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Post by blueneck on Dec 9, 2007 6:45:07 GMT -6
By Dave Johnson As I write this, the US national debt is about $9.17 TRILLION dollars. This debt is the amount we have borrowed to pay for our government since the Reagan tax cuts - compounded by the Bush tax cuts. This is because of a choice we made - yes I say WE, because this government is US - to borrow and pay later instead of pay now.
Don't for a minute think that you do not owe that money. It comes to about $30,000 for each American, including infants. If you are a family of four you now owe about $120,000 thanks to those tax cuts. YOU owe this money, even though the tax cuts have primarily gone to the very rich. You WILL be paying it, one way or another. Don't think that debt like that just goes away.
PLUS now each year we pay about $433 billion for interest on that debt. That amount, of course, rises every year. So in addition to owing all that money we have to service the debt by paying $433 billion every year. That amount is larger than the current federal deficit - which means if we had not cut those taxes and borrowed all that money in the past we would have $433 billion more each year to spend or save AND we would not owe $9 trillion.
I do not understand how we tolerate this situation. Yes, it happened because we listened to lies, but how many of our candidates are seriously talking about the changes that need to be made to fix this?
www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-johnson/what-the-reaganbush-debt_b_75936.html
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Post by redwolf on Dec 9, 2007 8:20:35 GMT -6
I would just like to point out here that there is a difference between the economic policies of the Republicans and Democrats. Notice that the article doesn't mention the Clinton years. His more progressive tax policies balanced the budget and reduced the national debt.
By the way, Libertarian economic policies are not populist either.
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Post by redwolf on Dec 9, 2007 8:26:41 GMT -6
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Post by redwolf on Dec 9, 2007 8:29:08 GMT -6
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Post by blueneck on Dec 9, 2007 15:18:08 GMT -6
Unfortunately nearly all of the republicans and most of the democrats are proposing more of the same old same old programs on trade and the economy just with different spins and names - the same bad policies that got us into this mess. I was floored while driving thru Michigan listening to the republican debate that was there a fews months back on the radio - all they had to respond to questions on Michigan's massive manufacturing job losses was more "free" trade and more supply side economics - talk about clueless and out of touch
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