United States National Debt

So the U.S. National Debt is at 16 TRILLION dollars and change. With this, that means that Every single person in the US (including babies, old folks, etc.) around 315 million people, would each have to pay ~$53,000 to erase this debt. Now to put it into perspective: it is estimated that the total wealth in the entire world is ~75-80 Trillion dollars. This means that we owe upwards of 20% of the total wealth in the world. Is there anyway that the US gov. can get this under control before it becomes such a problem that it can lead to wars or anything of that matter? What do you guys think is the appropriate actions that the US should take?

Actually we owe around 59-60T. about 10% of that is owed to foreign countries, the rest is owed to the people in for form of aid, health-care, etc. The best form of action in my opinion is to stop spending so much, get rid of most foreign aid, reduce corporate tax to attract more companies, severely reduce the power of unions so they can't ask for $100/hr incl. benefits, increase minimum wage to $15/hr (apparently supposed to be $22/hr with today's productivity), increase import tax to on products made in foreign countries, provide lower taxes for companies that produce in the US, slightly increase the tax on imported parts needed to produce a product, and increase the tax on loans to bankers.

may be missing some, but that may help to correct some of the debt problem.

You do what a family would do.

If you cannot afford the car for everyone, you have 1 car, or take the bus.

If you cannot afford the cable tv, you cut it. It is not a right.

We simply cannot afford all the handouts we give, so we must stop the handouts. We cannot afford the nation building and wars, so we must stop the nation building and wars.

Obama likes to say "but guys we will put these people out of a job, do you wanna do that?!

He makes the case that people will suffer, therefor we shall not do it. Guys, the country as a whole made a mistake, we did it together, and it's time to clean it up.

Yep, it's going to be painful, yes we'll suffer a bit, but it's gotta be done.

No politician is going to go slashing that much stuff, or advocate it... if they did, they'd not be a politician.

In the end, the only solution is education. Teach people about economics, taxes... etc... so they can properly vote on it. Teach people about immigration, teach them about job creation, teach them about these things, because right now all it is, is rhetoric. There are sensible ways to go about these seriously major issues... but there is no way, when the public as a whole is not even educated on the issues, or about the politicians themselves...and they get to vote.

This last election I asked around, was pretty active on social media talking to people. I stayed up on my game and the current events. It's clear that hardly anyone does any research on the topics they have very strong opinions about when it comes to politics. I know when I voted in the 08 elections, I paid no attention, yet had an opinion, and I got to vote.

I shouldn't have been able to vote in 08, but that's the curse of democracy. It's beautiful and a gift when done right. When people are lazy, it fails. People as in gov't and the public.

This is the people's fault together.

I have an idea. How about every state that is sick of the federal government's incompetence and overreach break off and form their own new country. Of course if they do that, the United States would probably launch an invasion into that new country, killing civilians town-by-town and burning entire cities to the ground to "preserve itself".

But like Snow said, the politicians will do nothing serious to solve the problem, their careers are on the line.

lol like the Uk is doing, Austerity Measures.

but theres lots of different ways a government could reduce debt. Cutting spending as i said, raising taxes, promoting higher amounts of innovation, deregulating exchange rate for higher exports (Although some of them might have some side-effects).

To be fair the Usa's debt isnt that much compared to other countries when considering the percentage it is of its GDP, especially when comparing to other European countries.

Luxembourg for example is in debt of about 2.1 trillion dollars. thats 3443% of its GDP. So it would be paid off if every person pays about 3.5 million dollars :L

Chief wrote:I have an idea. How about every state that is sick of the federal government's incompetence and overreach break off and form their own new country. Of course if they do that, the United States would probably launch an invasion into that new country, killing civilians town-by-town and burning entire cities to the ground to "preserve itself".

But like Snow said, the politicians will do nothing serious to solve the problem, their careers are on the line.

