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It can be brought under control but there are a number of problems that need to be fixed first. Social Security is a mess. The money collected should never have been placed into general revenue. It should have been kept in special funds and invested in government bonds and some market equities to ensure growth above the rate of inflation. Medicare is also in dire financial straights and needs to be fixed within a decade or so. Health care expenses (private or public) are spiraling out of control due to an aging population who is living longer than ever before. One also has to consider whether it is necessary to continue as a world superpower militarily considering that there are no longer any other superpowers to compete with.
Some would say that the government should cut back or eliminate social safety nets and return to a wild-west style of every man for himself. No other western nation is moving in that direction and it frankly does not seem like a place that I would like to visit nevermind actually live in. I worry that for every dollar withdrawn from social safety nets will just be replaced with another dollar spent on prisons and incarceration. In order to have society's disadvantaged work within the system there needs to be some sense of hope. There needs to be some sense that education and hard work can transgress society's social classes.
The only other option will be to raise taxes to pay for (at least some of) these programs. Regardless of what is actually done, the government needs to evaluate all of their spending programs to ensure that they are accomplishing the goals that they were originally created for and to ensure some level of efficiency per dollar spent.
Once America begins to run a small federal surplus, rather than a deficit, the total debt can be brought under control. Not only will the surplus be applied against the debt but the expected GDP growth of the nation will continue to make the existing debt a smaller and smaller percentage of the GDP. In some ways in can be paid off faster than it was created. The key, however, is to stop the damage from getting much worse. As soon as we are clear of this recession we need to enact some fiscal discipline and tax increases will need to be a part of the solution.
Debt is simply the result of fractional reserve banking. It can never be paid back. Watch this: Money As Debt
I lost IQ points watching that oversimplified garbage. That's just embarrassing. One university credit in Macroeconomics is all you need to get a basic understanding of how money works.
You can't get money from a stone so the people with money will pay a lot of taxes for a long time so you high school students and 20 something college graduates better aspire to be mediocre. But look at it this way, at least you'll have your light bulbs, the turtles will have their road crossing tunnel and prisoners will be tattoo free. On the other hand $9 trillion is a lot of debt so I'm thinking the elderly, disabled and terminally ill will pay with their lives through cost cutting.
Clinton had that all taken care of. Then came wars, spending, and taxcuts. For some reason I think that was a bad equation.
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Then came wars, spending, and taxcuts. For some reason I think that was a bad equation.
