Slashdot Mirror

>"Yes, show me how its all going to be paid for, and most of it will be contracted out."

Yep. Now extend that to ALL Federal programs, regulations, laws, and pork. Like that will ever happen...

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

He doesn't care about science, or exploration, or doing things the right way.

There is no scientific reason to send people to Mars. It is a political stunt. Every president is for it, but they all extend the schedule so the big spending will occur after they leave office.

Guess what? We aren't going to Mars by 2030. Here's the reason: National Debt Clock.

"...the United States' most prosperous state..."

If so, that's pretty fucking sad?
http://www.usdebtclock.org/sta...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/t... says:

"How much in debt are the California governments? Thatâ(TM)s hard to know too. According to a January 2017 study, âoeCalifornia state and local governments owe $1.3 trillion as of June 30, 2015.â The study was based on âoea review of federal, state and local financial disclosures.â

In other words, that $1.3 trillion in debt is the amount to which California governments admit. Other studies believe it to be more. Indeed, one study says it is actually $2.3 trillion and a recent Hoover Institute stated that there is over $1 trillion in pension liability alone, or $76,884 per household. Incredibly, there are 4 million current pension beneficiaries, a number that continues to grow and which exceeds the total population of 22 states.

Whatâ(TM)s the right number? Apparently, it is so large it is hard to accurately estimate. In every case, the number is staggering."

You mean, like America generally?

http://www.usdebtclock.org/
(it's at about $21.8 trillion as of this post)

We are the richest society in human history, and we still can't pay for all the shit we feel we need.
We borrow 1/4-1/3 of the US budget every year against "the future".

And before the inevitable comment: Yes, US military spending is huge, more than half of discretionary spending....however, discretionary spending is only about 1/3 the budget.
So when looking at "where does the US spend its $" from the total pile about 1/6 is military....while around 2/3 of the total US budget is spent on social spending.
https://www.nationalpriorities...

California has problems the way the entire country has problems. It's got an infrastructure built in the 60s that was designed to support less than half the people currently living in the state. Corporations get away with paying minimum taxes on maximum profits just they do in the rest of the country. And there is massive income inequality between the rich and the poor. All problems shared by the country at large.

Otoh, California's debt to GDP ratio is only 15.7%, whereas the country's (including CA) debt to GDP ratio is now 105.08% ( http://www.usdebtclock.org/ )

This is why: http://www.usdebtclock.org/. A lot of states are broke too. Mine certainly is.

The Nordic countries are rich in oil, low in population, and have been investing that money and it's working out for them.

The Nords also have much more impedance between the government and "the will of the people". America has weak political parties, and the smoke filled back rooms are long gone. The people get what they want, whether that is bread and circuses, or trillion dollar tax cuts. Any "asset fund" will end up liquidated and squandered on current consumption (or more tax cuts), much like what happened to most state level "rainy day" funds. For another example, look at how the states squandered the tobacco settlement, which was supposed to last for 30 years. Oops.

Talking about an "asset fund" is just silly when we have a rapidly growing national debt of $21 trillion.

Oh, wait, I just read the rest of the summary. They are going to use blockchains, so nevermind, that solves everything. Whew.

As I've always said, the US is heading toward insolvency because of automation. And it goes like this...

-First of all, take a look at the Federal Debt Federal Debt See that? Doesn't look too good, does it?

-Now, factor in globalism where there's a MASSIVE wealth transfer from United States of America to overseas. Any wealth generated in GDP is coming back to the US as opportunity, but concentrated in the major cities. This hollowed out the urban regions as they can't compete on both wages and product (it's why Trump won BTW).

-Add in automation, and now we have a force that's inherently DEFLATIONARY on the economy. It's tantamount to a slave force. Machines don't value themselves, so they're essentially free labor after you account human labor of design and maintenance of said machines.

-This will lead to lead to higher unemployment after the economic "Trump High" wears off (the crash will be a killer depression) in terms of less people in the work force as a over-all percentage of the population.

-More people will vote in a livable wage. More money is printed, massive stagflation kicks in from both inflationary and automated deflationary forces. Money becomes essentially a meaningless store of wealth while simultaneously being required.

-US dollar abandoned, or a massive World War settles reshapes the geopolitical and economic landscape. Or, a combination of all of the above.

