The Reality of Debt and Obligations

Current U.S. outstanding public debt, as of the sixth of December, 2007: 9,165,262,459,041.86 ( brillig.com/debt_clock). That is NINE (expletive deleted) TRILLION dollars. Even worse, current expenditure obligations, out to a span of twenty years, is estimated at around FORTY TRILLION MORE. Am I getting this across to people? Do you understand exactly what those figures indicate? I know that numbers as large as these are impossible for the human mind to classify, especially when we have billion dollar figures being thrown at us daily. Let me try, though...

The current US Gross Domestic Product is at 13.1947 Trillion dollars (Bureau of Economic Analysis). That means that we, as the wonderful and great (I truly believe that) nation of the United States of America, only produce barely over four trillion dollars each year over that which we owe. This may make it seem like we could pay off our debt in a year, but if that was your first thought, PLEASE, dear god, go take some economics classes. That would require no American eat, drink, drive, buy cloths, use electricity, or anything else AT ALL for a year. And besides, according to Brillig's figures, the public debt will increase this year, at current spending, of over 550 billion dollars. Not sound like much to you? Well, how about this gem: GDP only rose by 760.8 billion dollars. Conclusion: The debt figure, which does NOT include all of what America owes, is rising at nearly the same rate as our economy is growing. Now for the knock-out...

If we were to continue our current government expenditures on programs such as Medicare, Welfare, and the such, without creating any new ones (yeah right), we would have to shell out another 40-50 trillion dollars. How much is that, exactly? Very nearly the ENTIRE WORLD ECONOMY. Current figures, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is that the world economy is worth around 60 trillion dollars. Thus, our current debt plus our current expenditures equals the same amount as everything made in the entire world.

I have yet to even bring up how much it costs to run our military. I honestly dont even know what estimates for that figure would be, if all of our hundreds of military bases, many of which are over seas, were included.

How long do people HONESTLY think we can keep this up.

How can people keep INSISTING that the greatest threat we face today is from Islamic Terrorists? Sure, that threat may be very real, but tell me this: If you noticed that some punk set your fence on fire, and you went outside to put it out, only to notice while outside that the interior of your house were on fire as well, what would you do? Would you continue to try to put out fires in your yard, or even your neighbors yard, or would you come back and try to fight the fire threatening your very home?

We must - VERY SIMPLY MUST - realize where the true threat to our nation is coming from. We are on the cusp of choosing a new president, and none of them, NONE, are willing to face this threat in our very homes - aside from Ron Paul. Only Paul seems to even notice that our house is on fire, and the others, many voters included, laugh him off. If we are ever to try to save our country in the form which we now know it, our only choice is Ron Paul. The others could save us if they wished, but one can only conclude they either cannot see the issues clearly, or do not wish to act to save us.

-The Arkitekt