Debt
On the corner of 44th Street and 6th Ave (right above the IRS office, appropriately enough) there is a giant electronic billboard: the national debt clock. I pass it nearly every day when I go out for lunch. The thing is striking, perpetually climbing past the total of the day before. Right now, the clock informs me that the debt stands at $86,458 per family.I used to look at that and think, wow, that's about $20,000 per person. Today, however, I realized that I am a family, at least in the eyes of the federal government. These days, we tax by household (which makes sense; nobody wants small children to have to pay an even amount, for example). And, for the first time in my life, I'm nobody's dependent. I'm not the head of anybody else's household, either. My share of the national debt?
$86,458.
Eventually, isn't somebody going to realize that America is a terrible customer? If I had a perpetually growing bar tab that I never paid off, you can bet the bartender is going to stop serving me drinks at some point. And the money I'm spending on other things: it's all just a big loan from the bartender whom I owe. But if I've got the force on my side, I suppose everybody'll let that little detail go.
Woo-hoo for realpolitik!
posted by Skay @ 12:09 PM
1 Comments:
Actually, the national debt doesn't increase inevitably. The upward trend is entirely an artifact of recent Republican administrations. After consistently dropping annually as a percentage of gross domestic product since WWII, the national debt ballooned stunningly during Reagan/Bush-I. In terms of absolute real dollars, Reagan/Bush-I managed to accumulate a debt greater than all previous administrations put together. This is amazing when one considers that, as a percentage of GDP, US debt decreased during the drawn out Korean and Vietnam wars while it swelled during the essetially warless Reagan years (Grenada?). With Clinton, the debt immediately and consistently began dropping with respect to GDP while with Bush-II it immediately -- before 09/11 -- began it's inexorable Republican rise again. The rises, remarkably, match periods of the greates contraction of federal services for ordinary citizens. Republican claims of fiscal responsibility are a total sham and their claim to "businesslike government" translates to business-owned government. http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
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