National Debt?

[wisekris]

ok so some of our debates have started to roll into new ones. this is one of them.....

What are you feelings on the National Debt?

Personally I thinked its F'ed up how this "DEBT" is calculated most of it is owed to ourselves so I dont understand why it really even exists, im not trying to support our current prez. this is always how we have done it. I also feel that it so out of wack that there really is nothing we can do and if you think its a problem...well pay it off

[4th reich]

AGH! I started my own topic 1 minute late!!! Here's my opinion.

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I'm tired of people saying that the national debt is a bad thing.

People always say, the way is contributing 100 billion to the national debt, that's wrong. Most of the national debt is from large companies that are based in the US that buy 10's of billions in bonds every year. After 20 companies do that it's going to raise the debt. Those large companies need somewhere to put their money. They can't put it all into the stock market or banks. That was one of the reasons for the Great Depressoin.

Don't tell me that the government can just cut spending. The government spends most of it's money in salary for people that work in the armed forces. Tell me that if there was a major cut in defense spending that nobody in your familly would be effected. High school students that can't afford an education that are smart enough for it will often go into the reserves for an education. I bet everyone who reads this know someone close to them who has or is serving in the military.

The next thing that would get cutt if expenses were lowered would be education. You can't give me one aregument on why college tuition should be raised or middle school teachers paid less.

If you go ask people if the governemt should pay off it's debts they'll agree. I want to hear a rational explanation of why.

[Matshelge]

My contry does not have one.. How I feal about YOUR national debt.. it's a crazy scam that will fail unless Jesus comes around the mountain.

[GoBigelow]

It is crazy. The debt is definitely large, but by managing it correctly, we can bring it back into balance.

If you think about it, the government has no money of it's own, it operates solely on taxes, which is why it's called a Public Debt. It really is our money, but it is also our responsibility to elect people to office who really want to get the budget under control.

The bad part is, Bush keeps requesting debt increases, which is bad. If I owed a bank 10 thousand dollars, and have no way of repaying it, they would never let me borrow 10 thousand more, so why are we letting the government continue to spend our money in this way?

By the way, this past year, after recording record profits, the gas and oil companies were granted roughly 60 billion in tax breaks anyway! WTF! How much other wasteful spending could be applied to our debt?

Here's another helpful site:

http://www.federalbudget.com/

[b214]

Even if the government is in debt, they need to spend money. Why do you think war (not iraq) booms the economy? Because the government is spending a shovel of money, so the companies that build machines or whatever get a shovel of money. The gov is buying gas so the gas industry expands(more).Etc. In WWII, the U.S. was in debt. They decided to spend a shovel of money to help reconstruct europe(not germany) and the debt was gone in an instant and the U.S. made money off of it.

[wisekris]

It is crazy. The debt is definitely large, but by managing it correctly, we can bring it back into balance.

i hope you mean that we will bring it down and not bring it to zero, since the government started idont think its been zero..... and before you say that when clinton was in office we had a surplus thats because he pulled money out of SS to pad the debt it was resonable to do at the time because you still had baby boomers putting in and few taking out, now that most are taking out SS is screwed and shortly before Clinton left he pulled the money out of the debt and put it back into SS but it was to late SS typicaly makes money but since he took it out and put it into the debt all that money sat around and didnt do anything, now SS is F'ed and the Debt looks like it grew right under our noses, the fact is, is it was always growing......

It really is our money, but it is also our responsibility to elect people to office who really want to get the budget under control.

the problem w/ that is we normally get 2 bad choices for prez and 3rd decent one w/no chance o winning.

[Zidane]

Even if the government is in debt, they need to spend money. Why do you think war (not iraq) booms the economy? Because the government is spending a s*** of money, so the companies that build machines or whatever get a s*** of money. The gov is buying gas so the gas industry expands(more).Etc. In WWII, the U.S. was in debt. They decided to spend a s*** of money to help reconstruct europe(not germany) and the debt was gone in an instant and the U.S. made money off of it.

But it's different. Companies back then backed their country. These years are different. They'll make less of everything for more money. Off shore accounts and out-sourceing. Of course the country won't get the money it needs, but buisness will. Haliburton was a poor choice to make for military waepons. Even if Cheney worked for them.

[GoBigelow]

i hope you mean that we will bring it down and not bring it to zero, since the government started idont think its been zero.... and before you say that when clinton was in office we had a surplus

I meant exactly what I said, we should balance it. It would be really great if we could cut into the deficit, but with Bush in office, it is not a significant likelihood. Of course, I know of the whole Clinton thing, but he did what was available to him, and you can't hold that against him.

[4th reich]

War no longer boosts our economy. When world war 2 ended we didn't lower the amount of money spent on defense. It actually went up. It's that spending the brought the country out of depression, and in the years of the war we became dependant on that money. They weren't about to take away the one thing that kept the economy going.

From when America was established, the debt hasgone down per capita. That's now saying much since we payed France to win the war. We did very little, it was all the French. It's slowly going back up again, but that's not really a bad thing, we're paying interst to ourselves. Less then 10% of our debt is outside of our country, and most of that is from poorer countries that inflation is out of control and bought bonds so that they wouln't loose everything.

I don't think the debt should be lowered, that could screw up way too much. I think that it should go up only as much as inflation goes up.

[b214]

Even if the government is in debt, they need to spend money. Why do you think war (not iraq) booms the economy? Because the government is spending a s*** of money, so the companies that build machines or whatever get a s*** of money. The gov is buying gas so the gas industry expands(more).Etc. In WWII, the U.S. was in debt. They decided to spend a s*** of money to help reconstruct europe(not germany) and the debt was gone in an instant and the U.S. made money off of it.

But it's different. Companies back then backed their country. These years are different. They'll make less of everything for more money. Off shore accounts and out-sourceing. Of course the country won't get the money it needs, but buisness will. Haliburton was a poor choice to make for military waepons. Even if Cheney worked for them.

I've never thought of that, good point. Anyway, the country and almost all countries economy do this and slope downward, then upward and back and forth since the beginning of the U.S. There has been a "recession"(depression) about every 20 years. It can almost be predicted

[JasonWin]

In Canada we've had a surplus the past couple years. Witch when ya think about it is both bad and good. It's money we could save for rainy day but then again there's so many problems it can go towards fixxing right now. But with the new conservative goverment they plan on spending alot of that surplus.

[4th reich]

Canada has higher taxes though.

You'd think America would get a ton of taxes because of it's billionairs. They pay near to no taxes. They just put a lot o their money into charities. That's good for the charities, but it's not the billionairs that are giving the money. The government gives back dollar for dollar that they donate in tax breaks.

Oil companies aren't making more because the gov gives them tax breaks, it's because the give billions to school and the enviroment.

There was a company that was going to build a parking lot, the gov told them that they had to plant a few trees for every acre they paved. That company then got a tax break for planting those trees. The parking lot was almost free. weird.

[JasonWin]

With the most recent budget taxes in canada are going down a bit. And of course taxes are high, universal health care costs alot.