U.S. Debt Hits $40 Trillion

[DesotoCountyDawg]

The important part of US debt is a very large percentage of it is owned internally in the US and not by other countries. Still not ideal in any way to carry that much debt but at least it’s not foreign owned.

 

[ckDOG]

The important part of US debt is a very large percentage of it is owned internally in the US and not by other countries. Still not ideal in any way to carry that much debt but at least it’s not foreign owned.

I assume we are going to have some combo of an inflation tax to reduce the effective burden plus backing off of some entitlement promises we have made. For the latter to happen politicians are going to have to hope that that people forgot what guillotines are however...

 

[BoDawg.sixpack]

The important part of US debt is a very large percentage of it is owned internally in the US and not by other countries. Still not ideal in any way to carry that much debt but at least it’s not foreign owned.

Showing a chart of the national debt (for any country) is like showing a stock chart without mentioning operating profit, enterprise value, forward P/E etc... By itself it means next to nothing.

 

[85Bears]

Showing a chart of the national debt (for any country) is like showing a stock chart without mentioning operating profit, enterprise value, forward P/E etc... By itself it means next to nothing.

Not true. The interest on the debt and the ten year treasury yield is not “next to nothing”

 

[BoDawg.sixpack]

Not true. The interest on the debt and the ten year treasury yield is not “next to nothing”

You just proved my point. You added another data point to the conversation.

 

[85Bears]

You just proved my point. You added another data point to the conversation.

It’s bad news and can only lead to a bigger chunk of the budget going to service the debt and higher interest rates which further choke the economy.

 

[BoDawg.sixpack]

d

It’s bad news and can only lead to a bigger chunk of the budget going to service the debt and higher interest rates which further choke the economy.

I never said it was good news. I said showing a graph of the national debt by itself is almost worthless. That's like showing a chart of Tesla's net operating profit over 10 years and concluding that everyone who owned the stock got wiped out.

 

[grinningmule]

It is going to take short term pain to right the ship, and short term for our situation is probably 20 years, but Congress can't see past the next election cycle.
-Balanced Budget Amendment (high hopes considering those ******** can't even pass a yearly budget on time)
-Massive entitlement reform.
-Fiduciary controls that will unfortunately make it painful to secure Federal payments, but necessary to reign in fraud and waste.
-Completely closed border and a halt on all immigration for about five years to get that mess sorted out.
-No foreign aid.

 

[85Bears]

It is going to take short term pain to right the ship, and short term for our situation is probably 20 years, but Congress can't see past the next election cycle.
-Balanced Budget Amendment (high hopes considering those ******** can't even pass a yearly budget on time)
-Massive entitlement reform.
-Fiduciary controls that will unfortunately make it painful to secure Federal payments, but necessary to reign in fraud and waste.
-Completely closed border and a halt on all immigration for about five years to get that mess sorted out.
-No foreign aid.

Unfortunately that’s never going to happen , especially after dems sweep the midterms. Trumps foreign policy is killing the GOP

 

[grinningmule]

Unfortunately that’s never going to happen , especially after dems sweep the midterms. Trumps foreign policy is killing the GOP

The nutless GOP is killing the GOP, like clockwork.

 

[grinningmule]

Would partially privatizing Social Security have saved the government much money?
And how would privatizing Social Security have impacted the finances of citizens?

A quick search resulted in Google saying partially privatizing would have actually increased debt.

Used bandaid on a torn off limb.
View attachment 1400076

Not doing anything has definitely not saved the government any money.

 

[85Bears]

The nutless GOP is killing the GOP, like clockwork.

See Mike Johnson. Lionizing Lindsey Graham. The war with Iran is about as popular as herpes.

 

[She Mate Me]

Showing a chart of the national debt (for any country) is like showing a stock chart without mentioning operating profit, enterprise value, forward P/E etc... By itself it means next to nothing.

There’s no honest chart you can produce that’s going to paint the trend in US (and the vast majority of the globe) national debt in a positive light. It’s a huge 17ing problem and that will become increasingly obvious.

That said, I’ll fully acknowledge it is a much slower house burning than I thought it would be. But the house is definitely smoldering.

Reading about the slow motion collapse of the Roman empire is pretty enlightening. Especially the part about how they devalued their money through the decades.

 

[mstateglfr]

Not doing anything has definitely not saved the government any money.

You cited the partial privitization of social security as an example of how when someone did try to reduce the debt, people lost their mind.

My response was just that your example is one that seems to have actually increased debt, if it had been implemented.


