Or not.

With very little fanfare and an appalling lack of public awareness, let alone outrage, the public debt of the United States recently exceeded the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. Let that sink in for a moment. The national debt is now larger than the value of every good and service produced in the nation.

Upset yet?

The President is about to ask the Congress to increase the U.S. debt limit by $1.2 trillion, raising the "limit" $16.4 trillion. Congress is expected to approve this increase. And even if in a rare spasm of fiscal sanity they vote down the increase, the President has the authority to veto their disapproval.

Angry yet?

The Socialist solution to this is to raise taxes on the wealthy. They argue that if the wealthy pay their "Fair Share" the problem will be solved. Not quite. If the federal government seized every penny of wealth from those on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans the $1.5 trillion they got would do little more than cover that debt limit increase.

Dismayed yet?

When Congress gets around to budget issues, this is how it goes. (I'm using made up numbers.) The left wants to increase spending by 6%. The right says "no way" and proposes increasing spending by only 3%. The left screams and howls about how the uncaring right is slashing government and how people will suffer. They then reach a bipartisan agreement to increase spending by 4.5% with a promise to reduce spending in the future. The right crows about how much they "saved" and the left continues to howl about how much people will suffer from the draconian spending cuts. THEY DO NOT CUT SPENDING. EVER.

Angry yet?

A debt is an obligation to pay. How are we going to pay back the $15 trillion we currently owe if we're about to up that limit to $16.4 trillion? The answer is we can't. Certainly not as long as we continue to pile up massive annual deficits. The only options we have are to massively inflate the currency and pay our creditors with worthless dollars, or just simply not pay. Cutting spending to a level at which we can begin to buy back the debt is not something we as a nation appear to be willing to contemplate.

Consider your own life. What would happen if you decided that you were going to pay your mortgage or your car loan with Monopoly money or just not pay at all. Your creditors would come after you and seize the assets. One of our largest foreign creditors is Communist China. A nuclear power that recently launched it's first aircraft carrier. We owe them $1.16 trillion. OPEC nations, on whom we remain dependent for energy, currently hold a combined $229.8 billion in U.S. government  securities. How do you think they will react when we stiff them on that debt?

Worried Yet?

As a nation we have been riding the gravy train of government social welfare systems for decades. We're quickly running out of track, and the derailment will not be pretty.

Do you care?

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