Our national debt

Do you really know how much a Trillion dollars is? If you spent $31,709.79 every second for a year, that is a trillion dollars. And your Ok with this administration adding 3 trillion dollars so far to our national debt so far?

 

We've gotten to where it is easier to express the debt using scientific notation than it is to write it out.

The debt is $23,252,918,659,478.48 or approximately $2.3253x10^13.

 

no more or less ok than i am with the fact that the previous couple administrations increased it at approximately the same rate.

 

I think Clinton was the only one to eliminate or reduce it substantially.

 

looks like it grew relatively slowly under clinton, then started to shoot up under bush and really skyrocketed during obama. pretty much just continued the same trend since trump came around.

 

I am not uncomfortable adding as long as it's balanced. The way they've structured our income taxes is... well it's like this!



I think about the possibilities when I look at this structure. For instance, what would happen if we added four more brackets for example? If there were higher taxes then for the uber-rich above 37% and lower taxes than 10% for the ultra-poor wouldn't that be something...

I am warming up to the idea that people who have very high incomes should contribute to society; though I realize it's still quite unpopular. It seems like a good idea.

 

I stand corrected about Clinton

 

Clinton bragged up a "Budget Surplus" which only means they spent less money than they thought they would. The actual debt still increased during his terms.

 

When Obama won, a lot of people who were spinning plates for the Bush administration were ushered out. So nobody was left who knew which plates to spin, so it all came crashing down. It couldn't have been a better setup, except that it wasn't. Obama's administration was convinced that any Bush holdovers would be toxic and booted them all out without a proper hand-off because they were in SUCH a hurry to erase the Bush administration.

What's weird is how many Obama holdovers Trump retained without vetting them. Look how that has worked out. Obama had the right idea, just the wrong implementation plan. Sure, it feels good to evict your enemies, but some of them were just bureaucrats, some going back as far as Clinton and Bush 1. Shitcanning them en masse is what fucked him in the long run.

However, Biden did pretty well!

 

I don't have the figures handy, but I don't know that I would say debt was reduced "substantially" during the Clinton years. Perhaps it was reduced modestly. But even with the federal government running at a nominal surplus during some of the Clinton years- at a time when he perhaps reasonably could reduce defense expenditures, any so-called reduction reduction in the national debt was illusory. Why? Because it did not take into account the phony accounting for off-budget entitlements like Medicare and Social Security. They were never on an actuarilly basis.

He benefited from an excellent economy- one that I don't believe he can take much credit for. Moreover, Clinton greatly increased systemic risk by all but forcing banks to make foolish mortgage loans. That, of course, played well with the electorate and was popular with mortgage lenders, but came back to haunt us years later.

The national debt is a concept that does not readily lend itself to 30 second sound bites.

 

Another thread where no one understands the difference between public, intragovernmental, private debt and federal budgets

For starters $23 trillion in 2020 money is about $18.5 trillion in 2007 money. In real terms it has gone down slightly


Kind of stupid including intragovernmental debt in the figure, when most people dont understand what the $23 trillion figure actually means, they just think, shit thats a lot. Doesnt help when media labels it as "Trumps" national debt, or whoever the current president is. Figure includes things like pensions to be payed out and debt from all levels of government

Federal government and the President have little or no control on pensions or bad budget management of some buttwipe county in Indiana

Private debt is just as much of a worry, but never gets mentioned, no matter what country it is. US private debt has dropped noticeably under Trump

 

See... I wouldn't spin it quite that way. Obama's cabinet was pretty straightforward - I don't think he did away with his enemies. He probably made some responsible calculated and logical decisions about who should be doing what. Donald Trump on the other hand... his appointments have been shameless and unethical. Honestly, he seems to want all people with their hands muddied with business or corporate expertise. Corporate expertise is fine, but you don't want someone from the oil business as an appointment for the EPA, or anything remotely like that. I can't remember who it was, but isn't there one guy who lobbied for oil or something? I think that is a conflict of interest.

here is a pic of the cabinet

 

I don't understand national debt. Here's a link to the world debt listed by country. And every country is in debt by staggering amounts. It seems like someone should be running a surplus but they're not.

World Debt Clocks

 

I'm trying to read about it, but my brain sucks...

https://www.debt.org/government/

 

Only government spends $2 million on a tiny bathroom in a park.

 

I don't get debt. Nations owe money to who and for what? Earth? Who's earth owe money to? Jupiter? Or is Pluto scrounging more out of us for his disability claim on being a little planet? Stooge.

 

We still have a ways to go before we hit a quadrillion dollars of debt. A quadrillion is one thousand trillions (1,000,000,000,000,000 or 1.0x10^15.)