Do You Owe $100,000? Probably not.

You are supposed to repay a lot more than that, the government says.

Jul 18, 2024

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 20, 2024 that the U.S. Congressional Budget Office “…projects that this year’s budget deficit will clock in at roughly $2 trillion, some $400 billion more than it forecast in February and $300 billion larger than last year’s deficit.”

That same day, Reason magazine said:

America is now almost $35 trillion in debt. That means every American owes $100,000.

President Joe Biden's administration doesn't care. They want to spend more.

Already they are spending so much that they're increasing our debt by a trillion dollars every 100 days.

(If you already know how much you owe, and what it means, you might want to jump to “Conclusion: Why This is Important!”)

Government debt is a problem all over the world, of course. And if you live in a different country you may owe less, or more. But if you are an American, Reason says that you owe $100,000 because that is each American’s share of the $35 trillion federal debt. What’s worse than that?

That, in the photo, John Stossel looks like a baboon? No, that doesn't matter. It

just an error. What is really worse than you owing $100,000 is that you probably really owe more than $100,000. Way more.

Warwick J. McKibbin, in an article titled “Is Modern Monetary Theory Too Good to Be True?” in the Brookings Institute in 2019, wrote,

“When a government spends more than the revenue it generates, it usually finances its budget deficits by issuing government debt. Debt is a promise to repay lenders at some time in the future.”

A debt is a promise to repay. When the federal government regulators promise to repay the federal debt, who are they promising will repay it? The only people who can repay it, that’s who. I.e. the productive Americans who are net tax payers.

The Wall Street Journal article again, “Outlays are now expected to hit 24.2% of GDP this year and average 24% over the next decade. Wow. For perspective, consider that spending before the pandemic exceeded 24% only once since World War II—in 2009 amid the financial panic and the Obama-Pelosi ‘stimulus’ binge… CBO’s budget forecasts are getting progressively uglier.”

What is the politicians’ plan to pay for the increases in spending? Borrow more, of course.

Conclusion: Why This is Important!

To quote the WSJ article a third and final time, the last sentence in the article ends with the ominous words, “…a debt panic down the road.”

“Debt panic”? That doesn’t sound too good.

Jack or Joker, Knave or Fool. KleptoState Crook, or KleptoState Tool?

In a 2020 article titled. "What's Wrong with Central Bankers?" in RealVision, William H. White wrote:

So it's always more complicated than you would think. It's even more complicated than a fool or a knave…

They're [central bankers] starting off with the idea that the system is comprehensible, it's understandable, and it's controllable. ...the starting assumption ought to be, the economy is a complex, adaptive system. And it has characteristics, including unintended consequences, that are not present in models or analytical frameworks that assume the system is comprehensible and controllable.

To put it another way:

The central bankers claim that they are in control of a system that is a top-down hierarchy of control: the economy/financial-system. And the bankers and other government regulators are fully capable of controlling it to make it work.

The problem with that is that, as William White said, it's not true. The private sector economy — any free enterprise system — is a mostly a spontaneously organizing system, not a hierarchy of control.

You may not believe that; many people don't. The government and media have gone to a lot of trouble and made a lot of effort to convince the public that the economy is a controlled system, not a spontaneously organizing system. If you believe that the economy is a controlled system, then we have a book we'd like to invite you to have a look at. It's not a very fun book but, on the good side, it's free. Free to read online, or to download as a PDF. If you believe that the American economy is not a spontaneously organizing system please take time to at least look at Control versus Freedom (How Spontaneous-Order is the Secret Ingredient of Freedom).

Back already? Now that you indeed know that the American economy is mostly not a controlled system, the $64 trillion question is, do the central bankers know that, and so are lying knaves? Or are they fools who believe that they control the economy?

Knowing the true answer to two questions could give us the answer a third, very important question.

1. Knaves or fools?

2. What happens when someday the U.S. government cannot keep borrowing more,

3. ‘WTF is going to happen to us? And America? And the world?’

The mystery called, “Do the Leftists Have an Endgame”?

Do the actions of GoverFed fools comprise a series of single, one-off events, each one of which is aimed at getting more control for the government. But put together, those events have no particular or specific outcome? No endgame?

Or do the actions of GoverFed knaves comprise a plan to nationalize the whole private sector — as a command economy — and so end American freedom? It’s not a crazy idea. Many governments have done that to many nations in the past. With disastrous results, of course.

It seems to be an important question: Did incompetent GoverFed fools just wander into this debt-death-spiral a step at a time, believing that they were on top of things, that they were the experts who knew what the economy should do every step of the way? Or have sinister GoverFed knaves had a strategy all along? Method not madness.

If leftists have a plan that ends with the United States as a totalitarian nation, then the accumulation of a federal debt that literally cannot be repaid could be a part of that plan. A plan that's nearing completion. Perhaps in 2025, as some evidence suggests. A Conspiracy Theory You May Not Have Heard.