Just think, 100% inflation effectively cuts the Debt in half! Of course it also does the same thing for your bank account!
they are so @#$@#$ smart.
It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
Check out Zimbabwe! With enough inflation, you will be able to pay off the National Debt with your lunch money!
Although your link points out some very good facts about how we are getting ourselves in deep shit, the core premise is wrong, and thus leaves out some other important things we are screwing up.
All our debt does not come due at once, thus you don't ever try to go out and collect all the money to pay it at once.
It isn't about the money supply in terms of tangible cash. Lots of legitimate money exists only in ledgers or other representative vehicles.
However, the article is correct that right now, we are incurring debt at an unsustainable rate. To pay it back we'd either have to raise taxes, or increase the tax base.
Raising taxes is the moral equivalent of trying to collect all those dollars, although it does not require actual paper currency to change hands.
Another way to acquire money is to increase your tax base. Grow the economy, and you get more tax revenue. To survive the current rate at which we incur debt, we'd have to grow the economy at a rate several times larger than we ever have. This is highly unlikely.
A third way to reduce the debt is by having the lenders spend money buying your goods and services. This STILL doesn't save us because unless they spend the equivalent of your debt as fast as you incur it on your stuff, you fall behind. You fall behind slower, but your debt still grows to infinity.
That being said, if we behave responsibly and cover operating expenses with income, and stop incurring debt faster than we pay it off, theoretically, you can recover from the borrowing provided you can actually service your debt.
The article does get to the salient point in one of it's updates though. If we DON'T become more responsible, and in this case we isn't just the USA, we are on a path to have debt greatly outpace actual growth in production.
What it leaves out is that this basically means inflation, so those evil elite mofos who own the fed charter banks will have all their money be worth less too.
The other point it leaves out, is what happens economically speaking when EVERYONE is suffering nasty inflation. When that happens can you even tell? Or does it only really show if your economy grows slower than your birth rate?
Hmmm...I really didn't post the link as a blueprint for getting us out of this mess. I posted it more as an interesting factioid, like "if you stacked the natl. debt up with one dollar bills, the stack would reach Pluto with enough left over to buy Tiger Wood's yacht. (it's on sale now for some odd reason)"
I think the main point is that we need to stop spending with no regard to what we take in revenue. Any spending restraint would be welcome at this point.
how about reduce the size of government and start using the extra to pay off the debt? Increasing the size of government and spend more money then we have is BO's way of thinking and proves that he is a moron.
Well, we operate at a huge annual deficit. So it is more like reduce the size of government, and stop falling behind.
The main problem with reducing the size of government is that if you don't touch medicare/medicaid, social security, or the military, you aren't going to do jack.
break out the chainsaw on worthless departments of the fed, medicare/medicaid and social security, than reduce the red tape in the military to reduce overhead.
Blah blah. And social security is "bankrupt."
Although it will be an issue if never addressed, our national debt is low compared to GDP. Certainly lower than many or most European countries. Sensationalism sells news.
thebaron
The "Federal" Reserve should be disbanded and all members thrown in jail for failing to keep our money worth more than toilet paper and they should have never existed in the first place.