Washington Post Puts Up Misleading Video- Debunking Follows
In just a minute, I am going to show you a video which apparently targets the American masses and was produced with some sort of 8th grade audience in mind. It was posted on Huffington Post today (10/14/13) where all of the really smart people hang out.
This is the shit that Huffpo readers watch and this is what we are up against. So what's wrong with this deficit spending video produced by the Washington Post?
Please pay attention to the graphing that occurs right around the :46 mark. This is the visual aid that they employ to pacify the sheep who watch shit like this and think it is accurate. Note also how they say the United States has "always borrowed money" as though that makes borrowing seem normal and acceptable. (Please ignore the references made by the video about our poor, victim, President Obama. I mean after all, I clipped this from Huffpo)
First of all, saying that the US has always had to borrow is not entirely accurate. The US has not always had to borrow to pay it's debts. In fact we went through an actual 30 year period where we didn't fight any wars and voila!!! We didn't have to borrow anything because we had no debt. 1830-1860.
Virtually all historical US borrowing has occurred because of wars. This piece, from The Atlantic, details our war spending very nicely, up until our current day. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/the-long-story-of-us-debt-from-1790-to-2011-in-1-little-chart/265185/
If you simply read the Atlantic article, you are going to find that near the end of it- it makes this statement. You'll love this- this is the part where your government stole all of the money in the SS trust fund years ago- they note it but for some reason- still don't want to count it.
Because on top of the roughly $11.4 trillion in US government debt, which can be bought and sold and is floating around in financial markets, there's also nearly $5 trillion in debt that the US government owes to itself. Those are largely obligations to the trust funds that are used to pay for programs such as Social Security. These aren't counted in debt-to-GDP charts published here, and are often excluded from such calculations. But if you did include this debt--and there's an argument to be made that we should, since the government is on the hook to pay these claims--the US debt-to-GDP ratio was just under 100% at the end of 2011.
So why can't anybody draw an accurate chart showing today's real debt (16.7 trillion divided by 2012 14.99 trillion GDP= 111%) at the exact same level that we had just after WW2??
Why do they say- well we excluded the 5 trillion the government stole from Social Security so we don't include that in our graphs. Huh? How can you steal 5 trillion that is owed to American taxpayers and pretend that it doesn't exist?
This is the kind of bullshit that passes as journalism.
Either way, the people of this country don't get the truth. The real truth is that current government debt exceeds every historical measure that we have ever employed to measure it. It has never been this high. Period.
And unlike 1946, we don't have the capacity to pay the debt down. The real American economy, primarily corporations and 30 million manufacturing jobs, have all left the US. You can't squeeze trillions out of workers at McDonald's.
We are at a historical point in time where the debt will go supernova. Why? Because we are adding 340 billion dollars a year in interest expense ( at 2%) while watching principal amounts build. We have a giant demographic (boomers) all hitting the debit side of the ledger. Even if the government can somehow manage to hold interest rates steady- a much smaller taxpaying demographic will have to pick up the slack for a much larger retiring demographic. It only pencils out one way- and it's all bad.
If they don't slash and burn federal spending now, it's game over and the truth is- it's probably game over anyway.
It kind of makes you wonder how they are going to graph our debt, 10 years from now- doesn't it?
They'll think of something. They always do.
This is the shit that Huffpo readers watch and this is what we are up against. So what's wrong with this deficit spending video produced by the Washington Post?
Please pay attention to the graphing that occurs right around the :46 mark. This is the visual aid that they employ to pacify the sheep who watch shit like this and think it is accurate. Note also how they say the United States has "always borrowed money" as though that makes borrowing seem normal and acceptable. (Please ignore the references made by the video about our poor, victim, President Obama. I mean after all, I clipped this from Huffpo)
First of all, saying that the US has always had to borrow is not entirely accurate. The US has not always had to borrow to pay it's debts. In fact we went through an actual 30 year period where we didn't fight any wars and voila!!! We didn't have to borrow anything because we had no debt. 1830-1860.
Virtually all historical US borrowing has occurred because of wars. This piece, from The Atlantic, details our war spending very nicely, up until our current day. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/the-long-story-of-us-debt-from-1790-to-2011-in-1-little-chart/265185/
If you simply read the Atlantic article, you are going to find that near the end of it- it makes this statement. You'll love this- this is the part where your government stole all of the money in the SS trust fund years ago- they note it but for some reason- still don't want to count it.
Because on top of the roughly $11.4 trillion in US government debt, which can be bought and sold and is floating around in financial markets, there's also nearly $5 trillion in debt that the US government owes to itself. Those are largely obligations to the trust funds that are used to pay for programs such as Social Security. These aren't counted in debt-to-GDP charts published here, and are often excluded from such calculations. But if you did include this debt--and there's an argument to be made that we should, since the government is on the hook to pay these claims--the US debt-to-GDP ratio was just under 100% at the end of 2011.
So why can't anybody draw an accurate chart showing today's real debt (16.7 trillion divided by 2012 14.99 trillion GDP= 111%) at the exact same level that we had just after WW2??
Why do they say- well we excluded the 5 trillion the government stole from Social Security so we don't include that in our graphs. Huh? How can you steal 5 trillion that is owed to American taxpayers and pretend that it doesn't exist?
This is the kind of bullshit that passes as journalism.
Either way, the people of this country don't get the truth. The real truth is that current government debt exceeds every historical measure that we have ever employed to measure it. It has never been this high. Period.
And unlike 1946, we don't have the capacity to pay the debt down. The real American economy, primarily corporations and 30 million manufacturing jobs, have all left the US. You can't squeeze trillions out of workers at McDonald's.
We are at a historical point in time where the debt will go supernova. Why? Because we are adding 340 billion dollars a year in interest expense ( at 2%) while watching principal amounts build. We have a giant demographic (boomers) all hitting the debit side of the ledger. Even if the government can somehow manage to hold interest rates steady- a much smaller taxpaying demographic will have to pick up the slack for a much larger retiring demographic. It only pencils out one way- and it's all bad.
If they don't slash and burn federal spending now, it's game over and the truth is- it's probably game over anyway.
It kind of makes you wonder how they are going to graph our debt, 10 years from now- doesn't it?
They'll think of something. They always do.
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