And I believe what you're also implying is that folks who bitch about the huge US debt tend to ignore which country or countries have the largest GDP, too! Even looking at it on a per capita basis can make the list change a lot, too.

Yes, exactly! And while most of us here are talking about The Problems, few have put forth any possible solutions. And the name-calling and ad hominums are really starting to piss me off, too.

I thought we Gulchers dealt with facts, not insults?

Robbie, that's another fiction, too... Some debts have fixed 'payoff dates,' but I don't think there is one set for 'the National Debt', is there? Link, please?

Even a home mortgage with a paydown schedule has only a 'last payment date' not a 'callable expiration.'

As my friends at MarketMinder.com keep saying, neither China nor anyone else is going to 'cash out of US bonds'... it makes no sense for them to do so and it would hurt them as much or more than it would hurt 'us.'

Or, more simply, "What's the 'Due Date' on our National Debt?" Link, please? :)

Hey, I NEVER claimed that there was any "willingness" to reverse the trend! The Liberals see tax revenues as a bottomless well to pay for anything they think is worth paying for AND so do the Conservatives.

The Liberals tend to want to spend the money on 'social support and infrastructure' whether any of the programs have ever demonstrated success in reaching their alleged goals, AND the Conservatives love to take that money and funnel it into National Security issues... like military programs... whether the Pentagon even wants the program or not.

Oh, and as a current footnote on debt versus income, my wife and I currently carry a debt load of about $75k and ALL of our 'income' is from SocSec and IRA withdrawals.

In ten and a half years, our TOTAL IRA balances are down about 2/3 of one percent, after hundreds of thousands of dollars of fees and withdrawals. Our SocSec 'income' would cover maybe half of our outstanding debt (which comprises a Home Equity Loan and our Visa account (which is paid off in full every month from our checking account.))

It's not the Debt... it's the debt LOAD on your cash flow that matters!

Keep in mind, too, that the Boomer Generation (which began just after I was born) grew up into the instant-gratification and "pay"-with-plastic credit card mentality, and severely hyperextended itself in every way possible. The Boomers supported the 'government will supply all of our needs' belief and didn't save bupkis towards their own retirements.

Reality bites.

Why can't you accept the facts? Intragovernmental loans come from previous revenue-- trust funds running a surplus. There's been no borrowing from outside the government, unlike the other Treasury instruments that make up the real debt.

You people are so disappointing. I noticed when I worked to support the Ron Paul campaign in 2008 that most of the people around me were 9/11 Truthers-- ironically, of course, people utterly resistant to truth in any form because fantasies of vast conspiracies were so much more comforting to them.

This was a total reversal from Dr. Paul's campaign in 1988, which I also worked for, having the privilege of spending a day with Dr. Paul and hosting Andre Marrou at my home. By and large, their supporters were the very best of the Libertarian Party, the nut jobs having been mostly distracted by Russell Means. But now the LP, like much of the Objectivist movement, has become an asylum run by the inmates. No wonder Dr. Paul went back to the Republican Party-- people like you drove him back there.

There's a similar but even greater irony here, which is that a forum named after Galt's Gulch is dominated by people like you who have no interest in facts, only a fanatical devotion to their own comforting fantasies. Do you remember what John Galt said about Galt's Gulch?

"Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever.”

You don't belong here. This place should belong to those who accept the facts, think rationally, and speak the truth. People like me.

Get the hell out of our way.

But your example is a straw man. It assumes that the plumber will never find a way to live within his means and will, forever increase his credit card load.

As I said before, I was a "$24-27k marketing guy with a $70k mortgage"! My wife and I DID have a negative cash flow of about $1000 a month for nearly a year until she found a well-paying job.
Inflation obviously helped decrease the impact of our mortgage payment (something like $610 a month... I just unearthed some old tax records to shred...) but about 15 years later, we'd paid the entire mortgage off!

To paint the picture that an alternative scenario is impossible or that everyone in the 'plumber's position' will be there forever is what I call 'the catastrophization of America.' All problems will destroy everyone all the time and no solution is feasible without everyone getting screwed one way or the other.

If I want that kind of rhetoric, I can turn to leftish TV 'news' broadcasts or virtually anything that escapes Obama's mouth.

Sorry...

No argument from me on that, Robbie... but all I'm trying to point out is that the situation you've accurately described is the result of nearly a hundred years of failure to adjust the rules and deductions and contributions leading to the future debacle.

What I'm trying to say is that if it takes 100 years to really screw up a system, maybe 'plans to change course' shouldn't include expectations to Fix Everything in our next Five Year Plan... if there even were one.

I have proposed and supported plans to make SocSec voluntary and opt-in OR opt-out, with clearly-defined terminology and rules and obligations on the part of all workers who sign up or out.

That's why I referred to a roughly '40-year working life' as what I considered a 'reasonable' amount of time for most humans to adjust their savings, spending and retirement planning to achieve a safer and more secure retirement life for themselves and their families.

As for 'calling in the debt,' I think we all can expect that the 'solution' that will come out of DC will be some kind of kicking-the-can-further-down-the-road, coupled with pulling the wool over as many eyes as possible so that 'harsh realities' don't have to be experienced by Anyone, Ever. Including Congressmonkeys....

The aging of population is worldwide.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/31...
The 65-over group will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% percent of our population. But how many age groups made up the 100%? Five or six? Do you know?
The 65-over group will always have an advantage in statistics because it covers several decades, while the other groups tend to be counted in ten-to-fifteen year increments.
I think I saw one article recently that actually make a separate group of the 85-older, but still...that doesn’t happen often.
So tell me: What age group has a bigger than 20% pool? Hmmm?

Just so we are clear, I have not downpointed you yet.

Obama would say that this money is owed to ourselves, except that the money will be taken by the looters from the producers and given to the moochers.

The difference between the 100+% debt/GDP ratio and the 74% debt/GDP ratio quoted by png is mostly such IOU's from the Social Security trust fund, with some Medicare thrown in, as well as a few other smaller items.