O Tempora!: Millennia of Debt

Monday, September 10, 2012

Millennia of Debt

The national debt has just surpassed the astounding figure of $16 trillion, more than the US GDP. This occurred, rather appropriately, during the Democrats’ national convention. Of course, having this milestone pass during the Republican convention would be about as appropriate. But to the Republicans’ credit, they have at least made an issue out of this disaster, though their “solution” is a miniscule lowering of the proposed increase in spending. That is a “cut” in Washington. (Such a “cut” makes the GOP Nazis, baby-killers and grandma-under-the-bus maniacs in the eyes of the Democrats.) The Big Two political parties have created all this debt on our behalf, and neither will do much about it.

Perhaps the public doesn’t understand the magnitude of this debt. To put it into perspective, let’s look at the time it takes to spend (or pay off) trillions of dollars.

Suppose (miracle of miracles) the government stops borrowing tomorrow and starts paying off at the rate of $1 per second. Well, paying $1 trillion at $1/second takes about 31,700 years. That’s right – 31,700 YEARS for each trillion. 16 x 31,700 is just over 500,000 years. So the government has callously mortgaged the taxpayers for half a million years for the explicit debt.

But wait – there’s more. The unfunded liabilities, for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, government pensions and the like is over $119 trillion, per usdebtclock.org. So that’s another 3,750,000 years. Our total debt, if paid off at $1/second, will take about 4,250,000 years.

And even that’s not the end of it. The budget proposed by congressman and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan will supposedly balance the budget by 2040. Assuming (second miracle of miracles) that this wimpy budget is adopted and assuming a straight-line decline in deficits, over $20 trillion will be added to the explicit national debt during the next 33 years. Even if the unfunded liabilities don’t increase, we’ll owe $139 trillion by 2040, or about 4,406,300 years of indentured servitude to pay our debt at $1/second.

Our “public servants” have become our masters and sold us down the river into fiscal slavery for 4,000+ millennia.

Labels: national debt, servitude, unfuded liability