Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
\nEvery year for the last 40 years, the United States has run short of money in the budget.\u00a0 To fill the shortfall, the General Fund borrowed from the Social Security fund, but that still wasn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 To make ends meet, we borrowed even more.\u00a0 The total accumulated debt is now $20,000,000,000,000.\u00a0 That\u2019s twenty trillion, with a T.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>That number does not include the cost of promises the government will be obligated to pay in the future such as Social Security and Medicare, the 20 trillion number is only the total of the promissory notes signed to fund government operations in the past.\u00a0 Covering the cost of all government promises is closer to 100 trillion, give or take, depending on who you talk to.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>We\u2019re not paying down the debt.\u00a0 We\u2019re making the minimum monthly payments on existing debt while running up ever more debt, month after month, with no end in sight.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>I don\u2019t care whose fault it is.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>No, I really don\u2019t care whose fault it is.\u00a0 Finger-pointing and blaming is useless blather, at this point.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>I want to know what we\u2019re going to do about it.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>The reason it comes up is because Republicans in Congress are talking about reforming Obama-care to make it affordable enough that the government can continue to offer the program, but Democrats are screaming the reforms will make the program unaffordable for individual citizens.\u00a0 Both have fair points.\u00a0 Both fail to address my point.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Can government programs run in the red forever?\u00a0 Can public debt be accumulated forever?\u00a0 Is there literally no limit to how much debt we can run up?<\/span><\/p>\n
If so, why?\u00a0 That\u2019s not true for private individuals or corporations.\u00a0 If it\u2019s true for government, there must be a reason why it\u2019s true.\u00a0 What\u2019s the reason?<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Joe Doakes<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Let’s ask Paul Krugman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Every year for the last 40 years, the United States has run short of money in the budget.\u00a0 To fill the shortfall, the General Fund borrowed from the Social Security fund, but that still wasn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 To make ends meet, we borrowed even more.\u00a0 The total accumulated debt is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,66,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-health-care","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62435,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62434\/revisions\/62435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}