KenH
Well-Known Member
"In August, I started a column by writing, “The national debt reached a new milestone this week. Did anybody notice?”
At the time, the debt had surpassed $37 trillion as of August 11. It has since passed another milestone. On October 22, it climbed past $38 trillion. That’s another trillion dollars in two months and change.
...
Will the national debt’s “big four-oh” get anybody’s attention next year? Probably not much, based on the response to previous big numbers.
It’s all adding up very quickly. The national debt at the end of fiscal year 2000, which was 25 years ago, was $5.67 trillion. In other words, it has increased more than $32 trillion in a quarter of a century.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a group advocating for fiscal responsibility, says the national debt is growing five times faster in the 2020s than it did in the 2000s. It’s gone from increasing by $1 trillion an average of every 716 days in that decade to $1 trillion every 145 days now.
The debt is growing by $6.9 billion per day, $288 million per hour, and $4.8 million per minute.
...
Someday, something – probably a crisis – will make the nation’s irresponsible fiscal policies un-ignorable. Debt is like that. You can keep living the way you’ve been living – albeit with nagging guilt – until something, usually quite painfully, forces you to stop.
In the meantime, I guess we’ll keep sprinting past numerical milestones. At this pace, we’ll easily hit the “big five-oh” in a decade or less.
Think anybody will notice?"
- rest at Steve Brawner: Uncle Sam’s “big four-oh” coming soon
At the time, the debt had surpassed $37 trillion as of August 11. It has since passed another milestone. On October 22, it climbed past $38 trillion. That’s another trillion dollars in two months and change.
...
Will the national debt’s “big four-oh” get anybody’s attention next year? Probably not much, based on the response to previous big numbers.
It’s all adding up very quickly. The national debt at the end of fiscal year 2000, which was 25 years ago, was $5.67 trillion. In other words, it has increased more than $32 trillion in a quarter of a century.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a group advocating for fiscal responsibility, says the national debt is growing five times faster in the 2020s than it did in the 2000s. It’s gone from increasing by $1 trillion an average of every 716 days in that decade to $1 trillion every 145 days now.
The debt is growing by $6.9 billion per day, $288 million per hour, and $4.8 million per minute.
...
Someday, something – probably a crisis – will make the nation’s irresponsible fiscal policies un-ignorable. Debt is like that. You can keep living the way you’ve been living – albeit with nagging guilt – until something, usually quite painfully, forces you to stop.
In the meantime, I guess we’ll keep sprinting past numerical milestones. At this pace, we’ll easily hit the “big five-oh” in a decade or less.
Think anybody will notice?"
- rest at Steve Brawner: Uncle Sam’s “big four-oh” coming soon