Government Of Deabeats, By Deadbeats, and For Deadbeats
From October 4, 2004: According to a two-part cover story on the national debt in USA Today, the average American household's personal debt is $84,454, and the average American household's share of our national debt is $473,456. Meanwhile, some $53 trillion dollars in government debt and liabilities incurred by the Baby Boomer generation starts becoming due only four years from now as the generation that racked up all that debt begins to retire and relax, leaving repayment to their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on. Written before the 2004 presidential election, the USA Today article notes that neither George W. Bush nor John Kerry had bothered to address the national debt at all during their campaigns. I guess neither man thought it was very important. Perhaps that is because four years from now, whoever won would no longer be in office....
It is difficult for me not to quote even more stastitics about the national debt. And believe me, there are plenty of terrifying statistics to quote. So I'll try another way to illustrate the severity of this problem, and the threat it poses to our nation's future.
Have you ever wanted to be a millionaire? Probably. A million dollars is a lot of money. If you do the right thing with a million dollars you can lead a pretty comfortable life without ever working a crappy job for low wages again. Yes indeed, a million dollars is a lot of money, because one million is a very large number.
But 53 trillion is a much, Much, MUCH larger number.... Allow me to illustrate.
There are approximately 280 million citizens in the United States of America. So if you wanted to become a millionaire by asking your fellow Americans to each give you one dollar, you'd only need to ask about one-third of all Americans. But if you wanted 53 trillion dollars, you'd need to ask each man, woman and child in America to give you $189,286.
The seating capacity for the Rose Bowl in Pasadena is 91,136 people. If, after the Rose Bowl game, everyone in the stands left $1 on their seat, you could pick up all those dollar bills and have almost exactly the amount you'd need to pay off one average American household's personal debt. However, to pay off the national debt each person in the stadium would have to leave nearly $600 million dollars on their seat.
Few of us will ever know what it is like to even have a million dollars, so let's make a comparison between some numbers that are more relevant: the amounts of debt each American citizen actually owes, on average.
If the average American personal debt were a one-story building, the average American portion of the national debt would be almost six stories high. If a drive from New York City to Columbus, Ohio represents the average American's personal debt, you'd have to drive from New York City to Los Angeles to represent the average American citizen's portion of the national debt.
Still not convinced that the national debt is a problem worthy of a Presidential candidate's undivided attention? Then consider how long it would take to pay off the average personal debt versus the average portion of our national debt, using only your current annual income.
If your gross annual income is $20,000, it would take just over four years to pay off the average American personal Debt. But it would take nearly 24 years to pay off your portion of the national debt. That is if every penny of your income--before taxes--were applied.
If your gross annual income is $100,000, it would take 308 days (more than 9 months) to pay off the average American personal debt, but it would take almost five years to pay off your portion of the national debt. Again, that's every penny you earn from your hard work for nearly 5 years, before taxes--if you earn $100,000 a year.
In case you didn't notice it already, I'll state the obvious: millionaires and billionaires won't like paying off their portion of the national debt, but at least they can. Poor people don't have a living prayer of ever paying off their portion of the national debt. To make matters worse, if you read the U.S. government's budget each year, most of the money our government spends goes directly or indirectly to help our millionaires and billionaires, and barely serves poor people in any meaningful way at all beyond basic bureaucratic services.
Our outrageous national debt is more than just a stain on the American character. It is a truly mind-boggling example of criminal fraud, because those in our government who voluntarily chose to take on all this debt have never once shown any interest in actually paying it off, even though they were always well aware that it is absolutely, positively inescapable that future generations WILL have to repay it--or suffer the consequences. For their own personal and political gain, they sacrificed our children's future. And Americans continue to elect and re-elect politicians cut from exactly the same cloth. Hillary Clinton vs. Jeb Bush in 2008? What exactly do you expect either one to change?
Meanwhile, the same government that created this national debt with no intent to repay is responsible for the existence of the American Debtors Prison, in which citizens with even a few thousand dollars in debt that they have every desire to repay, but temporarily can't, are driven into poverty or homelessness from which they will never recover--solely on the ludicrous stereotype that anyone who does not repay their debts, for any reason, must be a "deadbeat". If a hard-working American who cannot repay their $53 credit card bill because they lost their legs in an industrial accident is a "deadbeat", what on earth do we call wealthy and powerful politicians who stick their own constituents with $53 trillion in debt and liabilities that they never intended to repay in the first place? I don't think a word for that degree of arrogant irresponsibility even exists in the English language. If there's no bread, let them eat cake.
Perhaps during the next presidential election we should be a little less afraid of the bogey-man of Baghdad, and instead be genuinely terrified of our national debt's very real threat to our nation's financial security. This isn't a matter of tolerating the necessary evil of hypocrites in public office. It is a matter of national survival. In a capitalist society those who have a positive net worth win, and those with a negative net worth lose. Beginning four years from now, that 90+ percent of the American population who cannot afford to repay their portion of the national debt are going to learn the excruciatingly hard way what it means to lose, and the American Debtors Prison will quickly become as overcrowded as every federal penitentiary in America already is today. The time has come when we must vote for candidates on the sole basis of their fiscal responsibility, and their commitment to standing up for individual debtors' rights. Any other criteria can only result in an implosion of American society in the decades to come.