Stalking you, hardly. You just seem to float to the top but not to worry. After this post I'm applying a -2 freak award to you. I will never have to see your crap again.

https://www.statista.com/stati...

http://www.latimes.com/politic...

https://www.usgovernmentdebt.u...

I really like this one.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/sta...

>"I would imagine that would cause more shutdowns (that might last a shorter duration) as they spend money up to/over the limit until there is a new influx of money from taxes. "

There is a word for that- "savings." Make savings part of the budget and then we have a buffer until we can, again, lower spending or raise taxes.

The problem is the mentality that we can just borrow our way out of problems. It doesn't work. "In 2015, the United States government spent $223 billion in tax dollars just to service the national debt."

http://nationalinterest.org/bl...

And the biggest root problem is that people keep voting for leaders who will spend more AND tax less. It is very unfortunate that there was not some mandate in the Constitution to deal with this that can't be so easily overridden. Of course, the Constitution didn't stop the Fed from spending trillions on things clearly "reserved to the States or the People".

Approaching $21 trillion now and still growing at $10k PER SECOND...
http://www.usdebtclock.org/

http://www.usdebtclock.org/gol...

Bah the last post messed up.

Here's a link to where all of the Gold goes... (Gold demand by country)

http://www.usdebtclock.org/gol...

Cough http://www.usdebtclock.org. Not possible sorry.

I generally agree with your sentiment, but your individual debt figure is off by over an order of magnitude. The debt per citizen is a bit over $62K, while the debt per taxpayer is over $168K.

Source: http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Also, I'm not sure how you figure deficit spending is "unconstitutional". The US does not have a balance budget amendment.

So it takes a SECOND breech before they decide to suspend the contract? If they have the option to suspend it now, why didn't they do it before? I think this speaks volumes about the competence of the IRS.

How about we move to a simple flat tax with no loopholes, which would dismantle 80% of the IRS and either pass the savings onto the taxpayers or use the savings to start paying off the 20 TRILLION DOLLAR national debt?

Even they admit they directly spend over 12 BILLION dollars a year, which goes up every year! Yet that doesn't include what it costs businesses and individuals to COMPLY with the insanely complicated tax codes. That compliance is estimated to cost the USA economy an additional $409 BILLION dollars every year. Wow, that works out to $3,500 dollars for every tax payer in the country, every year.

https://taxfoundation.org/comp...

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

https://fairtax.org/index

But all liberals can say in order to explain away their terrible choice of a losing candidate

It's not about explaining away their terrible choice of a losing candidate, it's about explaining away the very substance of their beings.

Liberalism IS a terrible choice that people choose after making many terrible choices in their lives after accepting and inheriting the many terrible choices their ancestors made.

They simply have had the instinct to turn back and try again struck from their being. They are incapable of self-correction. All they know is 'doubling down'.
"If this is such a terrible choice then why am I still alive after 375 years? $25 trillion on black please."
It doesn't occur to them that civilization ~7000 years old would take longer than that to die. Perhaps that's another of the instinctual deficiencies piling up in the liberal camp.

The vast majority of the population has absolutely no soul and thus cannot really be considered to be human.
The a mass of human essence can only be divided up so finely before it annihilates and explodes; you just can't have too many people thinking too many different things going around asserting themselves. There is just absolutely no practical application in nature for such diversity in methodology. These are evolution's miscarriages trying to gnaw a survival-niche into a void.

Reject liberalism and embrace a future for humanity.

Everyone knows the labor reporting in the U.S. is a crock. I don't know why they bother reporting these lies. Here are the raw numbers: http://www.usdebtclock.org/ You can spin the data any way you wish but it appears the actual unemployment number is just twice what is being reported. On top of that my anecdotal experience is that my working friends are underemployed.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/sta...

Are you sure it will be so easy to scrape up $3,000,000,000 to give to corrupt polluters?

Cut military spending by 80% and we'll have more money than we'd know what to do with.

It would barely make a dent. We spend more on each of Social Security and Medicare than we do on the military (each is almost twice as much these days). Military spending is only about 1/7th of the budget, and cutting military spending to 0 wouldn't even eliminate the budget deficit, sadly enough.

http://usdebtclock.org/

Stop whining like a spoiled brat and get to work, no one owes you anything.

Stop stealing from me what I earn and I won't be complaining. Every $1 you borrow I will have to repay as taxes. So you could live the high life in retirement you haven't paid for.

If anyone was paying attention he is looking at everything. He is renegotiating everything. Hell before he even set foot in the office he renegotiated several billion out of the military budget.