This happened before, resulting in the civil war. We're best off sticking together and putting tremendous pressure on politicians and corporations to fix the country or lose their jobs/have their company die if they don't do anything. We the people rule the country, corporations have very limited power compared to the middle class. It is just a matter of time before something big happens, once it hits the US it will spread amongst Europe as well, we're about to see change, be it bad or good.

Chief wrote:I have an idea. How about every state that is sick of the federal government's incompetence and overreach break off and form their own new country. Of course if they do that, the United States would probably launch an invasion into that new country, killing civilians town-by-town and burning entire cities to the ground to "preserve itself".

But like Snow said, the politicians will do nothing serious to solve the problem, their careers are on the line.

Doing something like this would 100% result in some type of war.. More than likely a civil war.. and even if every single State were to secede and form 50 independent countries, all the countries that we owe money to won't just magically forgive the debts that we owed. It would either be split into each former state equally, some states would take the entire debt, or once again: another war in which if we were to be divided into different little independent countries we would surely lose and then there would just be nothing.. -.- that would solve absolutely nothing.

I was making a joking reference to the so-called civil war.

Balancing the federal budget would be a great start. Doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon.

Chief wrote:I was making a joking reference to the so-called civil war.

Balancing the federal budget would be a great start. Doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon.

Agreed

Well, the astronomically high amount of Military spending might be a good place to start.

Or how about big banks giving shit loans that end up destroying the housing market, and putting the economy into a "recession", then the same banks getting incredibly huge bailouts so they don't fuck up the economy more. (what was it like 3/4 of a trillion dollars bailout?)

The debt is going to be here for a while, so all we can do is hope it caps soon and starts lowering once an actual plan is made.

17marine23 wrote:Well, the astronomically high amount of Military spending might be a good place to start.

Or how about big banks giving shit loans that end up destroying the housing market, and putting the economy into a "recession", then the same banks getting incredibly huge bailouts so they don't fuck up the economy more. (what was it like 3/4 of a trillion dollars bailout?)

The debt is going to be here for a while, so all we can do is hope it caps soon and starts lowering once an actual plan is made.

agreed about the debt staying there for a looong time.. and everything else you said too.. The money they dumped AFTER fudggin the housing was necessary to stop the further plummet of the econ

Snow wrote:You do what a family would do.

If you cannot afford the car for everyone, you have 1 car, or take the bus.

If you cannot afford the cable tv, you cut it. It is not a right.

We simply cannot afford all the handouts we give, so we must stop the handouts. We cannot afford the nation building and wars, so we must stop the nation building and wars.

Obama likes to say "but guys we will put these people out of a job, do you wanna do that?!

He makes the case that people will suffer, therefor we shall not do it. Guys, the country as a whole made a mistake, we did it together, and it's time to clean it up.

Yep, it's going to be painful, yes we'll suffer a bit, but it's gotta be done.

No politician is going to go slashing that much stuff, or advocate it... if they did, they'd not be a politician.

In the end, the only solution is education. Teach people about economics, taxes... etc... so they can properly vote on it. Teach people about immigration, teach them about job creation, teach them about these things, because right now all it is, is rhetoric. There are sensible ways to go about these seriously major issues... but there is no way, when the public as a whole is not even educated on the issues, or about the politicians themselves...and they get to vote.

This last election I asked around, was pretty active on social media talking to people. I stayed up on my game and the current events. It's clear that hardly anyone does any research on the topics they have very strong opinions about when it comes to politics. I know when I voted in the 08 elections, I paid no attention, yet had an opinion, and I got to vote.

I shouldn't have been able to vote in 08, but that's the curse of democracy. It's beautiful and a gift when done right. When people are lazy, it fails. People as in gov't and the public.

This is the people's fault together.

So right... Its just too bad that the US is in too deep and probably wont figure their shit out before wars start to happen. Tbh its not just the satets that are gunna be in the shitter. Pretty much the entire world is headed there. Its just going to get worse, faster when larger countries get there.

exactly!