Egads! Look at the Size of that thing!

Straha · Post by **Straha** » 2004-10-12 09:26pm

It will soon engulf us all.

Personally I've known about this for a while, but I never knew it'd be that big. $53 trillion? SHIT!

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-10-12 09:29pm

Really puts things in perspective, the deficit that the politicians are squabbling over today is just a drop in the bucket compared to the government's real liabilities.

Post by **weemadando** » 2004-10-12 09:53pm

This has been a big issue in Australia for a while, what with us been a welfare state and all. Just put all the retiree's in a work camps goddamnit!

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2004-10-12 09:59pm

eh, another depression, another war. business as usual.

Butterbean569 · Post by **Butterbean569** » 2004-10-12 10:00pm

Ah who cares...by then Bush will be out of the White House! And if he doesn't win this year, we can blame it on Kerry!

Heh

I'm not a big fan of Social Security and other governmental programs of the sort. Just a big fuckjob IMO...and it seems as if it'll be showing its true merits quite soon. Just as I enter the workforce. Yay.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-10-12 10:12pm

This isn't a problem unique to government, either. Some of the biggest companies in the country have got massive pension liabilities off the balance sheet, too. Ford, for example, may be brought down by this.

Chris OFarrell · Post by **Chris OFarrell** » 2004-10-12 10:22pm

weemadando wrote:This has been a big issue in Australia for a while, what with us been a welfare state and all. Just put all the retiree's in a work camps goddamnit!

Yes but nothing like THIS problem, even adjusted for population. This is just insane.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2004-10-12 10:41pm

I'm saving my money for retirement. If the government can cut me a check when I hit 65 then great, but it would be stupid to plan for such a thing.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-13 01:44am

I don't see what reason there is for such unrestricted panic. Any edict that government made can be unmade. The future will probably involve higher taxes and reduced elderly benefits, and someone is going to have to do something to reign in corporate profiteering on health care (make up all the corporate apologist bullshit you want, but everyone knows they're gouging and diverting a ridiculous fraction of health-care costs to profit-taking and administrative overhead, ie- salaries for hordes of well-paid "health-care" people who have never even seen the inside of an operating room). It's not the end of the world if taxes go up and elderly benefits go down.

HyperionX · Post by **HyperionX** » 2004-10-13 03:05am

I'm not quite sure how this is suppose to make since. We know as a fact that the cost of retirement is a set number. If the government doesn't take care of them their children will have to anyways. Underfunded perhaps but there's no reason to believe that somehow this is unaffordable. The medicare crap smacks of pure bullshit. It's basically stating that the cost of health care is going to exceed the value of our economy by 3.

First of all, throughout most of human history we lived entirely without health care and we did fine (sort of). If health where to actually get that expensive, what's going to happen is that it will simply not get that expensive, ie people will simply stop buying more health care if an increase in health care is too expensive. And that just leads me the question where on Earth is he getting the figures that medicare will continue to get more expensive without bound. I see no reason why health care is going to be $26,000 per person by 2050 under any circumstances.

It's sounds like to me just some Malthusians trying to stir up the pot with some bullshit figures that are just extrapolations of current trends with no bounds. The stuff on Social Security I can believe, we've got that lock up in law and may very well be currently unsustainable. But the medicare stuff is bullshit AFAICT.

Coalition · Post by **Coalition** » 2004-10-13 04:14am

the guy in the article wrote:Economist James Galbraith of the University of Texas in Austin is a rare optimist in this debate. "I'm not at all concerned about Medicare or Social Security," Galbraith says. "Unless the government goes broke, Medicare isn't going to go broke, and the U.S. government isn't going to go broke because it can print money."

Am I the only one seeing a slight problem with that statement? If the government prints more money, then each dollar is worth less, so costs will rise as well.

Or can an economist on this board show me where he is correct (using small words

)

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2004-10-13 11:52am

Coalition wrote:
the guy in the article wrote:Economist James Galbraith of the University of Texas in Austin is a rare optimist in this debate. "I'm not at all concerned about Medicare or Social Security," Galbraith says. "Unless the government goes broke, Medicare isn't going to go broke, and the U.S. government isn't going to go broke because it can print money."
Am I the only one seeing a slight problem with that statement? If the government prints more money, then each dollar is worth less, so costs will rise as well.

Or can an economist on this board show me where he is correct (using small words )

IIRC, the Germans tried doing that after the first World War in an attempt to pay their debts, and the resulting inflation made their money virutally worthless.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-13 12:22pm

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi wrote:IIRC, the Germans tried doing that after the first World War in an attempt to pay their debts, and the resulting inflation made their money virutally worthless.

That story has been played out many times in many countries. But like it or not, it is a surefire way to deal with a huge national debt, as long as the debt is enumerated in terms of your own currency. Simply inflate yourself out of it, thus trading the value of your dollar in for an effective reduction in your national debt as well as other obligations. Obviously, the trick is not to overdo it so that your dollar suffers a catastrophic crash and you can't import anything.

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2004-10-13 12:46pm

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi wrote:
Coalition wrote:
the guy in the article wrote:Economist James Galbraith of the University of Texas in Austin is a rare optimist in this debate. "I'm not at all concerned about Medicare or Social Security," Galbraith says. "Unless the government goes broke, Medicare isn't going to go broke, and the U.S. government isn't going to go broke because it can print money."
Am I the only one seeing a slight problem with that statement? If the government prints more money, then each dollar is worth less, so costs will rise as well.

