Searching for a Ladder

The nation is falling more and more into debt in the worst time possible. The government has now accumulated a tremendous number of eleven trillion dollars in debt. The baby-boomer generation could be one cause of this national debt issue that we have going on but there are many other reasons. The national debt affects everyone around it and it has an affect the taxpayers now, it affects the taxpayers’ children, and their children to come.

The national debt is money owed by federal government. It has accumulated over a long time with some times like the World War II era being larger than normal. Another time was in 1937 near the end of the Great Depression when the presidency was passed to Truman. It doesn’t take a doctorate degree in economics to realize that lately the national debt has been going up and up without hesitating to keep rising. The debt has increased an average of $3.9 billion a day since September 28, 2007. The tax cuts from the first president George H.W. Bush caused the debt to dip down by a small amount but then back up. The Clinton administration made it go down further after it had started to go back up again, and then when the second President Bush came into office, he pushed for tax cuts that once again caused the debt to increase. Recently it skyrocketed from the stimulus package. Although it has not been long since Barack Obama became president, it must be challenging having so much pressure on the national debt to increase with the steepest slope in a long time and having little he can do about it.

Although many young people like me have not really come eye-to-eye with the impact of national debt, it is should be in the back of everyone’s mind. This national debt will be discussed for many years to come and what we do now is important. The national debt will not just affect workers paying for taxes right now, it will effect many generations to come.

The national debt cannot be fixed with a few little tax changes here and there, it is going to take major overall changes and it will take a long time. Solving the national debt is likely to go beyond effect tax rates; it will effect how much money schools get for computers, books, and other necessary materials, it will affect the benefits one gets after retiring. It changes the prospects for national health care and other ideas.

The economy is slowing under our noses as more and more businesses go out of business because lack of funds. If the government earned a dollar a second it would take approximately 348 years to pay off the current national debt. . Many do not know the extent of a trillion dollars but 348 years is a long time, and that is if the government earned a dollar a second.

According to federalbudget.com, interest on the debt is the third largest part of the federal government’s budget. Defense is larger and so is income redistribution.

This national debt could be a factor in the worst slump in a long time. The national debt is a factor in companies laying off workers and not hiring them because there is concern about the future. This is causing the economy to slow down even further because even if people are not earning income, they still have to spend money, and it is usually money they do not have. Additional personal debt is also a challenge.

If the solution to this national debt problem were easy, we probably would not be having this dilemma. I noticed my 1040EZ form for 2008 indicated that the federal government spends far and away the most of its money on Social Security, Medicare, and other retirement programs, and then comes defense, and the third thing that the federal government spends its money on is interest on the national debt. The latter is from federalbudget.com.

The national debt is not going to be fixed or even lowered much for a while. It is possible that President Obama could put in motion some major tax cuts that might stimulate it but these are not enough to fix the recession in economy right now and they will add to deficits and debt. The national debt will be in history books around the country and even the world until the babies that are not even born yet have grandchildren.

The national debt is at $11 trillion dollars and needless to say it is not getting any smaller anytime soon, it goes up on average 3.5 billion dollars a day, just imagine how much that is in a year. There is an analogy that says you are digging yourself a hole you cannot get out of, and that analogy goes well with the national debt problem the government is having, it seems as if the government is digging a hole deeper and deeper and they do not have a ladder. We as a country need to build a ladder great in size with the materials we have down in the hole, and although it will take awhile. One day the ladder will be finished and we will crawl out of the hole.