Borrow your way to prosperity! I should try that!

Every time I read a story about the debt, and I read three today, it always something like the debt is XX trillion + SS + Medicare. $16.5 trillion is obscene, $65 trillion is incomprehensible.

It ought perhaps to be noted that quite a lot of that is pension commitments that will be funded in the future. I suspect that if one looked at the future commitments of a company providing pensions, the numbers would look similar.

Not that I disagree that governments spend too much money. This problem is IMHO never going to go away; when the people making spending decisions are taking no personal risk of any sort and have no clue whatsoever about business...

I'll illustrate that in a small way. My town is currently going through major reconstruction. One section of the job, which is going to cost about £30 million, has been held up for four years by a dispute about the value of one house in the middle of a terrace of about 50. The sum involved is bout £30K. Any businessman faced with this would simply have paid the current owners what they wanted - costing less in the long run.

The Chinese have a better way Fletcher; it's called community based organizing and collective involvement.

It doesn't allow for some fool to hold up the project. In fact, the town doesn't get major reconstruction; it gets a Great Leap Forward of oh say 150K. Progressivism is swell, no EPA to screw your plans.

What scares me is that our elected officials seem to be under the impression that we can continue paying the interest on this debt without curtailing expenditures, if we just devalue the dollar far enough.