It was another crazy news week, so it’s understandable if you missed a small but important announcement from the Treasury Department: The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year – President Donald Trump’s first full year in charge of the budget.
That’s almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017.
Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It’s the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year.
Treasury mainly attributed the increase to the “fiscal outlook.”…
We’re addicted to debt, says Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He blames both parties for the situation…
Every time you feed your addiction, you grow your addiction, says Goldwein.
There doesn’t seem to be any appetite for budgetary restraint in Washington, but the market may force Congress’ hand.
We still are not seeing what the infrastructure bill, the increases in military spending, or the effects on tax receipts of any economic downturn will do to that number. And Trump may have to offer increased spending elsewhere to get a deal on other issues he wants to deliver on. It could go much higher.
It is a wise play. I would try to increase it by even more. America is a junkie which does not want to go to rehab, so the best course is to facilitate safe highs until such time as conditions change, and America is forced to confront her addiction. It even has the advantage of speeding the time until a more sudden collapse, rather than drawing out the collapse into a soft landing which will then produce a lingering period of economic doldrums seemingly forever.
But you can see how things would go from bad to cataclysmic overnight if the Apocalypse hit, and wiped out tax receipts, as it destroyed jobs, evaporated bank accounts, and destroyed the infrastructure to deliver goods – and even eliminated the lenders who are facilitating borrowing.
I watch Drugs Inc. periodically, and am astonished at how addiction works in the addicts. I thought they needed to get high because they were used to being high. In reality they need to get high to feel normal, and escape a pain and suffering they cannot tolerate.
Every day the addicts get up, physically sick and miserable, as if they have the worst flu you can imagine. Their muscles ache, their stomachs are cramped, they are covered in cold sweat and chilled to the bone, they shake and they throw up. And then they force themselves out the door to go and find the fifty or a hundred dollars they need to get their next fix for the day. That fix only gives them moments of warmth and a feeling of normal health, which they enjoy for a few hours, before the intolerable sickness returns. That is why they call it a fix. It fixes them and makes them feel normal, implying that their natural state without “the fix” is being broken.
America is now a junkie. Only there is no methadone to blunt the pain of withdrawal from debt. And like an addict, America is going to ride her addiction into the ground, until she hits rock bottom, and the amygdala from stopping is indistinguishable from the amygdala produced from continuing on.
Everything in politics comes down to resources and dopamine. The system around that mechanism is what produced ideological differences, motivates the search for greatness, and that system is what produces all of history.
And we have some epic history that is going to be made at some point in the near future.
The debt is a serious issue most people are unaware off. Deficit finance should be considered a crime against humanity. It gives the elites the power to mortgage off future generations, in order to pay for wasteful spending in the present.
If you ask the average person on the street what the national debt is, they would have no clue. It's about time we enact a balanced-budget law, and require all outstanding debt to be payed off over the next 100 years. If the debt continues to grow, the economic will collapse.
Unfortunately many people believe that an increase in government spending is better. We get offended by politicians that recommend making a cuts. We vote for people who offer to pay for things we can't afford, and assume that the money comes out of thin air. Instead of wanting an increase in government spending, we should want an increase in government efficiency, and accountability.
The education system needs to change. They over-teach Algebra and Calculus, but under-teach personal finance and economics. Young people see the government as a source of entitlement, instead of an organization that can provide opportunity.
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