Sunday, October 12, 2008
National debt; too large to count
It is no secret that our country is in debt. This debt however has skyrocketed in past eight years and as recently as Saturday afternoon, it reached 10.2 trillion dollars. Ironically, the debt clock in Times Square cannot record the digits of such a large number. Our national debt is so large that it is unable to be recorded. No one could have predicted that the national debt could have risen this much in recent years and the clock being unable to accurately record our debt is symbolic of how drastically the American economy has been altered. In addition to recording national debt, the clock also displays how much each American family will owe. This amount almost reaches 90,000 dollars, which is more than most American families earn in a year. Everyone is impacted by such poor economic decisions and in this case the people are paying for the mistakes of others. Unless the economy improves, the American lifestyle of overbuying and risky investment will be a thing of the past. As the economy worsens, people should begin to be more wise with their money.
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5 comments:
I had the pleasure of having a conversation with a very intelligent man for whom I work at Jackie Speier's office. One of his theories regarding debt is interesting to take into account. I'm not sure I agree with him completely, but I thought I would put it out there for you to contemplate.
He believes that the more we are indebted to other countries, particularly the unfriendlier ones like China, the more stable the world is. In other words the more economically interdependent each state is, the less chance there will be war and strife. For example, because China owns such large portions of the United States' economy, it would be crazy of it to nuke us; they would be nuking their own investments!
This theory doesn't take into account the idea of social and environmental fairness. Although free trade might breed peace and reconciliation, it also reeks of environmental havoc and human rights' violations. Thus, wreak
I suppose, for the time being at least, you can't have your cake and eat it, too.
hmmm...your acquaintance has a very interesting view on debts, and I actually think he makes a lot of sense. However, I also agree that environmental and social fairness are being sacraficed. But as of right now, being indebted to China might not be such a horrible thing because the US cannot handle another war. It is just not possible.
As for the debt clock not being able to record the digits of our debt, it really scares me to see how deep of a hole we really are in. 90,000 dollars is a huge sum of money, and even for those of us who can pay it, it still hurts to be paying for the mistakes that we are not completely responsible for.
The fact is that a ridiculous percentage of our tax money goes to paying interest on the national debt.
The only problem with the theory you propose Jason is that for the most part the countries and people we would most likely enter into conflict with do not invest in our country Correct me if I am wrong but i do not believe that that countries like North Korea or Iran have substantial holdings in the United States.
Wow, it's crazy how the U.S. has so much debt that it can't even be recorded by the debt clock.
"It will be replaced in 2009 with a new clock... The new clock will be able to track debt up to a quadrillion dollars, which is a '1' followed by 15 zeros."
I hope that our debt will never get to the point where it can't be recorded by the new clock!
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