Yeah I get that, but you can’t just look at 1 side of the balance sheet. If I die today it would be pretty shitty for my kids to bitch about the debt I left them. Net wealth is what matters. I doubt our gov has neg net equity
The debt ceiling is an artificial non-market mechanism that should not exist. If we are concerned about deficits, as we should be, we should address the deficits through future budgets. Threatening to not pay prior obligations is either suicidal (if carried out) or not credible (because it’s suicidal).
If you include total obligations we are well beyond $31 trillion. What is etc.. Do you have an example of when if ever innovations, discoveries etc... balanced the budget. Are you of the age range for the questions I posed? If so and I advocated an increase of the national debt ceiling to $50 Trillion would you be opposed to that?
And yet we know future budgets do not address the deficit or the debt ceiling. Lets be honest about the discussion and recognize that reducing deficit spending does not eliminate deficit spending.
The question makes absolutely zero sense For this debate, and there’s really not even relevant in the abstract. It’s nonsense.
So the question about how much to raise the debt limit makes no sense? How to address our nations financial crisis makes no sense? Are you of the belief we do not need a debt ceiling at all?
The short answer is that raising it now is only accounting for past debts, even years into the future. The only real solution is to balance the budget if that’s what people care about. The dent ceiling is a completely artificial metric in regards to fixing current problems, about the only thing it does is highlight the larger issue.
I certainly agree it highlights the order of magnitude of our financial crisis. That said it certainly does nothing to correct the issue of profligate spending. No one pays attention to the red light or the blaring klaxon. How many times does the fire alarm have to go off before people realize they need to put out the fire?
The gop wants to crash it, burn it, blame it on the dems in the next election cycle. Other than that, they have no platform. A very risky game of chicken.
If we don’t look at how we got here how will we even begin to have a path out of it. I’m not hopeful as this has been a recurring issue for decades.
The gop deficit hawks only give a shit when a dem is in power. Forget the gas stoves, they're coming for social security and medicare.
Great point - regarding the Human condition I would add: When is non stop consumption and economic expansion enough? When is environmental degradation enough? How many nukes are enough? Just a few other points to consider.
To cut right to it, IMO a trillion tons of gold would solve nothing with humans in charge. The current addition of human civilization is speeding (accelerating) to the edge of a monstrous cliff and will be joining others in the literature: Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and so many countless others. We Westeners revel in our post industrial revolution glory, not even 300 years old yet, mocking other civilizations that lasted 3,000 years. All while humans are determined to flush ourselves down the crapper by our own hand from greed. Shakespeare would be impressed.
And our government is sharing that equity with you by taking your fruits of labor to pay for it. The problem is not everyone pays yet everyone gets. As matter of fact our Federal government cannot take away from you enough to pay for that net equity you reference. If the government did we wouldn't be the trillions of dollars in debt that we currently have.