It is all up for grabs. Basically since Nixon we have kicked the can down the road. Regan amped it up. Clinton 'paid it off' by swiping the money from SS. Obama put the crown on it. We are in serious financial trouble.

This is exactly what we need. Cuts across the board. This is going to impact everything. We are 20 trillion in the hole. With another 100 trillion unfunded. With a deficit of 600 billion. Even if we cut the *entire* military we are still short. We need to talk seriously about it. Military cuts and other programs are going to have to drastically be cut back. Even without the military we are still short about 200 billion PER year.

Still dont think we are in trouble? Compare for yourself http://www.usdebtclock.org/200... vs http://www.usdebtclock.org/

The fed has been playing a nasty trick on the people who loaned us money. We are at nearly 2x inflation since the year 2000. We are literally stealing peoples and other countries money. We are making up money to steal wealth. As that is what inflationary funding does. It steals wealth. It discourages saving. Banks are making up the money not from assets but from fed borrowing.

The only saving grace to all of this is the debt interest ratio is low or near 0 and we renegotiated a lot of it.

I am being 100% serious. If we do not fix this. Our gov will no longer exist eventually. They will not be able to pay the bills. No one will accept their 'money'.

If anyone was paying attention he is looking at everything. He is renegotiating everything. Hell before he even set foot in the office he renegotiated several billion out of the military budget.

It is all up for grabs. Basically since Nixon we have kicked the can down the road. Regan amped it up. Clinton 'paid it off' by swiping the money from SS. Obama put the crown on it. We are in serious financial trouble.

This is exactly what we need. Cuts across the board. This is going to impact everything. We are 20 trillion in the hole. With another 100 trillion unfunded. With a deficit of 600 billion. Even if we cut the *entire* military we are still short. We need to talk seriously about it. Military cuts and other programs are going to have to drastically be cut back. Even without the military we are still short about 200 billion PER year.

Still dont think we are in trouble? Compare for yourself http://www.usdebtclock.org/200... vs http://www.usdebtclock.org/

The fed has been playing a nasty trick on the people who loaned us money. We are at nearly 2x inflation since the year 2000. We are literally stealing peoples and other countries money. We are making up money to steal wealth. As that is what inflationary funding does. It steals wealth. It discourages saving. Banks are making up the money not from assets but from fed borrowing.

The only saving grace to all of this is the debt interest ratio is low or near 0 and we renegotiated a lot of it.

I am being 100% serious. If we do not fix this. Our gov will no longer exist eventually. They will not be able to pay the bills. No one will accept their 'money'.

The whole nation has been living in la-la land ever since the federal debt hit $10T. Everyone knows that it's now just a case of pushing the day of reckoning further and further down the road via things like artificially inflated bubble stock markets and hoping for unicorns outnumbering black swans.

More than half the population is receiving benefits, less than half the population is working (see here), and it's just going to get worse as more "good quality" jobs disappear.

... tax the rich bastards

Careful, you're revealing your ulterior motives (envy and greed).

... at a 50% tax rate

Golden rule: how would you like to be taxed at 50%?

... which would benefit everyone.

The fact that you are included in the "everyone" group did not escape my notice.

That money could be used to feed the hungry, rebuild roads and bridges ...

You're so altruistic when planning how to spend other people's money.

... pay for basic research that corporations no longer do...

Because IBM (just to name a single example) isn't filing huge numbers of patents and innovations every year, right?
Also, I like how vague and condescending your term "basic research" is.

... and help us pay off the crushing debt we are already under.

Or we could stop giving money to foreign governments, stop handing out "free" stuff to our own citizens, stop spending fortunes on cruise missiles and drones, etc. ...

The Forbes 400 for America says that they own about $2.4 trillion. So you would have to go after a much larger number of people than that if you want to really punish those evil greedy rich people whose money we wish we had.
The federal budget is about $3.95 trillion with a deficit of $616 billion and a total debt of just short of $20 trillion.
This article gives the net worth required to be in a percentile of wealth.

Please check my math: 0.01 * 338 million = 338,000 people => 338,000 * $30,644,280 gives us a guess of their net worth being about $97,448,810,400,000 (ninety seven trillion dollars assuming that they all have about a thirty million dollar net worth).

If confiscated then that would be sufficient to pay the national debt... You were saying merely that we should tax them at higher rates (50%). It really just means taking their money over time rather than all at once.

