America's debt problem

America's national debt is currently at 14.3 trillion dollars. This is more than 97.5% of our GDP. With how things are going along right now, our place as the world's largest and strongest economy won't last long. We may be living in the last generation of Americans that will be seeing these levels of quality of life.

A short documentary on our problems:

debt seems to be a problem of a lot of counties.

my country has a $396.9 billion debt - 98.6% of GDP.

The answer is simple:
Stop wasteful spending.
Freeze Spending (I mean EVERYTHING, defense, social security, medicare, medicade, etc )
AND BRING JOBS BACK. simple really, tax (and by that I mean absurd 110% taxes) on all out sourced jobs until they are back in the states (then give them a domestic incentive) and we have something to do, people can't pay taxes if they don't make money.

No. You want to encourage spending because that's why there's a recession going on. People are saving instead of spending thanks to the ridiculous tax rates and the amount of jobs available.

Quit going to McDonalds, BK and shit and cook your own food for once. Its much cheaper to cook than to go out and eat.

Stop using tax money to research on unimportant stuff and use it to at least help out the economy. Why the hell are they spending tax money to stuff like trips to Mars when theres are recession going on?

People nowadays need to rethink their priorities for fucking once.

Bring back our boys from the front line. Stop spending a large amount of money on something called newest weapon. Create more jobs. stop buying oil from outside and focusing on renewable energy. Energy are the main reason we (my nation) go to war. The answer are already in our grasp why bother taking from others?

plus stop using the so called VETO POWER because by using that it use a lot of money i mean A LOT OF MONEY.

For science it's ok to spend a little or rather would you like other nation especially from an emerging country beat us to the mars? i would rather say that is immpossible but today technology have made their jobs pretty damn good soo later if we don't do something the history will be imprinted with the saying 'AN EMERGING ASIA COUNTRY BEAT USA IN MARS MISSION'.

Well i can't say that this is the current goverment fault but i will blame all this on the previous stupid that they so called mr president george w bush he is the one that make our economy soooo bad shit that i think to compensate we should take all it's belonging including it's property inside an outside the country. Sell his house,land,cars,everything that has value even the broom inside it's closet.

Why not didn't he said in his election i will do everthing i can for the country, soo this will be the time to do it sell everything he have and make some money to create more jobs although it still aren't enough.

Nah it's pretty simple.

People should just stop being fucking stupid all of the time.

America should just switch from democracy to a technocracy.

Meant wasteful government spending, but spending on our part is important

That and it's healthier (solve obesity AND debt in one strike!)

Or something as stupid as potato research

That would help alot.

America has it hard not saying they don't deserve it but it still sucks to be them. Unlike our country wherein we have a debt we can never get out of due to the intolerance and stupidity of previous presidents which bloated our national debt into abnormal lengths. Usually debt is a good thing but as it is, it is causing our money value to decrease and make us more poorer by the minute.

You guys are applying economic theories that are outdated and aren't going to work. There isn't a single short-term, or even long-term, fix for the American deficit nor for any other country. Not a single economic theory is designed to deal with a debt of this magnitude.

Wasteful spending? It isn't going to be a drop in the bucket. Besides, curb spending in one department it will inevitably be transferred to another department who claims they are in dire straights. Besides, the only department I would personally consider greatly reducing their operating budget would be the military budget. Stop giving the United Sates military a budget that allows them to tinker with so many damn experimental weapons and crap only to sell it overseas.

Freeze spending? Are you absolutely insane? What good is it to curb spending if you are putting everyone of your citizens out to pasteur by stopping necessary spending measures in this country? There wouldn't be anyone left to worry about the budget.

You can't bring jobs back the United States without incentive. It costs more money for American workers than to outsource the job. You'd have to be willing to give them short-term incentive, for a long-time goal that may or may not help in the slightest. It isn't a gamble that we should be willing to take.

