By: Dan K.
As many of you know the United States of America is
currently in debt, A LOT OF DEBT. The Treasury of Department reported on
September 4th 2012 that the national debt had past the $16 trillion
dollar mark. This number is astronomical and continues to rise each day. In
fact it is currently at about $16.7 trillion dollars and is increasing by $3.85
billion dollars every day.
The general view of the American public is that most of our
debt is owed to China. This however, is incorrect. While America does owe a
huge sum of money to China, approximately $1.16 trillion, they are not our
biggest contributor to the debt. The United States total foreign debt is just
over $11 trillion. This means that other
countries are also contributing to the total debt.
But as far as one single cause goes the number one factor to
our debt is our own Social Security Trust Fund. Of our $16 trillion owed over
$5 trillion alone comes from Social Security. This number is expected to raise
too. As the baby boomer generation gets closer and closer to retirement age the
government is going to need billions of dollars to meet the needs of this
retiring generation. In fact there are about 76 million people who fall into
the “baby boomer” generation. This means that as these people grow older and
get closer to the retirement age the government is find money to pay for
retirement. Money that we currently do not have.
This article has really opened up my eyes as to how much debt we actually owe, and to who we owe it to. I don't now know why we haven't made a relentless effort to pay off this debt before the baby boomers got this close to retirement. We knew that this was going to happen, so why didn't we act upon it? I guess that we will just be in debt forever and we will have to accept that.
ReplyDeleteReading the article really put into perspective the direction our country is going in as it pertains to debt. Even though politicians are constantly complaining about Americas debt something greater has to be done in order to stop the $3.85 billion daily of debt we are accumulating. Some serious cuts in spending and innovation will have to take place in Washington to prevent the failure of Social Security, while shrinking American debt. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over generations to come and if there is even any Social Security left when we retire.
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