National debt made simple
This video cropped up on another forum I'm on. I know nothing about the group presenting it, but I thought they did an excellent job of comparing the national debt to personal debt.
"The interest owed alone amounts to $440 billion, which is three times the annual operating expenses of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, Learn Liberty said."
Please don't post until you've watched the whole video. That will keep the thread civil for at least 3-4 posts.
BTW do you ever play havoc with the search engine by putting random Tags on the post? Armstron Siddeley? What's that? Dang it there I go with my own thread jack!
I must say, that's possibly the best way to bring out national debt into perspective.
The short term answer is for me to move to a country more financially stable. Anyone care to teach me Chinese?
I may be wrong but more perspective.
Just how much Mortgage does a average 50K household have. Its not like we as a whole are walking around with completely clear books. Well most aren't. .
Factor out the overage, and payed off obligations over time. Leveraged against inflation that you can control with the FED and its not a terrible number.
There are many many countries that have higher debt to income or GDP ratio that we are not talking about. Japan comes to mind as a example. And they or other counties in similar situations are not able to borrow at 3% reliably or act as a defacto international currency.
BoostedBrandon wrote:
Anyone care to teach me Chinese?
They have an inflated housing market, their stock market is soaring, everyone is overspending like crazy, and everyone thinks the growth never end. Sound familiar? Probably not the best choice. If you want financial stability, you want somewhere in South America, an oil country, or Deutschland.
And the national debt is totally screwed up. I remember learning as a kid in school that the government can just borrow indefinitely. Didn't sound safe now, still doesn't sound safe now.
I used to hold a holistic and somewhat idealistic view of these things but my level of respect and confidence in our system has precipitously dropped in recent years to the point where now, I’ll basically just take whatever I can get.
Selfishly, I’m fine with inflation as I’m in my mid forties and I’ve aggressively saved my whole life resulting in a solid stock portfolio and a nice home. Both of these assets are reliable inflation hedges so it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other…price of a dozen eggs doubles…no problem, my assets will double in concert to cover the cost.
Who gets hosed, the young that haven’t accumulated many assets yet and have to figure out how to pay for college, a decent car, a home.
In an effort to minimize the risk of winding up in Margie’s patio, I’ll just say that these young people that are going to bear the brunt of debt monetized inflation are largely responsible for it due to how they typically vote…nuf said.
For the people who complain about any of the specific line items in the budget it's enlightening to know that the interest alone is more than any individual item. So controlling the deficit in general would do more good than to target any specific debt.
That's not to say we shouldn't work on the individual debts because they add up.
Generally speaking, most individuals do not manage and hedge debts responsibly or advantageuosly.
And thats a seperate problem at the individual level than the federal government using police force with fiscal policy to direct the behavior of people.
and even more confusing is both of those things are a different problem than the government operating from a position of debt, which it didn't always do before the last 70 years, and yet we still seemed to get along okay.
Wait, we owe only $50,000 per person?
Why not pay it off over 10 years with additional taxes? It would only be fifty-three hundred or so per year per person.
In reply to madmallard:
The past 80 years have generally been very good to us. We went from having a regional sphere-of-influence to being one of two worldwide superpowers, to trying to figure out how to operate as the only remaining one. We put a man on the moon and put a computer on every desk.
In addition, nobody's lost a cent of his deposits in a bank failure, we don't have to worry as much about supporting our parents or ourselves in old age, we live a quarter century longer and work only a few years longer, for better wages, under far, far better conditions.
chaparral wrote:
Wait, we owe only $50,000 per person?
Why not pay it off over 10 years with additional taxes? It would only be fifty-three hundred or so per year per person.
I think your math is a bit off. $350 a year for 10 years is only $3500.
$50k per person, with no interest would be $5k in taxes per person, for 10 years.
But only what 50% of the population is working (children, retired, unemployed), so that increases to $100k per TAX PAYING individual. Or $10k a year in tax, per person for the next 10 years.
So $833.33 a month, for the next 10 years?
chaparral wrote:
In reply to madmallard:
The past 80 years have generally been very good to us. We went from having a regional sphere-of-influence to being one of two worldwide superpowers, to trying to figure out how to operate as the only remaining one. We put a man on the moon and put a computer on every desk.
In addition, nobody's lost a cent of his deposits in a bank failure, we don't have to worry as much about supporting our parents or ourselves in old age, we live a quarter century longer and work only a few years longer, for better wages, under far, far better conditions.
These things do not corellate necessarily. If you assert they are, its going to be a very long and peripheral discussion.
But as a point of philosophy seperate from the nitty gritty, we ARE in immediate dangers that are quantifyable and tangible. How responsible is it to have a 'good 80 years' ignoring the ultimate consequences of these policies?
