My guess is that if we stop incurring debt right this minute and start working on paying it off, we should be out of debt in about 500 years. I might be a tad optimistic in my estimates though.

I know it wouldn't come close to covering the whole debt, but I always wondered if it would be worth it to orchestrate some kind of nation-wide drive, not unlike the drive for charitable donations right after Katrina. In my area at least, you couldn't go into any store without seeing a donation jar near the check-out. We'd probably be lucky if such a thing even raised HALF of ONE trillion, but if it were possible to throw a couple hundred million at the debt from mere charity, why not do it?

I'd throw some money into a "Balance The Fucking Budget" bucket. But maybe not everyone would.

We should ask, though, how much of his stimulus should be seen as "spending" and how much of it should be seen as "investment"?

One is a debt creator. The other, not necessarily.

Well geez, someone's a tad senstive about their GDP.

'Shelter house'? You'll have to explain that one to me.

Clinton fucked us when he signed the NAFTA agreement.  It paved the way for outsourcing and fucked this country for jobs so, that's just one thing. 

Obviously a joke.  Corporations would die from laughter.

Even if we were to do that, are you suggesting that we tax imports that same way?  Do you think other countries would actually go for that?  Everyone already despises us enough as it is.

I hear the Dutch are looking to expand their empire of wooden shoes and windmills.

Over their dead lumberjacks.  Canada exhausted it's supply of gold and closed up it's last gold mine two years ago so, you better have some damn sharp ice skates to be able to take over their diamond industry.

I take it you mean medicinal marijuana.  Not really familiar with America/Canadian affairs as far as weed goes.

Even a good suggestion in the face of an ultimate collapse means very little.  The economy will eventually plummet and no new deal or plan will pull it out unless more drastic measures are taken.  America's money system just isn't cutting it anymore.

Well, honesty, the basic question that you seem to be asking is really far too complicated to ask with the simple words that you are using. Let me start with some basic terminology.

GDP stands for gross domestic product. Basically, it is one of the key indicators of our economy. Most importantly, it is a measure of what is out there in any given year that can possibly be taxed.

Past that is where this gets hairy. You need to make category distinctions between terms that seem to be similar but are not.

Federal Deficit: In any given year, the government takes in a certain amount of cash. Then they spend a different amount of cash. If they take in more than they spend, the the deficit is negative. Basically, they get to pay down some of the debt. If they spend more than they take in, the deficit is positive. Here, they add to the debt.

Federal Debt: What the government owes over the long haul. It gets large sometimes and smaller others but it never really goes away.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

OK, with that out of the way, the deficit is a number in the billions of dollars and the debt is a number in the trillions of dollars. We really need to keep them separate in our minds.

The debt is fairly steady and nobody really expects to pay it off, basically ever. In fact, if we did pay the debt off, we would fuck the economy far worse than keeping it around. You see, most of that is accounted for and understood. And the interest payments on that are largely what the government owes to the people in the form of interest on bonds and stuff. That much is figured into the yearly budget and happens to be one of the smaller slices of the pie chart.

The deficit is what can and does change from year to year. As I said above, it can be positive or negative. Also, it is interesting to note that it absolutely does not matter one whit which party is running the show.

During the first of Clinton's terms, the deficit grew farther and faster than it did in the preceding twelve years of republican government. At the same time, the GDP was growing like gang busters, so nobody really noticed that Clinton was outspending Reagan and Bush 41 by a fair bit.

During Clinton's second term, his spending increased even more but the growth in GDP leveled out. However, he also bumped everyone's taxes enough to cover what he was doing. In fact, in FY 2000, despite having an economy that was in the toilet, he managed to make a small payment on the overall debt. Pretty much, that is where the money for the old Bush 43 tax cut came from. Clinton was soaking the economy for all that it was worth in order to claim one last, fairly meaningless accomplishment.

Enter Bush 43 who decided to do a huge giveback for his economic stimulus package. For the record, every incoming president has an economic stimulus package. Even when the economy is doing well, people always like to feel as if they are being given something.

Hence the rallying cry from the first year of Bush 43, “OMG! He is SPENDING THE SURPLUS!!!”

Bullshit he was. There never was a surplus to spend. He just chose not to take in as much as his predecessor did.

Less even. We stand at not quite nine trillion in debt. However, as noted above, our economy depends on there being a large debt to keep it moving in the right direction. If Obama does decide to fix the problem by printing money, which BTW is not a presidential power, you can look forward to paying $20 for a loaf of bread and $500 every time that you gas up your car.

Seriously, that is how Hitler paid to rearm Germany when he got into power and there are photographs from that time of people carrying wheel barrows instead of wallets. Nobody really worried about other people grabbing handfuls of cash from each other as it was about as valuable as toilet paper.

Also, forget about savings. If inflation hit 100%, it would be basic math that the change in your pocket is worth half as much a year later. Sure, a savings account in such an economy would pay like 50% interest but that would only make your impoverishment drag on a little longer.

We're already selling ourselves to you. We're your biggest trading partner.

You'd do better to seize our nickel mines, which can be more profitable. Of course, there are the ones in Cuba. Maybe you should just give up and admit that socialism works sometimes and trade with them so they don't have to put up with socialism PLUS a de facto dictatorship.

Oh Josh. We don't get our pot from you guys. You get your pot from us. That's because we have British Columbia, and you have a full-scale war-on-drugs. There's also the Jamaican connection, which is much easier to make by way of Toronto. Mexico does okay, but they're not connoisseurs like those hippies in BC.

Please. Americans invented that system to benefit their own economy at the expense of other nations' sovereignty. The debt you'd call in would be as real as the benefits you promised.

Naw, that's socialism. Helping one another out in a systematic way is un-American. You guys have to be spontaneous and erratic with your giving. What are you, commies?

No way. You guys have guns that you actually carry around with you. Mind you, that makes it more likely that you'll hurt yourselves, but I'm not going anywhere near that craziness.

Hehe.

The first thing he needs to do is regulate the Federal Reserve Bank. Get those money grubing sons of bitches on a leash.

When I opened this thread, I thought it was going to be about crews working through the night to clean up all the trash left behind by inaugural attendees.