22 trillion dollars and no relief in sight.

[No. 1 son]

And apparently the debt has taken control of it's own destiny.  Unlike the Redskins, who loose control early, the debt will sustain itself. How will this debt resolve itself ( and yes it will) and what will it appear to us as? Massive inflation, depressions, astronomical interest rates for everyone, obligations to foreign interests, disappearing consumer goods, and even more social unrest, if that is possible. Mu kalculater wouldn't digest all those zeros, so had to refresh on scientific notation. 

[bobathon]

Best go shopping.

[rally2xs]

Debt will progress until potential creditors will shy away from buying it because they will fear losing money on the coming bankruptcy. The interest rates on borrowing will soar, and interest payments per year will rival all other spending. Lessee, 22 trillion == 22 X 10^12, so if interest goes to, say, 6%, that'll be 6 X 10^-2 so multiplying that is 132 X 10^10, or 1.32 X 10^12 or 1.32 trillion. That's about 30% of our current total National revenue.

The solution is growth. What we have to do is steal the manufacturing base away from the rest of the world and bring it here to employ millions of new workers that will then have money to spend from good-paying manufacturing jobs, and drive the economy through buyer-driven economic expansion. People have money, spend it, that raises the demand for manufactured products, factories ramp up to provide the products by adding 2nd and 3rd shifts, as well as building new manufacturing plants.

Getting it all to happen in the USA instead of China is a matter of making it possible to make more money in the USA than it China. The number 1 way to do that is for the gov't to stop treating manufacturing as a pot at the end of the rainbow. We should have a constitutional amendment that absolutely prohibits taxing _ANY_ business for ANYTHING involving their activities to manufacture and deliver goods to the American people and the rest of the world. #1 is no income taxes, ever, period, as they are the most corrosive thing to business that's ever been invented. Then no property taxes against businesses, no new taxes against producing things here. Any taxes that remotely might suppress the profitability of US manufacturing should be prohibited. World manufacturing profitability should occur in the USA, not in China or India or Russia or anywhere else. That is of course aspirational, as some manufacturing won't be able to be pried out of their home countries, but anything remotely considered mobile should end up in the USA, employing citizens instead of foreigners, and causing the flow of money to reverse itself and enter the USA instead of leaving it.

(The FairTax would achieve all that, and would be better if we'd quit taxing business in other ways such as property tax, too.)

[bobathon]

Are you drunk or high?

[minx]

I think both.