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Can we survive this? Revenue, mostly taxes, is the income for our government, and while it is at an all-time high, government spending has out-run it by miles. Since 2001, the last year of surplus, revenue has increased 51% and spending has increased 88%!
Now, the national debt is reaching towards $18 trillion. And 2015 promises to be another year of $500 Billion in over spending.
Much of the revenue increase was due to wars and economic stimulus, one-time expenses. Once these expenses phase out, we should be able to balance the budget.
Can we survive a Big Government that has already racked up $18 trillion in national debt on the federal level alone, and a political elite that think they can continue spending 30-40% more than they confiscate every year (with no plans to even stop adding to the debt)?
Of course not. We wouldn't have gotten away with it this long if we hadn't developed the #1 economy in the world after WWII, but now that China will soon rule the economic world, we're on borrowed time.
And BTW, the causes of the 2008 collapse were not only not fixed by our corrupt leadership, but made much worse, we'll be seeing another collapse in the short term. This may or may not cause the few sane Americans left to wake up, and stop letting anti-American Socialists run the nation for their own profit.
Can we survive this? Revenue, mostly taxes, is the income for our government, and while it is at an all-time high, government spending has out-run it by miles. Since 2001, the last year of surplus, revenue has increased 51% and spending has increased 88%!
Now, the national debt is reaching towards $18 trillion. And 2015 promises to be another year of $500 Billion in over spending.
What do you make of all this?
The deficit has dramatically declined since 2009 and will decline further as the economy improves.
The greatest problem is the increase in spending that will come from Social Security and Medicare as the population ages. This will slowly push up federal spending and there isn't much that can be done about it. Some compromises do need to be worked out with respect to these programs. It doesn't help to have such a dysfunctional Congress. I personally favor increasing retirement ages and taxes that pay for these programs.
The basic issue of debt is not an overwhelming one though. There is no trouble finding purchasers of treasury bills and if there were, interest rates would be far higher than 1%. The dollar is exceptionally strong and many foreigners are choosing to purchase treasury bills simply because they consider them a safer, better investment than obligations in their own countries.
The deficit has dramatically declined since 2009 and will decline further as the economy improves.
It didn't have anywhere to go but down. It tripled in 2009.
See this is that effing government math again.. "We've cut the deficit by a trillion dollars in 5 years"
Yeah.. But you're the one who caused it to be over a trillion dollars in the first place. What are you patting yourself on the back for?
I'm not blaming the government math on Obama.. Lord knows he's not the first one to do it.. But i'd love to see someone run their own finances like the government runs theirs.
Wonder how that would fly if I didn't pay the IRS one year.. Then paid $10 the next year and told them "Yeah, but my deficit was lower this year!"
We rarely ever have had a balanced budget in the US regardless of who is in charge. How we lower our debt in the US is through economic growth vs actually paying down the debt. Japan's Gross Government Debt is 237.918% of GDP. Yet that country hasn't fallen to third world status like people seem to believe the United States will fall to due to our debt which is much lower.
I'm a little like MarkG in that I don't think the national debt as a percentage of GDP is a particularly important number. After all, many companies and many families owe more than they take in in a year.
But the problem is:
(A) Governments are notoriously poor investors. Companies and families owe money on things like capital equipment that will make money or homes that will become assets. Government investments almost never pay off.
(B) As Mark says, there is a bill coming due in the form of Social Security. If all the government's money is spoken for now, what's going to happen then?
Also:
Look at the effect of the world wide recession and how it affected the revenue during the years '09 and forward. We are only in the next couple of years going to see a way to balance the budget. And then Social Security will hit. So there is no room for another recession of any size.
I fall somewhere around the conservative/libertarian framework, so I vote for people who promote the idea of a smaller - and therefore cheaper - government. The fiscal feeding frenzy in the last few years has gone on long enough, I feel.
It used to be, working for the government paid a little less than most jobs, but you retired early. Now, it pays more than most jobs and you still get the coveted early retirement.
Giving the government more money doesn't seem to me to be the answer to any problem, yet 2014 marked the first year that "We, The People" provided "Them, The Government" with 3 trillion dollars. Which they spent.
Can we survive this? Revenue, mostly taxes, is the income for our government, and while it is at an all-time high, government spending has out-run it by miles. Since 2001, the last year of surplus, revenue has increased 51% and spending has increased 88%!
Now, the national debt is reaching towards $18 trillion. And 2015 promises to be another year of $500 Billion in over spending.
What do you make of all this?
Problem is revenue, not spending.
Spending isn't too far out of what would be expected.
Revenue, however, has been slashed (what happens when taxes are cut). Taxes are the lowest they've been in decades.
Will we survive? The answer is easy, yes.
It's federal debt. Not state, not local, not my debt.
No...we cannot maintain this level of spending on foolish and wasteful programs. The ONLY thing the federal gov't. is supposed to do is protect this country's shores.
The problem IS spending....we are too wasteful. Stop the spending. We cannot continue taxing and taxing and taking and taking....
We must let our citizens make the money they want, and can make. The Government should be given just enough to fund our military, to keep our country safe and intact. That's all.
We should not be funding folks who refuse to work. We should not be paying $500 for a freaking toilet seat, or $100 million for one mile of asphalt highway. The Federal Government is the reason prices are so freaking ridiculous for everything...including medical care.
We need to get them out of our wallets and our lives!
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