The National Debt and Political Will
The national debt of many countries is out of control as governments try to pump up their economies. This is particularly true in the United States where the current debt level is scary, but the future projections are downright shocking. Something needs to be done, but where is the political will?
The current USA national debt is $12.364 trillion dollars. The budget of President Obama estimates it will rise by another $1.9 trillion in 2010. It will then rise another trillion dollars a year for the remainder of the decade. These numbers are considered very optimistic because 2010 is the first year that Social Security will not run a surplus. The government has annually used the hundreds of billions of dollars in Social Security surpluses to pay the interest on the national debt.
As we move forward, we face a mount of debt that is simply staggering. As big as the above numbers are, it is estimated that we have over 50 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities in the next thirty years. That makes our current debt levels look like nothing and raises the very troubling question of how we are going to deal with all this debt?
The answer is simple. We need to cut spending and raise taxes. Neither of these is going to excite politicians who want to be re-elected or voters who do not want to feel any pain. That being said, it is getting very late in the game when it comes to dealing with this problem. The dollar has taken a beating the last few years and inflation is just around the corner. The time is now to do something, but it will require voters and politicians recognizing as much and stepping up to do the right thing. Kind of seems like a pipe dream, eh?
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