What you are bringing up now, that doing nothing hasn't solved the issue, is totally aside from what you claimed earlier and what I posted earlier.

I agree that doing nothing hasn't improved things.

 

[BoDawg.sixpack]

There’s no honest chart you can produce that’s going to paint the trend in US (and the vast majority of the globe) national debt in a positive light. It’s a huge 17ing problem and that will become increasingly obvious.

That said, I’ll fully acknowledge it is a much slower house burning than I thought it would be. But the house is definitely smoldering.

Reading about the slow motion collapse of the Roman empire is pretty enlightening. Especially the part about how they devalued their money through the decades.

It is quite a slow burn but very few people are aware of that. Like I posted on the first page, between the year 2000 and 2025 the U.S. is believed to have added $3.89 of net national wealth for every $1 of debt. For all the countries we've assisted and all the social programs we've undertaken that's pretty incredible. Yes, Rome collapsed, but it was around for over 500 years. If you include the Eastern Roman Empire it was over 1,400. That's a pretty good run.

 

[mstateglfr]

It is going to take short term pain to right the ship, and short term for our situation is probably 20 years, but Congress can't see past the next election cycle.
-Balanced Budget Amendment (high hopes considering those ******** can't even pass a yearly budget on time)
-Massive entitlement reform.
-Fiduciary controls that will unfortunately make it painful to secure Federal payments, but necessary to reign in fraud and waste.
-Completely closed border and a halt on all immigration for about five years to get that mess sorted out.
-No foreign aid.

- Sure, let's balance the budget.

- Sure, let's reform entitlements. As a start, lets get everyone paying the same % for SS, but not increase benefit caps. That is a reform many would support.

- I don't know hat fiduciary controls you are referring to, but if it's a legitimate process that will reduce objectfully wasteful spending, cool let's do it.

- Halting all immigration for 5 years is absurd. Immigration is how we keep this all rolling. We need more bodies to offset how few kids we are having.
No immigration would be an economic and academic disaster.
Choosing to hurt ourselves like this, in the name of debt reform, just doesn't make sense.

 

[She Mate Me]

It is quite a slow burn but very few people are aware of that. Like I posted on the first page, between the year 2000 and 2025 the U.S. is believed to have added $3.89 of net national wealth for every $1 of debt. For all the countries we've assisted and all the social programs we've undertaken that's pretty incredible. Yes, Rome collapsed, but it was around for over 500 years. If you include the Eastern Roman Empire it was over 1,400. That's a pretty good run.

I don’t doubt your wealth number considering the run our equity markets have been on for basically 4 decades, but can you link a source for that? I’d like to read about it.

 

[grinningmule]

You cited the partial privitization of social security as an example of how when someone did try to reduce the debt, people lost their mind.

My response was just that your example is one that seems to have actually increased debt, if it had been implemented.


What you are bringing up now, that doing nothing hasn't solved the issue, is totally aside from what you claimed earlier and what I posted earlier.

I agree that doing nothing hasn't improved things.

- Sure, let's balance the budget.

- Sure, let's reform entitlements. As a start, lets get everyone paying the same % for SS, but not increase benefit caps. That is a reform many would support.

- I don't know hat fiduciary controls you are referring to, but if it's a legitimate process that will reduce objectfully wasteful spending, cool let's do it.

- Halting all immigration for 5 years is absurd. Immigration is how we keep this all rolling. We need more bodies to offset how few kids we are having.
No immigration would be an economic and academic disaster.
Choosing to hurt ourselves like this, in the name of debt reform, just doesn't make sense.

There is nothing absurd about halting immigration for five years. It will take that long at least to sort out and implement new immigration policy, deport the illegal leeches and denaturalize the "legal" criminals and fraudsters bleeding our country dry. Followed by a very ******* strict policy of if you can't support yourself you can't enter, plus reversing the insane policy of importing the entire ******* third world population into our country and finally, ending "birthright" citizenship and chain migration.

 

[BoDawg.sixpack]

I don’t doubt your wealth number considering the run our equity markets have been on for basically 4 decades, but can you link a source for that? I’d like to read about it.

Here's a data set for net national wealth: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGZ1FL892090005A

And Federal debt: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN

You can edit the timeline for both of these data sets. I included screen shots below.

Also, the Fed’s U.S. net national wealth measure is broad, but it is not literally the market value of everything the United States owns. The biggest omission is government land and other non produced nonfinancial assets.

