the US national debt is approximately 6 trillion dollars
a) if the debt is paid at the rate of $1000 a second, how many years will
it take to opay off the debt? (assuming no interest)
b) a dollar bill is about 15.5 cm long. if 6 trillion dollar bills were
laid end to end around the equator, how many times would they encircle the
planet? The radius of the Earth at the equator is 6378 km.
...i think my brain is leaking out my nose
posted by TheThirdCross on Monday 28th August 2006, 21:38:00
that money would have been better spent on education...because i can't
answer either of those questions.
well i'm sure i could if i really wanted to, but i don't
The National Debt will
never be paid off. I shouldn't. We leverage our future based on the
credit worthiness of our economy's ability to pay it back.
There's plenty of politics & pork-barrel bullshit that goes on.
Overall, it takes a VERY large amount of money to operate an organization
the size of the US Govt.
Almost 1/2 of Mrs. Ego's & my
pay goes to taxes. We're not rich, but we're targets of tax
increases because the "have nots" think we should carry their
fucking load. UP YOUR'S COCKWADS!! We worked our way to making some
decent coin. Those tax happy fuckers should do the same & quit asking
the Govt. to take care of them. Bastards!! :-0
I don't mind some social programs, so long as they are
opportunity-giving, not just hand-out programs. If a citizen betters
him or herself due to social programs, that person will often become a
productive citizen. I believe that when it comes to social services,
the government should follow the saying "God helps those who help
themselves." Insurance, in the form of free-aid, should only be
provided in extra-oridnary circumstances--i.e. where problems were
caused by outside forces completely outside the control of the
person.
It will be a sad day when or if the USA suffers the level of
socialism found in many other nations. Equality breeds stagnation.
there sould be limited social programs.
i am sick of seeing people get 5000.00 gifts from the U.S.
government each year. i can not count how many arguments i have
been in with people that think they deserve that money just
because they have x amount of kids and are not married or that
they do not have that much money.
what is really bad is people are begining to beleive it is their
right to have nice homes, cars,airconditioning and free
healthcare.
I don't understand how, if we have these "no
children left behind"-type programs for education, why
we don't have that kind of policy for welfare-like
programs. You have to show progress to receive any
kind of aid. Furthermore, that aid should not be easily
transferable, for instance expensive baby formula obtained
through the Women Infant Children (WIC) program should not
be appearing on the store shelves of Chinese markets (which
I have seen), instead such products should be branded
as donor food, with no resale value.
Foodstamps should also be eliminated in place of a more
extensive WIC program, which forces members to be educated
about nutrition, infant and child care, and only allows
certain foods to be purchased (which should be branded), not
a free check like food stamps provide. It would help combat
the obesity among the poor, as well as ensure that goods are
non-transferable, as they were not meant to be.
Public debt, as a number, is a misleading figure; debt/GDP is generally a
better gauge. For instance the debt figure of the US, as a percentage of
GDP (64.7%), is on par with or better than the leading economies of
mainland Europe: Germany (67.3%, $3.6T in debt), France (66.2%, $2.8T);
however, it is worse than, say, the UK's debt/GDP figure at 43.1%, but
with high debt-figure of $7.107 trillion. Nations like Russia and China
have very low debt/GDP ratings reflecting large-scale growth, while the
governments of nations like Japan (158%, $1.5T debt) are crippled by their
high debt/GDP percentages.
This public debt may be more indicative of how trustworthy a nation is with
regards to credit. The US has never defaulted on any loan. Sure, this is
because we can just pass laws to raise the debt limit, but the dollar is
still very strong and countries like China are still willing to buy up
currency to stabilize their own economies (especially if currencies are
fixed to the dollar). Recently the UK has been selling a lot of currency,
which may explain its high debt figure.
Personally, I don't want the situation to change. So long as GDP
outpaces debt, debt will never be a paralyzing effect on the economy. THis
isn't to say that we should spend spend spend like Japan did, but the
current status quo is definitely acceptable.
Well things like pressuring them to float their currency is
standard practice, as it artifically affects the rate at which
goods can be purchases or sold in that market. Other tactics...
well, in the end we're not here to improve the prosperity of
other nations unless it has a feedback effect for ourselves.
In Australia they just give cash handouts to anyone without a job, and for
some people it's actually more beneficial to just work less hours and
get the taxpayers money instead based on the leverage for what designates a
certain amount of handout money based on the individual.
It was like that with Katrina victims: because the hand-outs were so
good, and only applied to jobless people, people weren't seeking
jobs and there was a huge employment problem for rebuilding. It
expired in July fortunately. Personally, I would've thought it
would've been funny to just have some huge-ass guest-worker
importation, and have all those jobs dry up prior to the benefits
ending to punish those lazy fucks.
back to school