A major factor in the viability in debt hedging by the government is the rating or perception of the strength of the confidence of bonds issued by the government. What was thought to be bullet-proof no brainer was downgraded recently, threatening the very core of how just one piece of the 80-years of governing from a place of debt was successful.
If the federal government can no longer finance further debt to a level needed by the spending policies being passed every year, a very very sudden and harsh consequence will be realised that will make those 80 years really seem like shangri-la by comparison.
We have had a government we can't afford for a long time, and not once has it ever contracted in on itself in that time. Every year, spending has gone up, and any talk of closing budget deficits to fight that will be ignored because total spending has always gone up, despite 'expected surpluses.'
These are the kind of threads that I get tired of here. Somebody posts some talking points from a right wing talk show or Fox News, left wing guys jump in and around and around we go. How many 'deficit' threads have we had on here already? It's not like we are covering anything new here. It's just the same old E36 M3 again and again and again. Kind of like an endless troll.
Yeah. Go ahead and bash me for being a raging moderate if you want. Yeah. All you guys want to turn the entire freaking internet into an echo chamber for your political perspective. You see this crap all over the internet. I thought this was supposed to be a forum about cars, not yet another clone of Free Republic. Even if we promise Margie to be more civilized this time around its still the same crap over and over. These threads are getting tiring. Most of them show no original thinking at all. It's all coming from the same media sources. At least get some new material once in a while. 
In reply to Snowdoggie:
well... the hope is that discourse is better than the alternative. Much worse has been done under the veil of silence.
Personally, i TRY to put a persuasive tone on what I put in here. I don't know how successful i am in trying, or how persuasive I'm actually being.... but I try to make sure that 'convincing someone' is more important in what i say than just reducing it to being right or scoring points.
--
Perhaps coming here is a kind of control? Follow me on this one...
if what you say is true and everyone sources only the same material on the internet, then at least part of what you say is true; that is the 'social' component of those outlets -is- an echochamber. Those quickly lose their initial 'feel good' component of sharing like-views when you're the least bit intellectual, so you go away from that circle looking for another place to interact some of those ideas.
But you still wanna have context with whomever else you find to interact with on it. I wouldn't want to go out on the internet and find someone in Edinboro to talk about the sunday alcohol sales laws in Georgia, for example.
So maybe coming to the car forum represents a control so that a person can attempt to compare views again outside of the echochamber. After all, we all share a favorable perspective one way or another of cars and/or racing. That acts as an anchor point to tether ourselves to.
Snowdoggie wrote:
These are the kind of threads that I get tired of here. Somebody posts some talking points from a right wing talk show or Fox News, left wing guys jump in and around and around we go.
Did you watch the video? It did a good job of putting the national debt into perspective and that's all the video was posted for. It doesn't go on and talk about anything else.
Now I'm sure you could have followed other links to material that offends your sensibilities, but if this video offends your sensibilities then you have a real problem. Take it for what it was and what it was intended for.
I HATE to suggest it, but maybe we do need a "Politics" subforum. At least then the people who don't want to see it won't be tempted to browse it.
Quite honestly, I don't need to watch the video. I got the same message this morning from an ad that an organization supported by people who have a lot of money put on CNN. It seems strange that people with lots of money want me to get that message so badly that they spend their own money buying lots of TV time to get it to me. The message seems to crop up everywhere guys with lots of money can buy ad space. TV spots. Magazines. Newspapers, etc. The message then migrates from the mass media to the echo chamber of blogs and internet message boards.
Meanwhile, messages of equal importance and even contradictory messages from people who don't have as much money never reach the mass media, much less the online echo chambers.
I may be getting cynical, but whenever somebody with a lot of money is willing to spend a lot of money to get a message out, I have to wonder what their angle is. How are they benefiting from getting this message out to the public and getting their ideas discussed.
My conclusion is that the guys who have a whole lot of money are about to screw us yet again. They know how to manipulate the system. The system is rigged. And like a title wave or an earthquake, there is nothing a little guy like me can do to stop it.
Let's put this in somwhat cruder terms:
Imaging you are a dog locked up in a kennel. Every morning your owner walks in, stands up on a box and makes a long speech. Sometimes he talks about how his wife doesn't have relations with him anymore. Other times he talks about how what he is about to do relaxes him so he can go to work and earn the money to buy your dog food, and if he can't do what he is about to do, you will both starve. Every day he has a different topic and a different speech but the talking points are always the same. And every day the final result is always the same no matter what he says. Your arsehole is sore and he leaves the kennel with a big smile on his face. After a while, you stop listening to his words.
