How big can we let the deficit get before our economy shats the bed?
345037
i assume you mean the U.S. deficit...just keep printing more money and it will be ok.....lol
455522
oh, only one trillion!  that's great!\n\nthere are also capital gains taxes, corporation taxes, tariffs on internationally-traded goods, federal sales taxes (sales tax usually limited to states), and a variety of user fees, license fees, administrative fees, and so forth.\n\nI saw one person say we could print more money... that's one of those "gosh, how come no one's thought of that?" type deals.  A good course in macroeconomics would tell you why that can't happen, but basically it's supply and demand.  If you flooded the money market with dollars, the value of the dollar would plummet just like the Mark did in post-WWI Germany when they tried that trick.  Money is just a representation of a country's ability to produce goods and services, and each dollar is a fraction of our economic capacity.  More paper just means each piece of paper is a smaller fraction of the whole thing, so it's like trying to make more pie by slicing the same pie into more pieces.  Doesn't work- it just makes a mess of the pie you've got.\n\nI mean, if you really wanted to get down and dirty, the fed has few limitations on what it can collect taxes on.  But the thing is, where would that trillion be cut from?  Everyone has a few programs they don't care for... some think the military should be smaller, some think regulatory agencies like ADA or HUD could be done away with... but the consequences of slashing a program often outweigh the benefits of tax relief.  Like if you slashed HUD funding, you'd have rampant homelessness, which means higher crime rates, which means more expense in law enforcement and the economic impact of property value depreciation wherever the homeless congregate.  And slashing defense could really lead to some terrible things, because military power balance is just as vital as economic power balance in this world.\n\nPeople at the local level love talking about eliminating property tax, which is their big money-maker, but the bottom line is that the money's gotta come from somewhere, and budget cuts tend not to be the answer.  I worked for a town manager in a town where the people elected a council that slashed taxes, and everyone was screaming to have their programs back.  None of those legislators that cut the taxes were re-elected, because you don't realize how important governemnt programs are until they're gone and you're left with all these solutionless problems.  Believe me, as an insider, that all public programs are in some form or another a response to a real and present problem that people decided was worth investing public money into to solve.  Eliminate the program, and the problem comes back full-force.  And the Reagan concept that if you shrink government, the problems will solve themselves as the would-be tax dollars are redistributed in the free market.  It doesn't work that way because the free market is extremely short-sighted and self-centered.  Government has its flaws, but its stated purpose is to keep society running smoothly, and there has yet to be a workable alternative.
982600
Not likely. The debt to GDP ratio is really not any worse than it has ever been.\n\nhttp://zfacts.com/p/318.html \n\nhttp://www.optimist123.com/optimist/2006/05/pie_chart_of_wh.html
339120
I doubt it.  There are many different ways to look at the economy.  One of them is the unemployment rate.  During the depression and the times leading up to it, our unemployment rate his 25% or so at its peak.\n\nRight now, we're actually doing better, as the unemployment rate has been steadily decreasing for the last few years.\n\nSee this chart: http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/feddal/ru\n\nAlso, if you go here: http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/TableView.asp#Mid\n\nGDP has been growing pretty steadily for the last few years, even after taking into account increase in the CPI for inflation.  The economy is actually relatively healthy right .  There's just a lot of big stories on the media because people are paying a lot for gas, so stories about a possible depression sell really well.
340820
Some of the things (since 2000) can't be repaired.When you destroy and sell off the environment, that's it.Our economy,(I don't care what the g.o.p. say) was ahead in the ninties by at least 400 billion.Now the debt we have buried ourselves, and whored ourselves to China and Japan, the u.k. even Canada has a stake in us,is going to take I'm afraid our children to dig out of this mess.Not to mention womens rights,our basic freedoms and everything else they have slapped us in the face with.I wish a third party could win, but the odds of that are about as good as bush really being a christian!
317509
How about a story from today....\n\nhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/economy_dc;_ylt=Ah0HjPWTby6.X2_eWHQxKNWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--\n\nModeration... that's not really great... in a wartime economy that should be REALLY strong and with a HUGE debt that is artifically supporting our economy... come on... how long can we push the debt... OH YOU DON'T CARE... I FORGOT...
983809
Wait till Pelosi, Rangel and Reid get their mitts on the economy!  You wanted to see deficits?
89253
besides putting our wallets further into the red, I am not sure. It doesnt sound like its going to be something the "average joe" is going to be able to do... its going to be for the wealthy to find a way to take it off as a tax write off.
644443
Our economic policy is Nixonomics (Keynesian policy), so you can imagine that the result will be pretty much the same.  I expect inflation (currently observed in prices for both housing and raw materials like oil and metals), and over the longer term, some weakening growth (recession). In the days of Gerald Ford, it was called stagflation.  If we elect a responsible leadership that can control spending, we might be able to turn things around and forestall that slowdown, but sadly, I just don't see that happening.  Very few politicians on either side of the aisle are talking about responsible spending these days.  (OK, maybe they're talking about it, but they're sure not DOING it.)
701265
Take a look at the graph. The national debt after WW2 was huge and they needed a way to pay it down. It worked for a while as the US became more productive the debt to GDP ratio steadily declined until 1980. Its been increasing since then except for a short period during the Dot.com boom.\n\nhttp://zfacts.com/p/318.html
862898
The debt and deficit have no peer in the problem of economic waste. There is a contant danger of increasing interest rates ballooning the payments and every dollar is a loan from other countries who could stop lending us money and squeeze our economy. The Chinese are very aware of our deficit problem, and no one wants to address the problem. They own 40 percent of our debt and they are flooding our markets with Walmart goods. They are also attempting to capture the oil markets we depend on, this is a tragedy waiting to happen. We are not supporting our education system to compete with other countries who are producing a superior work force. The engineering crisis is untenable, India is producing most of our engineers and taking American jobs. You can not compete in the global economy without a superior educational system. Economic collapse is what killed the Soviet Union and we are following their example.
28636
It seems like that's bankruptcy, merely because you can't even imagine trillions of dollars, but the GDP has increased at an even faster rate. As you can see in the graph at the link below, the gap between the debt and GDP has grown at an enormous rate and shows no sign of slowing.
158094
You mean debt to income ratio.....it is usually about 40-60 or somewhere in between.
1067160
Given the situation, there's a high chance that America could fall into an economic depression. Looking at it now, it seems almost impossible to pay off the debt. I believe that America will collapse if it suffers from severe depression and attacked from numerous outside forces. But then again, America's suffered two depressions and it managed to survive, so we'll see.
124075
You would think so, and so would congress, and on paper it probaly does.  But the national budget for the last few years has meant nothing at all.  Absolutley nothing.  We spend even though we don't have, so what does it matter that we're off by a couple of trillion? Congress can always just allot more money for whatever as it goes along.
41585
As of Today the Department of Public Debt says the Amount of Debt owed by the U.S. is $8,165,647,324,627.69\n\nIt won't be paid by us but it will probably come due for our children.
608731
we borrow, thats why we are what 4 trillion dollars in debt.