Or can an economist on this board show me where he is correct (using small words )
The US is actually has been printing money for quite some time now (though they hide the fact by doing it via a convuluted process). Why do you think that the dollar has dropped so greatly in value against the Euro?

IIRC, the Germans tried doing that after the first World War in an attempt to pay their debts, and the resulting inflation made their money virutally worthless.

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2004-10-13 12:49pm

Thats odd, the message I posted didn't actually appear. Anyway, I stated that inflation is already occuring because the US pays for "deficit spending" by printing money.

Straha · Post by **Straha** » 2004-10-13 08:39pm

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:Thats odd, the message I posted didn't actually appear. Anyway, I stated that inflation is already occuring because the US pays for "deficit spending" by printing money.

Actually, it did, in the quote box. What you ignore is that the Fed is doing it: A. Openly and for sound economic reasons and B. Destroying money at the same time.

I don't see what reason there is for such unrestricted panic. Any edict that government made can be unmade. The future will probably involve higher taxes and reduced elderly benefits, and someone is going to have to do something to reign in corporate profiteering on health care (make up all the corporate apologist bullshit you want, but everyone knows they're gouging and diverting a ridiculous fraction of health-care costs to profit-taking and administrative overhead, ie- salaries for hordes of well-paid "health-care" people who have never even seen the inside of an operating room). It's not the end of the world if taxes go up and elderly benefits go down.

You go try and sell that to the retirement homes AND to the working class, and pull it off so that they'll vote for it and wont reverse the changes next chance they get, and I'll single handedly rewrite the constitution to make you dictator for life. It's not going to happen when a good chunk of voters are going to be retired and expecting all those benefits which they paid for for so many years, especially not with one of the two main parties in power (and getting a third party in positions of major power will NEVER happen untill after this shit hits the fan.)

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-13 08:50pm

Straha wrote:You go try and sell that to the retirement homes AND to the working class, and pull it off so that they'll vote for it and wont reverse the changes next chance they get, and I'll single handedly rewrite the constitution to make you dictator for life. It's not going to happen when a good chunk of voters are going to be retired and expecting all those benefits which they paid for for so many years, especially not with one of the two main parties in power (and getting a third party in positions of major power will NEVER happen untill after this shit hits the fan.)

I don't think you understand. It will happen one way or another. Either the government will make it happen in a controlled fashion or it will deficit-spend itself into such a huge debt hole that its currency will collapse anyway. The elderly can rail at politicians all they like, but they can't force international money markets to ignore a government that doesn't know how to balance its checkbook.

Straha · Post by **Straha** » 2004-10-13 09:08pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Straha wrote:You go try and sell that to the retirement homes AND to the working class, and pull it off so that they'll vote for it and wont reverse the changes next chance they get, and I'll single handedly rewrite the constitution to make you dictator for life. It's not going to happen when a good chunk of voters are going to be retired and expecting all those benefits which they paid for for so many years, especially not with one of the two main parties in power (and getting a third party in positions of major power will NEVER happen untill after this shit hits the fan.)
I don't think you understand. It will happen one way or another. Either the government will make it happen in a controlled fashion or it will deficit-spend itself into such a huge debt hole that its currency will collapse anyway. The elderly can rail at politicians all they like, but they can't force international money markets to ignore a government that doesn't know how to balance its checkbook.

Of course it's going to happen in some way or another, it has to happen, but the fact that it will be done in the most corrupt incompetent fashion, and that the same voters who just nodded along when it was happening doesn't make me think that the outcome can change much, and might even make us worse off. Besides, if the poor sap who gets stuck with the Hot Potato does this the right way he (and his congress) will have the opposition (Democrat or Republican) screaming for his head, and will be voted out of office the very next election and replaced with people who ran on just reversing the changes done, and that'll leave us even more in the hole, which creates a cycle that I don't want to be around to see.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-10-13 10:26pm

I don't think you understand. It will happen one way or another. Either the government will make it happen in a controlled fashion or it will deficit-spend itself into such a huge debt hole that its currency will collapse anyway. The elderly can rail at politicians all they like, but they can't force international money markets to ignore a government that doesn't know how to balance its checkbook.

You are forgetting one convenient fact; the old people are going to be dead before the currency implosion. They don't have to worry about tommorrow, because they won't be here.

Sure if most people sat down and thought about the long term consequences would be decent enough folks to not dick over the subsequent generations for their personal short term benifit. However if that regularly happened the mess wouldn't have happened in the first place. As it stands the only movement that happens on medicare or Social Security is ideological with promises of increased benifits or only effects people 70 years from now. People are simply not willing to look at problems decades away and weigh against concrete benifits today.

Butterbean569 · Post by **Butterbean569** » 2004-10-13 10:46pm

I'm no economist (yet

), but I think that they should act on this problem *now*. Think of it like a credit card debt that is out of control...except magnitudes larger. The quicker you start to pay it down, even if it's not by that much, the better. Unlike most people, I have *some* confidence in our leaders...and I think they'll avert a total disaster. There might be some bends in the road along the way, but we'll be fine as long as we take a staunch, disciplined, and decisive stand on this right *now*. If that means raising taxes or cutting some government programs, then so be it. I'd rather we stay in a "recession" for awhile than continue having our economy grow at a good pace for another few years, and go BOOM