Debt Growth

Does Anyone Even Care That The U.S. National Debt Will Soon Cross The 30 Trillion Dollar Mark?

I didn’t think that this would happen.  A few years ago when the U.S. national debt crossed the 20 trillion dollar mark, I didn’t think that it would ever get to 30 trillion.  But at this moment the U.S. national debt is around 28 trillion dollars, and our politicians in Washington are about to pass a 1.9 trillion dollar “relief bill”.  We are going to have to borrow every single dollar that we spend in that bill, and that will be on top of all of the “normal” borrowing that we are already doing.  So by the end of 2021, the U.S. national debt will cross the 30 trillion dollar mark.  I am sitting here searching for words that will do justice to how foolish this is, but I can’t seem to find any.  We are literally in the process of committing national financial suicide, but fewer Americans seem to care about budget issues than ever before.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. GDP declined to 20.93 trillion dollars in 2020.

So once our national debt crosses the 30 trillion dollar mark, our debt to GDP ratio will be surging toward 150 percent.

That is madness.

But most Americans are greatly in favor of the 1.9 trillion dollar COVID “relief bill” that is currently going through Congress, because it includes more direct “stimulus payments” to the American people.

Of course most of the money in the bill is not going directly to the American people.  In fact, one analysis found that direct payments only account for about 35 percent of all money allocated…

About 22% of the total bill comes from the $422 billion set aside for $1,400-per-person stimulus checks. Another 13% ($246 billion) is for extending additional unemployment funding of $400 a week.

And that was before Joe Biden and moderate Democrats in the Senate agreed to dramatically reduce the number of Americans that will qualify for payments…

President Joe Biden has agreed to a compromise with moderate Democrats to narrow the income eligibility for the next round of $1,400 stimulus checks that are included in a bill the Senate is expected to take up this week, a Democratic source told CNN Wednesday.

That means 7 million fewer families will receive a partial payment than would have under the House version of the bill, according to an estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model. The new proposal will completely cut off those who earn more than $160,000 a year and individuals who earn more than $80,000 a year.

Much of the money in the “relief bill” is actually going to go to “pork projects” that are favored by prominent Democrats.  Here are just a few examples…

PolitiFact rated “Mostly True” a claim from conservative Stand for America that the bill contains unrelated projects. Examples cited in that fact check included a $1.5 million bridge connecting New York and Canada; a $100 million underground rail project in Silicon Valley; $480 million for Native American language preservation and maintenance; and $50 million in environmental justice grants.

It looks like some of those “pork projects” won’t make it into the final version of the bill that gets signed by Biden, but there will still be billions upon billions of dollars of wasteful spending.

But what does a billion dollars matter anyway, right?

After all, a stack of a billion one dollar bills would only be about a half mile high…

If you were to stack $100 bills on top of each other, one million dollars would be around the three feet mark – about the height of a chair or a toddler.

And if you keep stacking the $100 bills, eventually past the peak of the world’s tallest building, going a little over half-a-mile into the air, this would be one billion dollars.

A trillion dollars is another matter.

In order to get to a trillion dollars, you would need a stack of one dollar bills that would go beyond the orbit of the International Space Station…

This would have you stacking $100 bills into the stratosphere and past the International Space Station. You would have to stack these bills 631 miles above Earth’s crust. That would equal one trillion dollars. Now imagine 28 stacks of 631 mile-high $100 bills.

That’s America’s debt.

We are trapped in an endless debt spiral that has accelerated greatly over the past couple of years.

The only way to keep the game going is to keep creating, borrowing and spending more money, and in the process we are literally wiping out the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.

Thomas Jefferson tried to warn us about the dangers of a large national debt…

I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared…. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt…. We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude…. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and our comforts, in our labors and in our amusements…. If we can prevent the Government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

But even though we were the wealthiest and most prosperous nation on the entire planet, we just couldn’t help ourselves.

We just had to keep spending money that belonged to our children and our grandchildren, and now we have accumulated the greatest mountain of debt in the history of humanity.

Jefferson understood that government debt was a way for one generation to steal money from other generations…

“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Since Barack Obama first entered the White House, we have been stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day.

Just think about that.

What we are doing to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal.

Of course if we stay on the path that we are currently on, there won’t be an America at all.

Can someone out there explain to me how this story can possibly end well?

I have been asking versions of that question for years, and nobody has ever risen to the challenge.

That is because it is obvious to everyone that our story is going to end tragically.

