Deer in the Headlights

Did you know that every single person in America owes over $46,000? That is the national debt divided by the entire population of the United States of America. As you undoubtably know, not everyone pays taxes in this country. If you are a taxpayer, your share of the national debt is north of $128,000. I don't know about you, but I don't have enough money to pay my share right now and I am worried about the fact that my share is increasing every minute of the day.

My president tells me not to worry. He will change the tax code so that the rich folks pay a bigger share and that will permit us to spend even more than we are now. I know that there are a lot of millionaires and billionaires in this country and some of them are saying that they are willing to pay more. The national debt currently stands at more than $14,300,000,000,000. In english that is 14 trillion, 300 billion dollars. So, if all of the rich folks agreed to pay a million dollars each in taxes we would need 14,300,000 folks to step up to the plate. I am not sure that we have over fourteen million three hundred thousand folks that are that rich and that civic minded.

Ok, so I am being ridiculous, but so is my president. Does he really expect me to believe that changing the tax code can solve our debt problem? Maybe he thinks that we are not smart enough to do the math. I certainly agree that it is hard to keep all of those zeros in their proper place, but even if I am off by one or two, the problem still seems to be much bigger than the solution. I suppose that Mr.Obama would point out that we don't have to pay all of the debt off right away and can carry some of it without doing ourselves any damage. In fact, we can add to it as per his budget proposal.

So let's see how that works out if we continue spending at the current rate let alone increase it. Right now the interest that we pay on our national debt is more than $3,583,000,000,000 per year (3.5 trillion dollars). That works out to each one of us having to come up with $11,500 or so in interest payments this year. Again, if we only include taxpayers, it works out to a lot more than that. Assuming that we continue to spend at current rates at some point we are using all of our GNP and borrowing more money just to pay off debt. I suppose that will work assuming that we can find some country that is rich enough and dumb enough to continue to loan it to us.

If the American public permits this idiotic situation to continue much longer we deserve the economic cataclysm that is coming our way with the speed and weight of a freight train. I am reminded of the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.