[nc_reb]

My students and I licked our pencils today and did some cyphering:


So here is some math for you....shock, I know, coming from an Ag teacher, but follow along.
There are 60 minutes in an hour
24 hours in one day=1440 minutes per day
1440 minutes X 60 seconds per min = 86,400 seconds per day.
365 days per year X 86,400 seconds =31,536,000 seconds per year.

The National Debt is:
$18,405,777,960,000 (It has gone up a few mil while typing this)
If you divide our National debt by the number of seconds in one year, how long do you think it would take to pay back our National Debt if we paid it off at $1 per second?

Here is the answer!

583,643.39 YEARS! Over half a million years paying back at one dollar per second!

Yep, let that sink in a while.

You are welcome!

 

[frazer42]

Yes, but if you put an extra hundred dollars per month towards principal it will knock off the last year or so of payments!

 

[GMG3]

Yes, but if you put an extra hundred dollars per month towards principal it will knock off the last year or so of payments!

I like the way you think !

 

[medalguy]

Yeah, but I can't say I like the way Congress thinks!!

 

[Lucky#13]

Yes, but if you put an extra hundred dollars per month towards principal it will knock off the last year or so of payments!

Yes, but it's pretty much all principal by then, so relatively little is saved in interest!

 

[frazer42]

Common Sense, Thomas Paine. Hilarious bit of olde tymey folk wisdom.

 

[OREO]

So, here are the numbers (obtained from US gov't sources). Population numbers may be a little low in some instances (population is constantly growing and pop. #'s are from either mid year or beginning of year where debt numbers are end of U S Govt. fiscal year (Sept. 30.) This is a handy date as today is FY end 2015.

	Today	FY ended 9/30/2008	FY ended 9/29/2000	FY ended 9/29/1990
US Debt	$18,406,414,000,000	$10,024,724,896,912	$5,674,178,000,000	$3,233,310,000,000
US Population	322,000,000	304,090,000	281,421,906	248,708,873
Per Capita Debt	$57,163	$32,966	$20,163	$13,000

ALL NUMBERS ARE APPROXIMATE. POPULATION NUMBERS MAY BE FROM MIDDLE OR BEGINNING OF CALENDAR YEAR.

All in all, this is an absolutely horrible trend. We as a country are passing this debt onto our children and grandchildren, etc., etc. How pathetic and greedy have we become that we will pass our own created problems onto future (even unborn) generations???

The good news is that IF (a really big "if") we freeze the debt (or at least dramatically limit its growth), natural inflation will have the effect of functionally lowering it over time. The bad news on this borrowed debt is that the interest rates are really low at the present. U S Treasury short term and long term rates currently are a combined average (not weighted average) of 2.337% which equates to $430 billion per year (the actual budget shows the interest payment number lower because more debt is short term than long term. See below* about short term rates). That $430 billion is about 11% of the 2015 $3.8 trillion budget. Defense spending including for Middle East operations was $622 billion.

*I understand that US Govt debt in recent years has been trending to shorter term debt. Currently, short term debt has a lower interest rate resulting in cheaper borrowing costs at this time for the government. BUT short term rates can move higher quickly (i.e. short term debt has a more volatile interest rate risk). Such a move to short term debt is great when rates are low or falling but not so much when rates are increasing.

2015 non-discretionary (i.e locked into a formula/law that cannot be easily changed every year) spending is $2.6 Trillion. The point here is that i) interest rates are very low and ii) for every 1.0% that U.S. Govt interest rates increase, the budget increases by at least $184 Billion. It's pretty easy to see rates going up by 2% over then next couple of years and even 3, 4, 5 percent or more in future years. That'll be disastrous to the U S Govt. budget/deficit/debt and probably the economy as a whole. Now to pay this increased interest on debt, you've either got to raise taxes, cut spending (only discretionary spending, i.e. mostly defense spending) or borrow more to pay the interest. Now I don't know where everyone else came from but from where I did, it was considered bad form to borrow to pay interest, at least over the long term . . . .

Rant over.

 

[storage_man]

Well it all comes down to Government spending. They all complain about Social Security. I say lets get the NON-DISABLED off of S.S. Sounds cruel, but I know to many people that have bad backs ? That receive S.S and they are able bodied, because its easy to get a DOC to give you a slip). Next shut down WELFARE. If you can't find a job after 1yr, your done - you have to find a F**king Job (and you won't get welfare for 5 years). Next Food Stamps. If you buy anything other than Veggies + meat + water - No purchases will be allowed (Sorry - you can by fish). Next is Medicare. I'm on Medicare, but since it averages $1billion a year in fraud, lets fix that ! Make the penalties so steep (kind of like MFG a illegal Machine gun) that Doctors will think twice ! Oh by the way No F**king Free Cell phones (I know its not big money but WHY ?)

We can probably trim at least $1 Trillion a year with this plan.

 

[GSG's_RedHeaded_StepChild]

Does not include unfunded liabilities. Think more like $200 trillion to $600 trillion.

It's kinda funny. Think the IRS would be OK with a company doing $5 trillion a year in business doing their accounting on a cash basis?