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Who's going to make us pay up?
Public Debt
I failed to take Macroeconomics in school and I don't remember going over this in any Government class. Can someone explain to me why everyone is OK with the fact that the US is almost 8 trillion in debt, that 47%* of our income tax goes to pay just the interest on the debt, and more importantly only 3 Presidents** since WW2 have spent less $ than they've taken in, thus cutting down that debt.
I mean why even bother with collecting taxes, if you're going to spend money freely anyhow?
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._public_debt
** Truman, Eisenhower, & Clinton each spent less in a single year than the total of taxes & income collected that year (and only Clinton left office leaving more than when he began, a surplus total of $61,992,000,000). source, data
Last edited by Doc Holliday; 16 Jun 2005 at 05:02 PM. Reason: total surplus was in millions
"Question the world man... I know the meaning of everything right now... it's like I can touch god." - bbobb the ggreatt
Who's going to make us pay up?
You mean if we go belly up?
No one.
Well amost half of the debt is bonds held by individuals like you and me, so we'll just have to cut that loss, the rest is owed to world banks like Germany, Japan & China, but they can't force us to pay, they'd just stop trading in US Dollars.
Last edited by Doc Holliday; 16 Jun 2005 at 12:08 PM.
"Question the world man... I know the meaning of everything right now... it's like I can touch god." - bbobb the ggreatt
Don't we barrow from international banks? Couldn't they just cut us off?Originally Posted by Yoshi
Datesimologist
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2005Feb22.html
"One doesn't want to say the sky is falling, but this is a serious problem," said Desmond Lachman, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. "What the Koreans seem to be saying is that they want to diversify their reserves [of foreign currencies] away from dollars in the future, which means they don't want to add a lot more dollars. But if foreign central banks decide they don't want to finance the U.S. trade deficit, who's going to finance it?"
I used to get the washington post. It is a big fucking newspaper. You could kill an army of dogs with it.
Sausage King
Hey, what's up, Doc?
Yes, if they want the global economy to go to shit and watch their business crumble, they could cut us off.
Datesimologist
Blame the big-spending "conservatives" who control Congress & the White House. Republicans only care about personal wealth. National debt is somebody else's problem.
You're an idiot. The Democrats had control of Congress for 40 years and control of the White House for manh of those terms. This is a big government "problem", not a party one. What do you care though. Don't you only follow the Japanese economy?
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