The end effect is the same. In the long term, it would produce the following problems:
1. The rich will just leave. Nobody will sit around while most or all of their wealth is confiscated. It doesn't matter how justified you think it is, they won't just sit there and be shafted. Next year you won't have anyone to confiscate the wealth from.
2. All businesses who can possibly manage to do so will flee the country. What do you think that would do to the GDP? Do you think tax revenues would go up or down?
3. You will have set the precedent that in this country we'll just take your stuff if you have it and we want it. Talk about the destruction of Western civilization. Everything is predicated upon the notion of "ownership" in our culture, society, and civilization. If you can just take someone else's stuff because you want it (individually or collectively) then what incentive is there to work, to earn and save, to do anything other than the absolute bare minimum to get through today? Would you work for free? Would you work for subsistence wages? Would you think it was fair if most of your income were taken away from you and given to others? Why do you think anyone else would or should?
4. With the evacuation of businesses (and jobs) and the ultra-rich a power vacuum and societal upheaval will leave the country vulnerable. Probably you would get a dictator in a couple years promising to make things better and to punish those responsible... read a history book or recall your history lessons in school and you'll see how such

So, you're going to replace Social Security payments of $24K or so with a UBI of $5-10K? Seniors literally starving to death in the streets. Quite a modest proposal there.

You can see the actual budget numbers here, BTW, at least for the big-ticket items. http://www.usdebtclock.org/ "Welfare" is $300B.

Don't mistake a lack of interest with a lack of capability.

Don't mistake a lack of money for a lack of interest.

Doesn't matter what else you cut, you can't spend 150-200% of the budget (for long). Do you see this?

Military spending is only 18% of federal revenue, or 15% of the budget. Don't be confused by "discretionary spending" pie charts: those are pure propaganda. We spend almost twice as much on each of SS and Medi*.

Check out http://www.usdebtclock.org/

BTW, other welfare programs that a UBI might replace are only about 9% of federal revenue, or 8% of the federal budget, so we get relatively little by replacing those.

UBI is a nice idea for countries who have their economy in order with the goal of long term prosperity.

Even if that statement is correct, this does not look like a country with its economy in order.

In 1978, when the Labor Force Participation Rate was only 63% and the national debt was only $0.77 trillion, Carter talked about economic "malaise" and a high "misery index."

In 2016, when the Labor Force Participation Rate is only 63% and the national debt is $17.3 trillion, the administration brags about how sustained and robust the "recovery" has been.

Best link for actual numbers I've found is http://usdebtclock.org/

We spend $306 B on "income security", basically all the "welfare" style programs. That's $1000/year each. Unemployment benefits cost $250B, and all the HUD assistance is small, maybe $50B, so all together we're looking at around $2000/year each for poverty programs.

We spend $899 B on Social Security. That's $3000/year each.

So that's $5000/year. Not really subsistence yet.

Look at it another way, total federal revenue (income, payroll, corporate taxes) is only $10,300/year per citizen. Average cost of health care in the US is around $3000/year. (Cheap Bronze plans on the exchange in 2015 are around $200/month), but these numbers vary a lot state-to-state.

I'm not seeing where we get to subsistence, even with half the government's income. Sure, of course we can always print enough money to pay any income you want "and we all had plenty of money, but there was nothing our money could buy".

BTW, it won't smooth out the economic cycles very much (I'm sure it will help a little), because it's going to be a small % of overall GDP, and people with jobs simply spend less (especially delay big purchases) when the future is uncertain.

Are you kidding? Federal government spending is 25% of GDP, total government spending is nearly 40% of GDP; these numbers have been going up for many decades. At what point do you consider government spending to be "enough"?

To be fair, current federal spending is:
* 68% mailing checks to the old and the poor
* 15% military
* 6% interest
* 11% everything else

We can reduce spending greatly while doubling spending on infrastructure, education, NASA, even enforcing regulations. We'd just have to be willing to mail less money to people. Sadly, those people are now a majority of voters, so it won't happen. (State and local spending is even more dominated by pension plans and related check-mailing.)

More pollution and more trash are by products of people using more resources.

I've seen visual proof that is false. Over the past 20 years, the sky over Denver has become much less smoggy, even as resource consumption increased. Why? R&D departments, funded by capitalists, developed internal combustion engines that burn fuel more completely.

