Mark Steyn measures the depths of America’s federal debt abyss.
In the weeks ahead, Democrats and Republicans will reach a triumphant “bipartisan†deal to avert the fiscal cliff through some artful bookkeeping mechanism that postpones Taxmageddon for another year, or six months, or three, when they can reach yet another triumphant deal to postpone it yet again. Harry Reid has already announced that he wants to raise the debt ceiling — or, more accurately, lower the debt abyss — by $2.4 trillion before the end of the year, and no doubt we can look forward to a spectacular “bipartisan†agreement on that, too. It took the government of the United States two centuries to rack up its first trillion dollars in debt. Now Washington piles on another trillion every nine months. Forward!
If you add up the total debt — state, local, the works — every man, woman, and child in this country owes 200 grand (which is rather more than the average Greek does). Every American family owes about three-quarters of a million bucks, or about the budget deficit of Liechtenstein, which has the highest GDP per capita in the world. Which means that HRH Prince Hans-Adam II can afford it rather more easily than Bud and Cindy at 27b Elm Street. In 2009, the Democrats became the first government in the history of the planet to establish annual trillion-dollar deficits as a permanent feature of life. Before the end of Obama’s second term, the federal debt alone will hit $20 trillion. That ought to have been the central fact of this election — that Americans are the brokest brokey-broke losers who ever lived, and it’s time to do something about it.
GoneWithTheWind
We have crossed an event horizon with our debt. There is a point before which we could have with austerity and increased productivity paid down/off the debt. We passed that point, we are now Greece, we are in a depression. The government has decided to kick the can down the road in the hope that when it all finally crashes down on our heads THEY won’t be in charge and can avoid the gallows/guillotine. I can understand the politicians/bureaucrats desire to keep grabbing at straws and not be the last man standing when the music stops. I’m not sure I wouldn’t do the same as a mere bureacrat. But the illusion of “it’s not that bad” will sooner or later disappear and we will all reap what we have sown. The chickens are coming home to roost. During the great depression you had millions of people everyday standing in long lines for a food handout. You don’t see that today. It is there, make no mistake, it is there. But it is all done by computers that put money into 80 million EBT cards every month and now the long lines of people waiting for food handouts is dispersed into millions of smaller lines in local grocery stores. The person in front of you swiping what looks like a charge card is one of those standing in line for a handout. The depression is here and in order to hide it we are borrowing a mountain of money every year. The borrowing makes it all worse and will make the crash much greater but it serves the purpose, i.e. keeping the politicians/bureacrats off the gallows/guillotine. The only thing missing and given the surreal times I expect it to happen someday soon, if for Michael Obama to say “let them eat cake”. Maybe it won’t be those exact words, maybe it will be more hip, more modern, more in line with our hip new presidents persona. Watch for it…
SDD
Anyone who has worked with the credit side of a bank can tell you that the surest sign that someone has decided that they can’t repay their debts is that they take out additional lines of credit and max out existing lines quickly.
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