From Bankable Insight
1. Unfunded Liabilities
The national debt is at an all-time high of around $16 trillion. That’s scary enough. But it turns out that number is just piercing the surface. If you include all the unfunded federal obligations to Social Security and Medicare it would add up to near $116 trillion! Remember that when politicians promise new spending without cuts.
2. Physical Size of Debt
Picture a wooden pallet stack six feet high with $100 bills. Seem like a lot of money, right? That would be $100 million, nothing to shake a finger at. Now, if you stacked those pallets two high and filled an entire American football field with them you would have a trillion dollars. A trillion dollars is a lot. If you spent a $1 million a day since the first day of the Common Era in year 1, or the birth of Jesus, you still wouldn’t have spent $1 trillion. Yet the federal deficit is more than that each year. So what does $116 trillion look like? Take that football field full of pallets stacked with $100 bills and stack those pallets high—like 1.5X the height of Twin Towers! See that tower next to the Twin Towers in the photo above? That’s our total national debt in hundred dollar bills…
3. Your Share
There are somewhere around 330 million Americans. With that in mind, every tax payer’s share of the $116 trillion is nearly $1.1 million! Just try to imagine this and put it in context to the entire national debt. The thought is dizzying. Politicians continue to push higher spending without any consideration of our economic future. They have no problem with newborns having a $1.1 million share of the national debt as soon as they’re born.
4. Obama Debt
Of the nearly $16 trillion in national debt the federal government has borrowed, more than half of that has been accrued under President Obama. In under 8 years this administration has added more to the debt than all previous administrations combined. The spending of the this administration has been untenable and reckless. Just what do we have to show for all this? A massive debt, record low workforce participation numbers, and a shaky recovery that promises more economic calamity in the future.
5. Kicking the Can down the Road
In order to start paying off our debt, spending would need to be reined in and politicians would have to be honest with Americans about the financial realities our government faces. Cutting people’s benefits or jobs, even if the cuts don’t take effect immediately, is not popular. So popular elections provide incentive for politicians to not address these problems. It’s easy to keep handing out money and let future generations deal with the fallout.
6. Only Way Out
The only way out of this mess is to slash government spending, balance the budget, and begin to pay our debt. Unused federal property can be sold off to help fund the unfunded federal liabilities and yearly payments can be made to those we’ve borrowed from. But the cuts have to be dramatic and immediate. 30 year budgets are useless, as future Congresses and Presidents are not bound to follow them. We need a plan that balances the budget with four years.