Socialism tries to make it capitalism more efficient

A generous description of socialism is that it seeks to address social ills in the short term, at the expense of economic growth that would provide a more sustainable way of addressing those ills in the long term. (A less generous description is that socialists get off on exercising control over the fruits of others' labor.)

Owners of capital naturally seek the highest possible return on their capital. And high-return-on-investment endeavors, by definition, create more and better jobs than low-return-on-investment endeavors. So it is axiomatic that when government coercively directs capital into endeavors other than those that capitalists would choose, fewer jobs are created than otherwise would be. (Providing for the national defense is an exception. Building roads and bridges is not an exception.)

If you want people to have healthcare capitalism will always fail at that.

Another easily-disproven assertion. Over the decades before purchasing health insurance became mandatory, the number of uninsured people dropped drastically. Why? Economic growth, caused by capitalism, gave more and more employers the means to provide this benefit (and it gave governments a lot of additional tax revenue, enabling the creation of Medicaid and Medicare for citizens who don't work). As such, capitalism caused a huge, organic decrease in the number of uninsured people. Allowing this trend to continue for a few more decades certainly would have made health insurance universal, with minimal coercion.

It's claimed that the non-free-market tinkering of the "Affordable Care Act" has accelerated the decrease in the number of uninsured people. If true, it happened in a coercive, very non-organic way that certainly puts a dent in economic growth -- and $101 trillion in unfunded liabilities make me pessimistic that the approach is sustainable.

Today's young are already crippled by more debt than they can ever pay off in their life times

The US national debt is over $160,000 per taxpayer. Great gift to our kids to go with their college loans. Unfunded liabilities are over $850,000 per taxpayer, so just over a million total. I'm sure today's youth will get right on paying that while I'm in retirement. (And yet, suggest on /. that maybe we could spend a bit less and someone will reply asking "why don't you move to Somalia", as if the extremes were our only choices.)

Another fun stat: the total value of all assets in America is slightly less than the total of various government debts and unfunded liabilities. This will inevitably end in "but though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy," which is actually good news for those under crippling personal debt, as enough inflation fixes that problem.

The current system, which limits the number of entitlement programs voters can vote for themselves, has created an $18.8 trillion national debt and what's far scarier, over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities: http://usdebtclock.org/

If those limitations were removed, I'd expect such an orgy of debt that the U.S. would have no choice but to default or careen into hyperinflation.

As they say, "A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

Secondly, you assert that pretty much everything I consume is heavily subsidized. To the point where I am getting a heck of a deal, receiving goods and services that exceed in value and cost what I pay for them. As I am an average joe, most of the country must be getting the same benefit. My question is, where the hell is all the money coming from to pay the difference?

He's right, you are getting a heck of a deal. As to the question of where the money is coming from: We're borrowing the money. Same as we have been for the past 20 years.

At some point, it will be time to pay the piper. The sooner we face the reality, the easier it will be. If we wait for the next financial crisis, it could be Greece all over again.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

The fundamentals of the US economy are looking great in comparison to what? Are you seriously content because "at least we're not in as bad shape as Greece!"? Housing prices are starting to come back - that's a good thing right? That no one can afford a house unless they sell their and their children's future into usury? Because a fundamental gauge of the economy is the PRICE OF YOUR HOUSE. No, that's only good for bankrupt americans who have no equity at all except the meagre slice they are forced by the banks to have if they buy a house. Buying a home then selling it is not a valid "business model". It's speculation. And just like any other speculator, one day honey you are going to get screwed.

Our founding father's were AGAINST a standing army FYI. They would shit themselves at the percentage of our taxes that go to our military complex...

It's not the Cold War: we only spend about 16% of the federal budget on defense (don't be misled by "discretionary spending" BS). A non-trivial portion of that goes to basic research.

We spent 60% more on Medi* than on defense, and there's far more waste and fraud in that system. (Both must balance cost of waste and fraud vs cost of policing waste and fraud, and it's not obvious what the optimal balance is.) We spend 48% more on Social Security than on defense. It's not like we're ignoring social programs here.

For the curious, US Debt Clock has a great 1-page overview of spending, revenue, debt, and unfunded liabilities.

