Come Back Down to Earth

debt trap

noun

• a situation in which a debt is difficult or impossible to repay, typically because high interest payments prevent repayment of the principal

The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled. – Ross Perot

 

 

It is a law of nature that what goes up must come down.  As of December 2, 2013, the United States government is $17,216,241,789,218.17 in debt.  This unfathomable number is a result of a lack of financial responsibility, fiscal liability, ethical decision making and diplomatic reform within congress and our political leaders.  Our debt is unsustainable and has the ability to break our country at its core.  Tyler Durden of Zeroedge.com argues that there are four different outcomes to a debt this large; a debt trap, hyperinflation, austerity but in conjunction with actual economic growth or default. Our current debt is causing increased treasury securities, inflated prices on goods to the extra taxes corporations will pay for being considered “risky”, a higher cost of borrowing money from banks for homes and other common good, crowding out and an eventual loss of social, economic and political power. 

There are significant things that our government can change in order to reduce spending.  It is estimated that our government spend 830.9 billion dollars on military expenditures.  This includes foreign military aid, foreign economic aid, civil defense, military defense and veterans benefits.  The military defense alone accounts for 626.8 billion dollars of this budget.  The United States spends more than any other country in the world.  The closest amount of military defense spending by another country is China, spending around 102.4 billion dollars.  In 2013, the US government also spent 799.4 billion dollars between our welfare program and payments to vendors that enable heath care for those on welfare.  While it is vital that we take care of our nation’s poor, I also think that it is important that we hold ourselves up to the same standards that we should have for our governments spending.  We must as a whole learn to manage our pocket books. 

I have heard that “A man in debt is so far a slave.”  And, I also took it to heart when my grandpa told me to always live below my means.  The behavior of our congress when it comes to our debt ceiling and government spending is outrageous.  At times, I question whether it will take a significant government shutdown and default to force them to restructure.  While I believe this would cause irreversible damage to our country, I also know that expanding ceiling is unsustainable.  We will explode as a nation if we do not come together to resolve this dire issue.