task0778
Diamond Member
With the national debt now effectively equal to the size of the entire U.S. economy, the nonpartisan watchdog’s latest report, “What Would a Fiscal Crisis Look Like?” outlined a dangerous future ahead. “If the national debt continues to grow faster than the economy,” the report said, “the country could ultimately experience a financial crisis, an inflation crisis, an austerity crisis, a currency crisis, a default crisis, a gradual crisis, or some combination of crises. Any of these would cause massive disruption and substantially reduce living standards for Americans and people across the world.”
The report warned that unless policymakers enact a “thoughtful pro-growth deficit reduction package,” disaster likely lies ahead.”The United States is deeply indebted, and its finances are on an unsustainable long-term trajectory,” the report concluded. While it’s “impossible” to know when disaster will strike, “some form of crisis is almost inevitable” without a course correction, the CRFB said.
ocid=msedgdhp&pc=DCTS&cvid=e127cd82708c44b7954f67734428bc4c&cvpid=60fcecf58042419784abaf5e88b6e354&ei=7
Some people will blow this off as fearmongering. I understand that, but this country is experiencing yearly deficits approaching $2 trillion and possibly exceeding that in coming years. Some people think it's not a problem, as the US Gov't can just print or create more money. But as the report notes, that creates inflation and erodes savings and purchasing power. Most of us remember the last bout we had with inflation (2020-2022). I don't think we wanna go back to that.
IOW, it's hard to see the fiscal trajectory we're on as a society/economy continuing without some difficulties down the road that could be really bad. And almost nobody cares, which means our political parties don't care either. We've got entirely too much FWA; Elon Musk and his DOGE program was a decent start IMHO, but we need to be doing that all the time. And it's gotta be mostly on the spending side, raising taxes will have to happen cuz, well politics. The Left will want to raise taxes now and cut spending later. Yeah, I've heard that song before. This time we need to cut spending now and raise taxes later. Anybody wanna bet how far that idea will fly? Yeah, me neither.
The report warned that unless policymakers enact a “thoughtful pro-growth deficit reduction package,” disaster likely lies ahead.”The United States is deeply indebted, and its finances are on an unsustainable long-term trajectory,” the report concluded. While it’s “impossible” to know when disaster will strike, “some form of crisis is almost inevitable” without a course correction, the CRFB said.
ocid=msedgdhp&pc=DCTS&cvid=e127cd82708c44b7954f67734428bc4c&cvpid=60fcecf58042419784abaf5e88b6e354&ei=7
Some people will blow this off as fearmongering. I understand that, but this country is experiencing yearly deficits approaching $2 trillion and possibly exceeding that in coming years. Some people think it's not a problem, as the US Gov't can just print or create more money. But as the report notes, that creates inflation and erodes savings and purchasing power. Most of us remember the last bout we had with inflation (2020-2022). I don't think we wanna go back to that.
IOW, it's hard to see the fiscal trajectory we're on as a society/economy continuing without some difficulties down the road that could be really bad. And almost nobody cares, which means our political parties don't care either. We've got entirely too much FWA; Elon Musk and his DOGE program was a decent start IMHO, but we need to be doing that all the time. And it's gotta be mostly on the spending side, raising taxes will have to happen cuz, well politics. The Left will want to raise taxes now and cut spending later. Yeah, I've heard that song before. This time we need to cut spending now and raise taxes later. Anybody wanna bet how far that idea will fly? Yeah, me neither.