It is difficult for me not to quote even more stastitics about the national debt. And believe me, there are plenty of terrifying statistics to quote. So I'll try another way to illustrate the severity of this problem, and the threat it poses to our nation's future.
Have you ever wanted to be a millionaire? Probably. A million dollars is a lot of money. If you do the right thing with a million dollars you can lead a pretty comfortable life without ever working a crappy job for low wages again. Yes indeed, a million dollars is a lot of money, because one million is a very large number.
But 53 trillion is a much, Much, MUCH larger number.... Allow me to illustrate.
There are approximately 280 million citizens in the United States of America. So if you wanted to become a millionaire by asking your fellow Americans to each give you one dollar, you'd only need to ask about one-third of all Americans. But if you wanted 53 trillion dollars, you'd need to ask each man, woman and child in America to give you $189,286.
The seating capacity for the Rose Bowl in Pasadena is 91,136 people. If, after the Rose Bowl game, everyone in the stands left $1 on their seat, you could pick up all those dollar bills and have almost exactly the amount you'd need to pay off one average American household's personal debt. However, to pay off the national debt each person in the stadium would have to leave nearly $600 million dollars on their seat.
Few of us will ever know what it is like to even have a million dollars, so let's make a comparison between some numbers that are more relevant: the amounts of debt each American citizen actually owes, on average.
If the average American personal debt were a one-story building, the average American portion of the national debt would be almost six stories high. If a drive from New York City to Columbus, Ohio represents the average American's personal debt, you'd have to drive from New York City to Los Angeles to represent the average American citizen's portion of the national debt.
Still not convinced that the national debt is a problem worthy of a Presidential candidate's undivided attention? Then consider how long it would take to pay off the average personal debt versus the average portion of our national debt, using only your current annual income.
If your gross annual income is $20,000, it would take just over four years to pay off the average American personal Debt. But it would take nearly 24 years to pay off your portion of the national debt. That is if every penny of your income--before taxes--were applied.
If your gross annual income is $100,000, it would take 308 days (more than 9 months) to pay off the average American personal debt, but it would take almost five years to pay off your portion of the national debt. Again, that's every penny you earn from your hard work for nearly 5 years, before taxes--if you earn $100,000 a year.
In case you didn't notice it already, I'll state the obvious: millionaires and billionaires won't like paying off their portion of the national debt, but at least they can. Poor people don't have a living prayer of ever paying off their portion of the national debt. To make matters worse, if you read the U.S. government's budget each year, most of the money our government spends goes directly or indirectly to help our millionaires and billionaires, and barely serves poor people in any meaningful way at all beyond basic bureaucratic services.
Our outrageous national debt is more than just a stain on the American character. It is a truly mind-boggling example of criminal fraud, because those in our government who voluntarily chose to take on all this debt have never once shown any interest in actually paying it off, even though they were always well aware that it is absolutely, positively inescapable that future generations WILL have to repay it--or suffer the consequences. For their own personal and political gain, they sacrificed our children's future. And Americans continue to elect and re-elect politicians cut from exactly the same cloth. Hillary Clinton vs. Jeb Bush in 2008? What exactly do you expect either one to change?
Meanwhile, the same government that created this national debt with no intent to repay is responsible for the existence of the American Debtors Prison, in which citizens with even a few thousand dollars in debt that they have every desire to repay, but temporarily can't, are driven into poverty or homelessness from which they will never recover--solely on the ludicrous stereotype that anyone who does not repay their debts, for any reason, must be a "deadbeat". If a hard-working American who cannot repay their $53 credit card bill because they lost their legs in an industrial accident is a "deadbeat", what on earth do we call wealthy and powerful politicians who stick their own constituents with $53 trillion in debt and liabilities that they never intended to repay in the first place? I don't think a word for that degree of arrogant irresponsibility even exists in the English language. If there's no bread, let them eat cake.
Perhaps during the next presidential election we should be a little less afraid of the bogey-man of Baghdad, and instead be genuinely terrified of our national debt's very real threat to our nation's financial security. This isn't a matter of tolerating the necessary evil of hypocrites in public office. It is a matter of national survival. In a capitalist society those who have a positive net worth win, and those with a negative net worth lose. Beginning four years from now, that 90+ percent of the American population who cannot afford to repay their portion of the national debt are going to learn the excruciatingly hard way what it means to lose, and the American Debtors Prison will quickly become as overcrowded as every federal penitentiary in America already is today. The time has come when we must vote for candidates on the sole basis of their fiscal responsibility, and their commitment to standing up for individual debtors' rights. Any other criteria can only result in an implosion of American society in the decades to come.
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
- Abraham Lincoln
posted by Paul at 4:22 AM
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