You have to wonder, then, what will happen in the United States a few years down the line when the many social programs implode. Digging out of it seems impossible given that unfunded liabilities are, as of this writing, over $818000 per taxpayer (see bottom line) and that is an optimistic number (pessimistic numbers more than double that). Food-wise, with cuts to Social Security, I expect we'll have senior riots - old and slow and easy to machine gun down, but who knows what kinds of people the failure of the health programs will bring. Since I will be approaching being a senior around that time, I've been hedging against expecting anything from the government and likely will move out of the country before then (my wife wants to retire to Ecuador, I'd prefer Europe, as my German is far better than my Spanish).

Debts and budgets are not contradictory. You can have debt AND have a balanced budget.

Organizations, businesses, individuals, even governments do it. They take on debt, get loans or bonds or other money, and have a budget to pay the principle and interest in a certain period of time. Many states even have balanced budget provisions in their state constitutions and routinely get some debt for capital funds to build new schools, zoos, parks, and more; then they make payments and after a few years fulfill the debt obligations. They have debt and a balanced budget.

What groups cannot do is survive in the long term with a budget deficit. When your expenses exceed your income for enough time, eventually your resources will dwindle and fail. That applies to individuals, to businesses, and to governments.

Deficit spending works for a while when you have money in the bank, and it works when you have other resources available to offset the money. You can have debt but still afford to make payments on the loan. But in the long term eventually the groups will reach the critical point where they cannot afford the debt payments, and the US is rapidly reaching the critical tipping point.

1) http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Looks pretty bad to me.

2) Did you look at a photo of the SBX? And did you read that it has about a fifth of the field of view of a regular radar? And they realign it manually?
It should have been shut down quick smart.

All of the wealth in America, including all corporate assets, all retirement plans, and all home equity, is less than $350k per citizen. That won't solve much. Even if you distributed it, most people would be broke in a year - wealth is a habit more than anything else.

In the long run, we benefit far more from wise investment decisions than from redistribution, because economic growth is exponential growth, and redistribution is a one-time constant. 95% of Americans live better than 99% of everyone who has ever lived. The median income in America is far more than the $30k or so that makes you a "1%er" of the world. Exponential growth per capita comes from technological progress, and there's no reason to believe technology will stop progressing.

Are the currently wealthy the best as making investment decisions? No, of course it's not optimal, but it's not terrible either. The entire premise of Capitalism is that you buy wealth, rather than being gifted it for loyalty to the leader or military conquest, so the better you invest your wealth, the more you can accumulate. That's a good thing when it works out that way!

You've fallen for the "discretionary spending" sales pitch. This pie chart is a bit old, and still has some war spending that we don't have for 2014, but it's still informative. http://usdebtclock.org/ is up to the minute, and cites every number.

Mostly what the federal government does is mail checks to old and/or poor people. Stuff like infrastructure and NASA is collectively an afterthought, and much (most?) of that is pork. As others have said, our government is a pension plan with a military.

I'd like to see more NASA, more roads, more NSF, more building anything, but that's just not the focus of the federal government these days.

Objectivists are not responsible for over $115 trillion in unfunded liabilities. http://www.usdebtclock.org/

You're off by an order of magnitude there - US debt is currently approaching $18 trillion, or about $56k per person.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Future generations will scarcely believe that we were here now, watching the footing for their prison be poured, and we did nothing.

I've got news for you, the problem isn't a future "prison," but rather the chains being forged. Those chains grow longer, heavier, the warnings continue, and nothing useful is being done about it. Demographics are against the US. This is not likely to end well.

Oh, it's coming. http://www.usdebtclock.org/

You'll like this then: http://usdebtclock.org/

Also, just Wikipedia for the US budget breakdown, but the debt clock is well-sourced and has the big-ticket items.

It's always amazing how blind people are to the US being anything but perfect.

1) The US dollar is, by far, not the most secure currency in the world.
http://content.time.com/time/b... (a bit dated but the reasoning is sound and is backed up by the next two links)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

2) The US is bankrupt with debt as a ridiculous amount and the situation is only getting worse as our politicians continue to spend what we just plain don't have to spend. There has been discussion of a US dollar default which, were it to happen, would completely devastate the value of the US dollar. That discussion will restart today which will most likely result in bitcoin (and other currencies) going up in relative value against the US dollar which will also drive it up in value against other currencies.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
http://www.reuters.com/article...

I'm not saying bitcoin is safe. It's not - it's very risk compared to government backed currencies. But don't make the mistake of thinking the US dollar is as safe as you seem to think it is either. Default seems inevitable at some point in time as the US just keeps spending and spending and spending with no end in sight.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/#