Sky High Debt

  By Florida Bill

      

      Do Americans understand or have a hold on just what  it means for a country to be $18 trillion dollars in debt? That's $18,000,000,000,000 --a boatload for sure.

      We have all  heard talk of this incredible debt, but what does it mean?  Is it just another number?  Every so often the President recommends an increase in the bottom line, and Congress eventually endorses the addition. In 2004, the federal debt was $7.3 trillion. This rose to $10 trillion when the housing bubble burst four years later. Today it exceeds $18 trillion and is projected to approach $21 trillion by 2019, according to Forbes Magazine.

       I keep hearing an ad playing regularly on television in which a celebrity urges the purchase of gold or silver as a way of preserving one's nest egg in view of the astronomical debt.   And he asserts that  "if that debt doesn't scare you, it should.....and it increases by millions every day." ( For me, I don't know whether it is good or bad to buy real gold.)

       How much is one trillion dollars.  One billion of course, is 1,000 millions, and 1,000 billions amount to one trillion.  And 18 trillion dollars means 18,000 billions.  That's an awesome amount of money.  But just how awesome?

        A couple of perspectives will help in understanding this sum of money.  For example, some physicians and mathematicians have said that if you live to be 80 years old, your heart will beat about 3 billion times;  And it would take 31,688 years for a trillion heartbeats to tick away.
         Some mathematical wizards have calculated that a billion seconds ago puts us in 1959. A billion minutes ago, Jesus walked the earth.  A billion hours ago--the Stone Age, and a billion days ago, no one with two legs walked about.  

         Other ways of  looking at America's debt: One trillion would equate to a stack of dollar bills reaching 1.1 million miles into space, or laid end-to-end on the ground, would encircle our planet five times. It would also stretch nearly five times the distance to the  the Moon from the Earth.    If you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire. With a stack of thousand dollar bills reaching 46 miles into the sky, you would be a trillionaire. 

          How did America acquire such a negative position?  The short answer is that there has been no balance to its spending. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, at the end of August, 2014, more than a third of the debt was owned by foreign countries (34.4%). And the remaining 65  per cent is considered domestic debt stemming from retiring securities and U.S.Treasury bills and in entitlements which include Social Security and Medicare. 

          Theoretically, the debt can be apportioned to citizens of the USA.   The debt has gone from  $72,051 per taxpayer in 2004 to $154,161 today--just 11 years.  So the time appears ripe for fixing the problem, and experts say it can be done, but the bottom line is that there needs to be a "tough love" management and serious paring of spending. 

           How bad could it get? It’s difficult to say. According to experts, to change direction,  we will need elected officials who are willing to put the needs of the country ahead of their own agendas.  And we haven't seen much of that since the mid- 1990s when we did have a balanced budget. In other words, politics will have to take a back seat. 

           I wonder if any of the candidates, Republicans and Democrats, have any plans for attacking the national debt.  We cannot continue to accumulate debt or there will be consequences for taxpayers and investors, and that's a scary thought.