A friend of mine tells me he no longer listens to the news on radio or television. He stopped subscribing to the newspaper months ago. He says that he will walk away from conversations that focus on the political world of today. In brief, he is tuning out the world. His claim is by taking such actions; he is able to get through the day with some degree of sanity.
My feeling is it doesn’t solve anything to hide from the problems facing this world or this nation. To some degree that is what we have done over recent decades. Most Americans have kept their eyes and ears closed to reports on how their country has been functioning. In particular I think we have all seriously avoided a mental balancing our national checkbook.
Like most Americans, I find it next to impossible to comprehend the size of our national debt. Most sources claim we will owe in excess of 13 trillion dollars within the next year. According to pundits, in as little as two years, but in no more than twenty, our national debt will exceed our total GNP (Gross National Product). In simple terms we will owe far more than we earn.
Perhaps it could better be understood in different terms. If the average man, took his lifetime earnings and used every penny to pay down the national debt…it would take him more than six million years to pay it down to zero.
In another comparison, every living person in the United States now owes about $44,000 of the national debt. However, there is 40% of the population that does not contribute to the revenue flow, because they do not pay taxes. This means the average taxpayer share of the debt jumps to a figure ranging in the area of $120,000…as of today. You also need to factor in the reality that our government has never been very truthful about the cost of ANYTHING. That translates into an even higher dollar amount of the debt owed by each and every taxpayer. One other consideration…. this is your share and mine…NOT INCLUDING interest.
How did we allow ourselves to get into such a fiscal mess? One could argue that because as a nation of politically ignorant citizens we paid no attention to what kind of people we placed in positions of power at any level of government.
One could also argue that from the standpoint of basic economics, as an electorate we have paid no attention to the financial health of our nation.
Having taught both government and economics I have long felt this to be the case. The education establishment of the United States has all but removed these topics from the classroom. In the twelve years of public education required to graduate a student, in most American classrooms only one semester of government and one semester of economics are required.
In a final visualization attempt to make you aware of just how huge the national debt has become, think about this for a moment. If you had been blessed with immortality and untold wealth…and had spent one million dollars a day…every day from the day Jesus was born until now, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars…. AND America owes 13 TRILLION.
