Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The threat of our rising debt

According to the latest figures from the DeficitAid.com web site, the Federal Debt is a bit greater than 12 TRILLION DOLLARS. That assumes you consider 91 BILLION DOLLARS a bit. Our national debt exceeds 12,091,600,000,000.

Even more interesting, or should I say appalling, is that the debt is increasing at an accelerating rate of approximately 1 million dollars every 9 seconds. I just did the math on this number and unless I am wrong, and you are all invited to do the math, that amounts to about 400 MILLION DOLLARS EVERY HOUR. Putting this in perspective, the national debt is increasing at a rate of more than one dollar per hour for every citizen of the United States EVERY HOUR OF EVERY DAY OF EVERY YEAR! Awake, asleep, working or recreating, we are all becoming responsible for another dollar to support our FEDERAL governments spending habits.

That may not seem like much on an individual basis, after all, it’s only $8760 per year, per individual, but you have to remember, this is the increase in the debt. The principal debt of more than 12 TRILLION DOLLARS is not even considered in this equation. I am also not considering the interest on the outstanding debt.

Just to offer another example, while I have been writing this, the Federal Debt has increased by more than 100 MILLION DOLLARS.

We are all responsible for this debt and when you think about the growth in government and the resulting growth in regulations, the debt will only grow and the efficiency of the private sector will continue to decline. The burden has already become crippling and will rapidly destroy our country. Forget about outside threats, the real enemy is our government an it’s inane desire to help us help ourselves. When are we going to learn? When are we going to realize that although we are the most educated society in the world we are educating ourselves into bankruptcy?