Taxes? Don't even get me started on how useless it would be to change tax levels in the United States. Any party regardless of whether it is the Democrats or Republicans are only mentioning taxes to further their own ends rather than actually have taxes affect the national debt.

Anyway, point is, the reason that all of these economists haven't come up with a solution is because there is none. Not a theory in existence can tackle the global economy. It has become THAT bad. Only thinking outside of the box will allow us to make any headway.

I guess this is where the old saying "You go to spend money to make money." comes into effect. It'll bite us in the long run i believe though.

Thats what I've been saying. The government is too busy funding unimportant projects such as trips to Mars and research in military weapons and not putting those funds into the bank.



I laughed when GhostIntheMachine typed this (Sorry Mate). But yeah we have to encourage people to spend money on the market because that's the main reason there's a recession. Too much saving, Not enough spending.



No I believe that gamble should be taken. Whether or not that the long-time goal may or may not help, it will still give people the opportunity to earn money and thus be able to spend that well earned money on the market, pay off their debts and feed their selves and family.



I'm not too sure what to say here but are you're saying is that the government is way too corrupt and don't listen? In anyway they should at least create the tax levels to at least allow everyone to be able to pay the taxes which can be used to pay off the national debt.



Looks like we're gonna have to wait until some big shot thinks up some theory that can beat the economic crisis.

Maybe instead of creating taxes to pay off the debt, why don't the government just start paying it off instead of creating extra programs?

That's pretty much what' I'm wondering about..

America is basically the focal point of the world's economy and basically since it's in the shitter everyone else soon will follow like a domino effect. Let's face it we are fucked unless we can find some kind of "undo" button but that is impossible so we'll just have to find alternative means of softening the blow this recession has caused even though it is going to hurt like hell for many years to come. I am sure in time when politicians and corporate fat cats get their heads out of their asses maybe, and I say maybe lightly we can possibly get out of this recession but it is going to take a long time.

No, not everyone. China's doing pretty well during the recession since the whole world is still exporting to China which is their main source of money. Hence why the US are complaining that China might take their status as a "Super power" country

Oh don't you fret about that; if current trends continue, China will dig itself into a hole long before the United States and the rest of the world get out of theirs.

China's economy may be the fastest growing right now, and even overtook the United States in manufacturing this year, but they have A LOT of systemic problems. Culure, society, and especially the environment is paying the price for such rapid (maybe rabid) expansion that has been left unchecked. China's population control plan is falling apart and many people are without work in China and wage laws are virtually nonexistent.

The environment on the other hand, is a whole other ball park: water pollution, air pollution, erosion, desertification, etc... China is quickly running out of arable land, and that will spell disaster in the decades to come. Rapidly increasing wages has resulted in the rapid increase in the price of commodities in China, which in turn has greatly increased the standard cost of living (e.g. oil and coal) which is compounding their energy and environmental issues.

Then there are labor shortages and the exponential increases in export costs...

China isn't sitting as pretty as China wants the rest of the world to believe. They don't change their tune in the next few years there will be in worse shape than the rest of the world in just a few decades at most.

A few decades is a long time. They have already addressed the fact that they have an environment problem so in those few decades they would have found the solution to filter out most of the pollution etc. And don't say that this project will cost more than China's budget because I know they should be able to afford it. Not only did they prove to us that they are dam rich from spending I think was a trillion dollars on the Olympics, a lot of countries owe them a few hundred billion dollars.

Standard of living? They already know about this AGES ago, its just that they don't know how to deal with it. I mean come on. How are they going to safely replace the old apartments when the ones next door is like 3 metres away from it?

Culture? Whats wrong with their culture? Nothings wrong with their culture. What are you talking about?



... You're talking out of your ass in this one ain't you? China has the highest population on the planet and you say there's labor shortage? No mate, you got it the other way around. In fact there's so many jobs available you'll definately get hired by a company in a few hours of searching.

