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You tax the wealthiest generation in history that is responsible for this debt. They got rich and the country went on the verge of bankruptcy to support it. A death tax is required to pay it down.
No country has ever taxed itself to prosperity. Even seizing assets of all the very rich in the United States would not cover a year of our federal budget.
Taxation is regressive, and holds down GDP growth, it also encourages money to leave while discouraging investment. The very rich, usually manage to avoid all taxes, in part due to being smart, having a hoard of fiscal helpers, and paying lobbyists to help preserve their wealth.
Taxation can't be a solution for our debt, at least not taxation of all wealthy people.
Generally I do not believe in incremental taxation as it's wealth transfer. In this case to pay offf $20T it will take a radical policy to unwind 40 years of our sins.
If you think about it rationally the baby boomer generation and their parents become the wealthiest generation in the history of the world. All the while our country was plunged into $20T in debt while fighting commies expanding welfare and entitlements and bombing Muslim countries.
Basically they get all the money get to retire young and get social security paid for on the backs of their grandchildren. We get nothing and left with the debt. Pretty much they butt raped and left the tab.
I really think the biggest key to reducing deficits and debt is health care. America spends $1 Trillion annually on diseases that are largely preventable through healthier lifestyles.
First off, I am not an economist. And I've looked for similar posts to avoid redundancy.
The national debt of 20 trillion dollars, with yearly deficits. How do we pay this off, if ever.
I've read about just "erasing" the debt because most is owed to us. Increased taxes, massive inflation via printing money to pay off debt. How do we pay the debt. Or...does it just go on forever.
Yeah, you never pay that debt off. What we should hope to do is out grow it.
For right now, we have about a 17 trillion dollar GDP and a 4 trillion dollar budget. We should hope some day to have a 25 trillion dollar GDP, a 5 trillion dollar budget, and still service the 19 trillion dollar debt. I just made those figures up - they are not accurate, but the theory is the same.
In order for that to happen interest rates must remain perpetually at zero because of the way debt based currency works.. debt is money, and the interest on the debt doesn't exist, so you have fewer dollars to pay off the debt than money that actually exists because interest money is not created.
The other alternative is runaway inflation to basically devalue the value of the debt.. I suppose it's a fine line between maintaining confidence in a currency and being able to inflate or maintain the debt levels. Nonetheless it seems like a debt based currency results in a situation where there's "never enough money" to go around.. and it's true, there isn't.
Still, the system seems to work pretty well, especially with very low interest rates. I question the need to raise interest rates just because there is economic growth.. I think for experimental purposes they should peg the fed funds rate at zero and see what happens, and let other bonds from government and private entities do as they will. If there happens to be inflation, that's a good thing because inflation makes debt worth less, especially if wages compensate... which they already haven't been really doing for the last 20+ years thanks to automation and technology anyways.
No country has ever taxed itself to prosperity. Even seizing assets of all the very rich in the United States would not cover a year of our federal budget.
Taxation is regressive, and holds down GDP growth, it also encourages money to leave while discouraging investment. The very rich, usually manage to avoid all taxes, in part due to being smart, having a hoard of fiscal helpers, and paying lobbyists to help preserve their wealth.
Taxation can't be a solution for our debt, at least not taxation of all wealthy people.
I think they're using fuzzy math to calculate this.. how much you make is relative to what the cost of goods are in your local currencies.. I bet most Europeans have a better standard of living than someone in the US making $32K/year. Chuckle. I'm not saying we have it bad in the US.. even the poorest people have a better standard of living than most Indians, Chinese, etc... but I'd hardly call $32K "rich" and if you're anywhere close to a big metro where housing prices are high, that won't get you very far at all. That's barely acceptable out here in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota.. if you buy a home 15 miles away that's 75 years old. Won't be buying a home in Brookings on that salary.. maybe a mobile home... due to local ongoing supply issues.
Example... Russia's average wage is about $17K per year vs our $46K, but a lot of items cost a lot less. This "strong dollar" is one of the reasons a lot of companies now make things overseas in places like China.. in fact it's probably the main reason.
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not ok
Looking at these prices confirms we kind of have expensive internet here but compared to us they pay a lot for gas and clothing relative to their wages. Interesting.
It isn't necessary to pay it off,
but it is necessary to pay it own to manageable level in relation to GDP.
Agreed. Going deeper though it's about what national purpose the debt represents.
In personal terms, having debt even high debt, in order to pay off an enduring capital asset
such as a mortgage to purchase a family home over time is entirely justifiable.
Having a similar level of continuing debt to pay for annual expenses is absurd.
Debt to pay the carrying costs of older debt is complete and utter insanity.
Revenue is at record highs. They have to (GASP!) stop spending so much. It's not the government's money, it's the people's money, the people who earned it.
Taxes are no different form the money you hand over at he end of the grocery store checkout line. The money isn't yours anymore once you've paid the tab. You have no say at all in how your taxes are used or spent. You can contact your elected representatives and tell them what you think should be done with the money, but don't expect that they will pay much attention.
First off, I am not an economist. And I've looked for similar posts to avoid redundancy.
The national debt of 20 trillion dollars, with yearly deficits. How do we pay this off, if ever.
I've read about just "erasing" the debt because most is owed to us. Increased taxes, massive inflation via printing money to pay off debt. How do we pay the debt. Or...does it just go on forever.
You don't worry about paying off the debt. You worry about balancing the budget. Because the REAL problem is that we BORROW 1/3 of our budget every year. The budget needs to be 100 percent financed by revenues.
To start assessing our debt situation realistically, we need real data, and real statistics, which our government hasn't been providing.
Actually, the federal government produces huge and highly detailed volumes of the best quality national economic data available anywhere in the world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by functionofx
Places like shadowstats help a lot.
Places like shadowstats (and zerohedge) are a joke. they do a disservice to the nation by spreading "alternative facts" as if they were true. No serious person pays any attention to any of it at all.
Last edited by toosie; 02-02-2017 at 05:56 PM..
Reason: Edited out partisan trolling
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