Quote:
Originally Posted by Xringer
Japan is a bit higher on that chart than China this month.
Those two have historically been the big international buyers.
It looks like China is holding about 1.5 trillion on average, this past year. With Japan just under a trillion.
If either one of them decides they no longer want to take our paper, then we are going to be in real trouble..
Have to resort to robbing the rich..?
Today, I heard that if we took ALL of Bill Gate's holdings, it would pay the interest on the debt for two (2) whole days.
If we took Oprah Winfrey's cash (and sold off her holdings for the cash),
that would pay the interest for what?? 90 minutes of debt accumulation??
U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time
We have to face facts, right now is not the time to be investing in schemes
that won't help with our current problems..
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If you figure is right China has already dropped half a trillion dollars in securities this year and we seem to be doing fine. Other countries and individuals have been willing to pick up the slack.
You're right about it being a spending problem to a large degree. Spending $700 billion/year on defense is a bit excessive. We would trim that to a more reasonable $350 billion per year. Let NATO play world police for a few decades. We are also not shaping medical policy well. Medicare payments would be substantially less if the focus was on care instead of treatment. One $40,000 hospital stay for an older person is the equivalent of paying someone $15/hour to help them three times a week for two hours each visit... For a decade! Doing simple things like making sure someone is taking their medication properly and helping with chores will drastically increase their standard of living and drastically decrease their medical costs. This may even cut costs by ~$100+ billion/year. This would also put downward pressure on medical costs as a whole for the entire country.
That said the way you're framing it is a bit disingenuous. We aren't looking at taking one person's money, in fact we probably aren't looking at individuals at all per say. In 1950
tax revenue from corporations was an extra $600 billion/year compared to today, and people back then weren't exactly sympathizing for the reds. Maybe you think that corporations should get over a half trillion bucks a year in tax breaks, but my grandparents didn't and I don't either.
We could also let the tax cuts for the wealthiest expire, which would add another $100 billion/year. At that point we've pretty much erased the budget deficit, and all it took was an approach similar to what our parents/grandparents had in the 50s.
So, in summation...
- Reduce defense spending
- Insure corporations pay now what they paid in the 50s
- Let the tax cuts for the rich expire
- Focus on overall care instead of just medical treatment
Those four things will pretty much eliminate the budget deficit, and Oprah can keep most of her money.
