When does the debt become important to you?
 

Title says it all.
The debt is ballooning out of control; the debt ceiling keeps being raised.

I fully understand the political finger-pointing. i.e. "Bush did it", etc
But that sort of thinking ignores the real world reality. Moody's has indicated that they may lower the USA bond rating. Do you understand the implications of that?
We'd end up borrowing more money simply to pay the higher cost of our borrowed money. The figure I heard is that the debt service alone will exceed our GDP. From there, its a fiscal death spiral. Look to Argentina for the pattern.

Its not simply a republican-caused problem, although Bush and the republicans didn't help. Obama has only added gasoline to the fire; his policies are, if anything, even worse. EVERYONE shares some blame. Our political leaders continue to treat themselves like royalty. They will all retire on some fat pension, Politicians are happy to simply " kick the can ( problem) down the road "(until they retire).

So what are the REAL ( non-political) answers? Please try to avoid the standard talking point answers, and the blame game. Regardless of who is.was the root cause, what do you see as the answers?

To me, there are only a few:
Cut what government spends. Causing massive pain.
Raise Taxes--deepening even further the recession
Print more money ruining the savings of those about to retire
Borrow more money--delays the problem, but deepens the same problem.

Do we accept the immediate pain caused by massive spending cuts, or simply pass it on?

The only real solution is to cut gov spending. The gov was never created to help everyone with everything, and it cannot do that. Across the board cuts, and then cut the board. We need to start arguing about which programs will be cut, not which ones we will create.

If you are going to cut, you must cut where there is a lot of spending. Looks to me like the military should get some massive cuts, and then pull them back from foreign wars, and foreign stations. Defend THESE borders.

eliminate the dept of education, scale back epa, thats a start...

None of this will happen; we're fairly screwed.

I dont see the need to keep 1/2 the world alive when the Aid we send them and they stick there middle finger at us in return

The aid money is being borrowed and we tax payers pay for it not the goverment we send it to we never get anything in return NEVER

what happened to the billions sent to haiti and its all gone already YA THINK - they should have given everyone in the country 200,000 dollars and sold them everything we would have been in better shape as well as the people of haiti -- just an example - jz

Well, first we look at the numbers, the private debt is higher than it's been since the 60s (in teams of percentage of GDP). In addition the public (SS) debt is growing.

Regarding the private debt, we do what we did in the post-WW2 era, reduce spending and raise taxes until it flattens out. There is always plenty of fat in government. Start by ending the current "wars" within a couple of years and get the military under control (pre-reagan levels). Significantly decrease domestic spending across the board, and come up with a realistic tax plan that will pay down the debt within about a decade. In other words, do what you would do with the family budget; figure out how to raise income and stop doing stuff you can't afford.

Regarding SS, cut the expenditure by raising the eligibility age significantly and put some type of means testing in place. The fact that I will probably be able to receive SS benefits tells me the eligibility standards are much too low. Raise the bar so most people will never collect from the fund, make it a safety net only (survivor benefits, people who truly can no longer work and truly need the income).

I'm betting that now that corporations can directly influence elections, they will have the country do what corporations do when they make a bad decision- first you see who you can sucker into taking over your obligations, and if that doesnt work, then stop making the payments and walk away from the debt...

X2 on that. To me it is insane to send monetary aid to other countries when we flat out don't have the money. It's kind of like me not being able to afford groceries for my family and using my mastercard to buy groceries for my neighbors. It's not that I don't want to help, but you have to take care of your own first.

Obviously, government spending is completely out of control. The lords are spending more than the slaves can make for them, not to mention obstructing our ability to thrive and compete with ridiculous laws like "cap and trade". If the government ever expects us to be able to recover they need to do what John Galt said; "get the hell out of the way":D

That sort of talk will never get you elected. It is a bidding war out there during election time and people go with the highest bid, which yours is not. Problem is that after the bidding is done and the winner doesn't pay, we don't do anything to them.

How will you entice anyone to want to donate to a fund when you tell them that they probably will not get it? That is the problem. It was sold to us as a forced savings plan.

Who receives the most aid from the USA? Should that be cut off or reduced?

Nothing is going to happen because no one wants to deal with it.


I suspect they are going to inflate it away.

Fortunately, I don't need to get elected. I put myself on a cash basis a long time ago; maybe the government needs to do the same?

That's part of the problem, why does SS need to be a separate fund so it shows up as part of the debt on paper? It's really nothing but an additional income tax and an entitlement program for geezers. It should be structured so a very small percentage of the geezers live long enough to collect; the eligibility age needs to be raised significantly.

Unfortunately, you are probably correct. In that case we should all probably get out of dollars and into something more stable (cheap real estate?).

How are we defining "aid" by the way? From what I see, aid to say Haiti is a dead end. We aren't getting anything from them. "Aid" that is used to by influence or people into our way or thinking, is that considered aid also? Problem is the word "aid" is overused because we don't want to come to grips with the fact that we are doing this to get that. For instance, if we give a country "aid" but we get to use their harbors and ports, is that really "aid"? Sounds more like a barter or sale to me.