Export costs... hm not really. They earn just as much as the exports costs. After all, labor there is extremely cheap so practically everybody that owns a company gets their products made in China. eg: Ipods, clothes, toys. I bet that there's at least 80% of the stuff you own is made in China isn't it?

You make it sound like the world has a good track record, nevertheless a track record at all, when it comes to caring about the environment. Addressing the issue and actually taking preventative measures are two totally different things.

I can't speak for China, but I highly doubt they are willing to change the current growth trends they have in order to tackle their environmental problems. Europe never did it, United States never did it, Russia never did it, and neither will China. Irreparable environmental disasters will be a foregone conclusion before China even starts to take actual measures.

As for a trillion I seriously doubt that. The games themselves had the highest estimate in Olympic history at about $40 billion USD. I can't fathom how China spent $960 billion dollars in preparations for the events, no matter how extensive their clean up itself was.

And as for the debt, it doesn't work that way. No country has ever seriously owed anyone loans and war debt. The fact that we threw away commodity for representative means there isn't enough actual material to back up all monetary values.

Besides, just about every country owes everyone something. The United States owes a lot to China, but France owes a lot to the United States still from both world wars. France is never going to pay the United States their war debts, and the United States will never pay China for loans.

Theoretically speaking, even if China were to suddenly ask all countries to pay back all loans then there would be a good chance other countries would as well. China owes the United States as well.

Talking out of my ass? Yeah, that's such a common thing for people to do in Serious Discussion. Go read and learn something yourself if you just choose to dismiss everything I say as though I'm pulling it out of my own ass.

There was a major labor dispute in 2008 when the Chinese government actually increased the rights of the work force. Private companies who came from other countries (including the United States) left China because they could no longer offer sub-standard wages which caused labor shortages. Then there was the Japanese auto strikes in 2010. You clearly have no idea what is going on with the Chinese government if you think there aren't any labor shortage issues.

As a result of that, export costs have been going up. It may still be cheap to manufacture in China, but due to the changes in their government (the Liberalization as some like to call it) it is becoming more expensive as time goes by. Exporting U.S. jobs to China has now become exporting Chinese jobs to India and other countries.

Even if they don't have this so called "good track record" they're gonna have to do something about it. Otherwise they're gonna get an increase in numbers of people going to the hospital sick or dying. Not only that, China will become less of a tourist attraction and just living there will become unbearable.

Ok so if one country gets a loan from another country and doesn't pay it back then wouldn't that make them look bad? That's stealing. And since when did the China owe US money?

Sorry about the "Talking out of your ass" comment if that came out the wrong way, I didn't mean it to sound offensive.
Anyway I actually watch the Chinese news on TV so I'm quite aware of most of the happenings that's going on with China. Reason of that policy was because the laborers were being harrassed and stuff so they had to enforced this. Yes because of this, workers had more rights and were hired at higher costs which in turn led to foreign companies going out of business. I believe the government were aware of this thus this opened up a lot of job opportunities for people in the rural areas to find jobs in the city to make up for the loss of foreign laborers. Something like a tradeoff.

You can export jobs anywhere as long as you can afford it. Hence why companies have gone out of business. They couldn't afford China's exporting prices which is the cheapest in the world.

Once again people started clamoring for austerity (cutting spendings!), or bemoaning the stupidity of people/governments since they "just had to go into debt"...

...yet not a single person mentioned fractional reserve banking so far.

The only reason why the whole world - yes, read it again, the whole world - is in debt is thanks to fractional reserve banking.



Actually what's in IOUSA is accurate. The USA is in deep shit, since it has a demographic crisis, excessive spending, living off loans and free trade has destroyed its own economy as every production was moved to shit-holes in the world where labor laws don't exist.

However that's not sufficient to explain why things are so bad. Why did the USA go into debt? I've already given one answer: Fractional reserve banking results in exponentially growing worldwide debt.

The other answer is less complex, but more chilling: Greed.
Not of average Joes. Not of people living beyond their means... but Wall Street execs, CEOs, the modern day robber barons of the world.