That means the headline U.S. net wealth figure does not fully capture things like federal land, state/local government land, mineral rights and certain natural-resource assets. So assets such as large tracts controlled by the federal government like national forests, military land, and similar holdings—are not simply marked to market and added into the national wealth total.

 

[QuaoarsKing]

The idea that the Roman Empire "fell" is a modern historical convention. If you went back in time to the year 480 and asked what it was like to live through the fall of the Roman Empire, they wouldn't know what you were talking about, pointing out that there's still an emperor in Constantinople, the Roman Senate is still there, the pope is still there, Odoacer is ruling in Italy but that's no big deal because "barbarians" have done that before (such as Thrax centuries before).

You have to have some dividing line between ancient and medieval times, and 476 works as well as any, but the idea that there was some dramatic change in lifestyle or governance around that year is way overblown. Even in places like France and Britain where the Romans stopped ruling directly, daily life was much the same and the many people still thought of themselves as Romans.

 

[Choctaw Dawg]

There’s no honest chart you can produce that’s going to paint the trend in US (and the vast majority of the globe) national debt in a positive light. It’s a huge 17ing problem and that will become increasingly obvious.

That said, I’ll fully acknowledge it is a much slower house burning than I thought it would be. But the house is definitely smoldering.

Reading about the slow motion collapse of the Roman empire is pretty enlightening. Especially the part about how they devalued their money through the decades.

"The Roman citizens were not told the empire collapsed, they just noticed the roads stopped being repaired"

 

[85Bears]

"The Roman citizens were not told the empire collapsed, they just noticed the roads stopped being repaired"

Sounds very familiar.

 

[DesotoCountyDawg]

There is nothing absurd about halting immigration for five years. It will take that long at least to sort out and implement new immigration policy, deport the illegal leeches and denaturalize the "legal" criminals and fraudsters bleeding our country dry. Followed by a very ******* strict policy of if you can't support yourself you can't enter, plus reversing the insane policy of importing the entire ******* third world population into our country and finally, ending "birthright" citizenship and chain migration.

Yeah halting immigration is absurd, sorry. There’s already an extreme difficulty in many sectors finding able bodies to fill jobs.

 

[BoDawg.sixpack]

The idea that the Roman Empire "fell" is a modern historical convention. If you went back in time to the year 480 and asked what it was like to live through the fall of the Roman Empire, they wouldn't know what you were talking about, pointing out that there's still an emperor in Constantinople, the Roman Senate is still there, the pope is still there, Odoacer is ruling in Italy but that's no big deal because "barbarians" have done that before (such as Thrax centuries before).

You have to have some dividing line between ancient and medieval times, and 476 works as well as any, but the idea that there was some dramatic change in lifestyle or governance around that year is way overblown. Even in places like France and Britain where the Romans stopped ruling directly, daily life was much the same and the many people still thought of themselves as Romans.

I'd make one note regarding Maximinus Thrax. He wasn't quite analogous to Odoacer as Maximinus was emperor from 235–238 and probably came from a relatively humble Balkan/Thracian background, but he became Roman emperor through the Roman army. He wasn't a foreign king ruling Roman territory while acknowledging another emperor. A better comparison would be fifth-century Germanic generals such as Ricimer, who effectively controlled the Western government while installing and removing emperors.

What makes 476 look much more important in hindsight is what didn't happen afterward.

 

[Chesusdog]

That’s what wins elections. Candidates who run on balanced budgets, social security reform, etc. get their clocks cleaned in mational elections.

Just ask Thomas Massie. The most principled man in Congress got voted out by Israeli lobbyists dumping a shitton of money into a candidate who didnt even campaign.

 

[L4Dawg]

Trump spends money like a drunken sailor and no one cares anymore about the debt. They just kick the can down the road. The interest on it is astronomical now.

Interest is bigger than the defense budget.

 

[L4Dawg]

The percentage of that money sent to other countries is obscene. I'll stop myself right there.

No it’s not. It’s a very small portion of the budget. Entitlements are by far the biggest portion. Those alone make up more than 50% of the budget. Interest is the second highest line item. Defense is third.

 

[grinningmule]

Yeah halting immigration is absurd, sorry. There’s already an extreme difficulty in many sectors finding able bodies to fill jobs.

Is that because able bodies can't be found or because too many able bodies are sitting on their *** collecting welfare and don't have to work? I'm sure it is probably a mixture. I understand the agricultural industry needing laborers and issuing seasonal work visas isn't the same as mass immigration, but that only works if those visa stay limits are adhered to.