In our insatiable greed, we are systematically destroying the United States of America, and we should be utterly ashamed of ourselves.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

26 Incredible Facts About The Economy That Every American Should Know For The Trump-Clinton Debate

donald-trump-hillary-clinton-debate-photo-by-vectoropenstockAre you ready for the most anticipated presidential debate in decades?  It is being projected that Monday’s debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could potentially break the all-time record of 80 million viewers that watched Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter debate back in 1980.  Many Americans probably hope to see some personal fireworks between the two nominees, but the two candidates have both expressed a desire to focus on substantive issues.  There will likely be quite a few questions about the economy, and without a doubt this is an area where Trump and Clinton have some very sharp differences.  The mainstream media would have us believe that the U.S. economy is in pretty good shape, and if that was true that would seem to favor Clinton.  But is it actually true?  The following are 26 incredible facts about the economy that every American should know for the Trump-Clinton debate…

#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, the U.S. government was 10.6 trillion dollars in debt.  Today, the U.S. government is 19.5 trillion dollars in debt, and Obama still has several months to go until the end of his second term.  That means that an average of more than 1.1 trillion dollars a year will be added to the national debt during his presidency.  We are stealing a tremendous amount of consumption from the future to make the economy look much, much better than it otherwise would be, and we are systematically destroying the future in the process.

#2 As Obama prepares to leave office, the rate at which we are adding to the national debt is actually increasing.  During the fiscal year that is just ending, the U.S. government has added another 1.36 trillion dollars to the national debt.

#3 It isn’t just the federal government that is on a massive debt binge.  Total U.S. corporate debt has nearly doubled since the end of 2007.

#4 Default rates on U.S. corporate debt are the highest that they have been since the last financial crisis.

#5 Corporate profits have fallen for five quarters in a row, and it is being projected that it will be six in a row once the final numbers for the third quarter come in.

#6 During the month of August, commercial bankruptcy filings were up 29 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

#7 The rate of new business formation in the United States dropped dramatically during the last recession and has hovered at that new lower level ever since.

#8 The Wall Street Journal says that this is the weakest “economic recovery” since 1949.

#9 Barack Obama is on track to be the only president in all of U.S. history to never have a single year when the U.S. economy grew by at least 3 percent.

#10 In August, the Cass Freight Index dipped to the lowest level that we have seen for that month since 2010.  What this means is that the total amount of stuff being shipped around the country by air, by rail and by truck is really dropping, and this is a clear sign that real economic activity is slowing down in a major way.

#11 Capital expenditure growth has turned negative, and history has shown that this is almost always followed by a new recession.

#12 The percentage of Americans with a full-time job has been sitting at about 48 percent since 2010.  You have to go back to 1983 to find a time when full-time employment in this country was so low.

#13 The labor force participation rate peaked back in 1997 and has been steadily falling ever since.

#14 The “inactivity rate” for men in their prime working years is actually higher today than it was during the last recession.

#15 The United States has lost more than five million manufacturing jobs since the year 2000 even though our population has become much larger over that time frame.

#16 If you can believe it, the total number of government employees now outnumbers the total number of manufacturing employees in the United States by almost 10 million.

#17 One study found that median incomes have fallen in more than 80 percent of the major metropolitan areas in this country since the year 2000.

#18 According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

#19 The rate of homeownership in the U.S. has fallen every single year while Barack Obama has been in the White House.

#20 Approximately one out of every five young adults are currently living with their parents.

#21 The auto loan debt bubble recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark for the first time ever.

#22 Auto loan delinquencies are at the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.

#23 In 1971, 61 percent of all Americans were considered to be “middle class”, but now middle class Americans have actually become a minority in this nation.

#24 One recent survey discovered that 62 percent of all Americans have less than $1,000 in savings.

#25 According to the Federal Reserve, 47 percent of all Americans could not even pay an unexpected $400 emergency room bill without borrowing the money from somewhere or selling something.

#26 The number of New Yorkers sleeping in homeless shelters just set a brand new record high, and the number of families permanently living in homeless shelters is up a whopping 60 percent over the past five years.

Despite all of the facts that you just read, the truth is that there is one particular group of people that have been doing quite well during the Obama years.  I really like how Charles Hugh Smith made this point in one of his recent articles…

The top 5% of households that dominate government, Corporate America, finance, the Deep State and the media have been doing extraordinarily well during the past eight years of stock market bubble (oops, I mean boom) and “recovery,” and so they report that the economy is doing splendidly because they’ve done splendidly.

By recklessly creating money out of thin air and pumping it into the financial markets, the Federal Reserve has greatly enriched the elite, but they have also dramatically increased the gap between the very wealthy and the rest of us.  Since he has been in the White House during this time, Barack Obama has gotten the credit for this temporary stock market bubble, and most of the elite love Obama anyway.

But in the process the stage has been set for the greatest economic and financial implosion in U.S. history, and the pain that is coming is going to affect every man, woman and child in this country.

During the debate, Trump and Clinton will talk a lot about tinkering with tax rates and regulations, but those measures are essentially going to be meaningless when compared to the massive economic tsunami that is coming.  The next president is going to inherit the biggest economic problems that this nation has ever faced, and it is going to take a miracle of Biblical proportions to turn the U.S. economy in the right direction.