Furthermore, if one compares the current debt as a percentage of GDP with that held during World War II and the Roosevelt years then it's actually a drop in the ocean. Of course, US GDP was lower back then so it's hard to scale it accordingly.

I believe that it's agreed upon that this 16 trillion dollar debt started with the race to outspend the Soviet Union, which ultimately destroyed itself trying to keep up. Looking at a graph of Gross debt/Public debt, and even one of debt/GDP you can clearly see that the graph was in a downward motion until around the early 1980s when it starts going up again.
However, if you look at the Outlay vs Revenue graph you can see that during the 1990s Revenue outstripped Outlay and consequently the debt began to decrease, and then post-2001 the Outlay went up again and here we are.

So, one cannot really link it to one particular president or party, certainly there are a couple that one could link it to if they particularly wanted, but then you have to also look at who controlled the Senate and Congress during that period.

This makes a good graph:



As you can see, debt went down in the 104-106 Senate which was Republican lead, but the President was a Democrat, likewise you can have a democrat President but a Republican Senate/Congress and have the debt go down or up. Socialism just does not come into it. Ambitious schemes that you simply cannot pay for comes into it, whether that is a national welfare scheme, or trying to build a bigger military than you can afford to run. Both sides are at fault, and the sooner that bi-partisan politics is put to bed and the two sides actually co-operate on the matter then the sooner the US can set about reducing the debt.
I know, pot kettle black, the UK isn't exactly a shining example of cross-party co-operation, and we're just as sick of it as you are. Most Politicians these days have forgotten who they were elected by, who they were elected to serve, and that they're there not to line their own pockets. Which is why voter epathy is on the rise in some countries, and more extremist groups are on the rise in others as people are just simply fed up of the status quo and they look for alternatives, be it Geert Wilders, Hollande or the Tea Party.