 

[OG Goat Holder]

I assume we are going to have some combo of an inflation tax to reduce the effective burden plus backing off of some entitlement promises we have made. For the latter to happen politicians are going to have to hope that that people forgot what guillotines are however...

Nobody wants to talk about that. But the answer to this is higher taxes on the rich. And when you have Elon running around with trillions of dollars, you start to wonder, shouldn’t he be paying a lot more? Doesn’t he have enough?

And I’m a conservative. Just like NIL, a few guys could take care of this debt. IF THEY TRULY CARED. They don’t. They wanted to cure the debt by firing some middle class government workers.

We are a society of idiots.

 

[mstateglfr]

There is nothing absurd about halting immigration for five years. It will take that long at least to sort out and implement new immigration policy, deport the illegal leeches and denaturalize the "legal" criminals and fraudsters bleeding our country dry. Followed by a very ******* strict policy of if you can't support yourself you can't enter, plus reversing the insane policy of importing the entire ******* third world population into our country and finally, ending "birthright" citizenship and chain migration.

This is totally unhinged.

- You cited the partial privitization of social security as a sings when it would have incrteased he debt.

- Then you claimed eliminating any immigration for 5 years is a good idea and wouldn't academically and economically crush the country.

- Adding in the rest of your comments about immigrants, it's clear you hold some very extreme and ignorantly hateful views on this issue.


Unhinged.
Your ideas won't fix the deficit.

 

[grinningmule]

This is totally unhinged.

- You cited the partial privitization of social security as a sings when it would have incrteased he debt.
Nobody knows what the long term impact would have been because it hasn't been tried. Short term increase, yes. Something has to be done to ensure the long term viability and weaning people off of a giant ponzi scheme is what it will take.
- Then you claimed eliminating any immigration for 5 years is a good idea and wouldn't academically and economically crush the country.
Would it?
- Adding in the rest of your comments about immigrants, it's clear you hold some very extreme and ignorantly hateful views on this issue.
By all means, elaborate on what my clear and extreme views are and how they are hateful

 

[HailStout]

 

[BossDawg78]

He doesn’t care, but neither does just about everybody else in positions of power. It’s just children grabbing what they can before the ship sinks.

Yup. They are more interested in attacking each other and trying to make the opposition look bad that they don't care about the people anymore. "Opposition" being the key word there. Instead of working together, Republicans and Democrats have become sworn enemies. It's sad.

 

[dgsmith15]

Maybe AI will save us all.

 

[85Bears]

That’s what I’m thinking, just put up some more flock cameras and keep the war going until diesel hits ten bucks a gallon. 4D CHESS.

 

[grinningmule]

Nobody wants to talk about that. But the answer to this is higher taxes on the rich. And when you have Elon running around with trillions of dollars, you start to wonder, shouldn’t he be paying a lot more? Doesn’t he have enough?

And I’m a conservative. Just like NIL, a few guys could take care of this debt. IF THEY TRULY CARED. They don’t. They wanted to cure the debt by firing some middle class government workers.

We are a society of idiots.

A few guys could take care of 40 trillion in debt? How, by liquidating all of their holdings in the stock market? No way that would crash the market and wipe out the wealth of little peons like us with 401ks.

 

[grinningmule]

Yup. They are more interested in attacking each other and trying to make the opposition look bad that they don't care about the people anymore. "Opposition" being the key word there. Instead of working together, Republicans and Democrats have become sworn enemies. It's sad.

Politicians serving their country has been a dead concept/reality for a loooong damn time.

 

[BossDawg78]

Yeah halting immigration is absurd, sorry. There’s already an extreme difficulty in many sectors finding able bodies to fill jobs.

Nobody is against legal and controlled immigration. But what has been happening is practically an invasion of the 3rd world. An invasion largely composed of people who will work the jobs "we don't want to do " for much cheaper and fewer benefits, but will gladly mooch off the government if given the opportunity. Further, many of them don't give a damn about the country and openly hate it. They have no intention of assimilating, no appreciation for the US or its history and they demand that WE assimilate to THEM in many instances. That's what has to stop, but there's so much money being poured into making sure it continues that I don't think it will ever get fixed....and the US will continue to slowly rot.

 

[BossDawg78]

Politicians serving their country has been a dead concept/reality for a loooong damn time.

Agreed. It's just becoming more painfully obvious.

 

[Chesusdog]

See Mike Johnson. Lionizing Lindsey Graham. The war with Iran is about as popular as herpes.

Lindsey loved war almost as much as he loved being in the closet.