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The unfunded liabilities are what, about 114 trillion?

Correct, according the the US national debt clock they are currently about 114 trillion. The problem with the concept of unfunded liabilities is that they are based on current spending and rates of increase projected out some arbitrary amount of time. Currently I think they are projecting these values out for 50 or 75 years. Projecting things that far in the future when it comes to government spending is basically worthless.

If you're reading this page, you're probably a taxpayer. If not yet, then you will be. Did you enjoy that money being spent in your name? You're liable for it! Even if you don't pay off your share, you'll be paying the interest on it! Think about it: $130K would buy a really amazingly sweet ride, like a 2011 Corvette ZR1. You don't have that ride, now do you? But, you have to pay the bill. Not so fair, is it? And, if you don't pay the bill, don't worry... your kids will get to keep paying it off. Nice parent you are!

That's where I really get ticked-off: My kids aren't old enough to vote, but that doesn't stop the politicians from borrowing money "in their name". I call that THEFT! It is just PLAIN EVIL.

I'm willing to go toe-to-toe with anyone to argue the benefits and pitfalls of taxes vs. spending. But leave my kids out of it! If we can't pay for something this year, then we don't do it! Pick on someone your own size! Don't steal my kids' money before they can vote! Don't steal their money before they're born!

As I tell the younger folks in my office: When are you gonna say, "We're just not gonna pay back the money you borrowed and spent without our permission!" ?

US Debtclock

You are almost at 55 trillion in total debt, that's like only 20 trillion away from the annual Global Domestic Product.

Aint that something?

Just looked it up. Total debt including citizens is $54 trillion, or $669000 per family. Good luck paying that off... http://www.usdebtclock.org/#

See here. Right now, it's about $1.36 trillion. We're about 63% through the fiscal year. Extrapolating the deficit at the current rate and we'll end up around $2.16 trillion. Note that the CBO does NOT include off-budget items; the actual debt clock does, however.

Are you counting US citizens as holders of US debt in your "rest of the world combined" comparison? I bet you are not. Foreign entities only own a total of 4ish trillion dollars, domestic entities own 10ish trillion. http://www.usdebtclock.org

Errhh... what?

You say China is heading to enormous dept crisis because _Railways Ministry_ has only $276 _billion_ dept?

That is a sum what is nothing when compared to US dept... If it would be $276 _trillion_ then it would be enormous! As US dept is over 14 trillion currently and rising in speed where the $276 billion is developed in _few days_.

And about ghost cities, yes, there is huge ghost metropoly in China, where they could actually move people but they dont.
But how about U.S cities what are "ghosting" all the times? Detroit is not the only one or "last one" or even only big one.

The difference between U.S Ghost towns and China Ghost metropoly is that later is build and new one in good fit. While first ones are in terrible shape because capitalism.

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

It's not 6%... http://www.usdebtclock.org/ Quotes US national debt at ~14 trillion. China holds ~3 trillion in US bonds. That is ~21% of our national debt. Citation:http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-04/23/c_13842843.htm Also, bonds aren't the only form of obligations the US sells to cover its debts. I think its safe to assume China likely owns a larger chunk of US debt than the bonds alone. In a world of nuclear weapons, economic domination is king. You may also want to look at the alliances China is trying to form with the many enemies (or barely neutral parties) the US has acquired over the years. Most recently that includes Afghanistan, though this is a work in progress. tl;dr China owns roughly 21% of US national debt through bonds alone.

Hmmm. I think I've solved the deficit problem! How much in taxes will these record companies owe on their $75 trillion? Even if they just pay 2% (which seems a little high when you compare with the effective tax rates paid by companies like Bank Of America) it would be $1.5 trillion, so it would take care of the budget deficit. It'd even put a hundred billion or so toward the US national debt. Problem solved! Now PAY UP, LIMEWIRE!!!!!

$ 4.3 M - Oh, come on, get a perspective!

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Where are they? Fffft - gone!

First it will get paid out of corporate funds - reduces profit, taxes and, since profitability is a must - stockholders want their cut - the customers will come up for it.
Size of company/revenue in relation to penalty is unknown, which would be interesting, is it even worth a scratch?
Maybe lawyers are making more on it challenging the whole thing.

The modern-fad "doomsday clock" would perhaps be inspired after the nuclear-war doomday clock, counting how close to implosion Wall St gets. In any case, it's neared midnight a number of times now. People like apocalypse clocks. doomsday clock, US Debt clock, ipv6 countdown clock. Impossible to tell how many fear and how many hope for a "Wall St Doomsday" -- but a clock just counts time.

Our debt isn't going to funding some great technological revolution that will generate future economic growth, it's mostly going to pay people not to work (welfare, Social Security, etc), to pay for health care (making people live longer so they suck up even more resources) and the military (generally in the business of destroying stuff and building up other countries rather than our own).

Why can't we afford it? We're barely treading water as it is and all the new spending we add is just adding another lead weight onto us. If were weren't mired in entitlement programs, we could afford to fund more research. In addition to the debt we do see, there's over $110 trillion in unfunded obligations owed for the existing entitlement programs, putting us, in reality, closer to 900% debt:GDP unless you're going to severely slash the entitlement programs. We're already well down the path to unsustainability.

Money is already printing itself these days.

Your numbers for Social Security, Medicare and Medicare D are way off. Do you really expect anyone to take your post seriously when you suggest that social security is currently $14.7 trillion in debt, nearly the same as the entire GDP of the US? And moreover, that Medicare is currently $77 trillion in debt, which is $16 trillion more than the world GDP!.

Perhaps your numbers are over long periods of time, and if they are, then say that! Instead you just come off as someone who has absolutely no clue. Yes, SS/Medicare are doomed if we don't fix them, but keep the FUD numbers out of the discussion.

My source is the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank as I pointed out in another post, with updated projections provided by usdebtclock.org. The numbers are the total unfunded liability. That is, not debt that is immediately owed today, but just how far in debt the programs are long term. Social Security owes $14.7 trillion more than it will take in by 2078 and is already running a deficit now despite projections that it wouldn't start until 2017. Likewise, Medicare is projected to go into the red in 2016. We're basically at the point of unsustainability already and things will only get worse.

Just because you don't like the numbers doesn't mean they are FUD. They're a stark reality that most people WANT to ignore because it points out just how much Enron style accounting goes on in Washington, DC - just like there was never an actual budget surplus in the late 90s, aggregate debt increased every year and has every year since 1957. It was all just "advanced" accounting techniques to hide the real deficits, just like the 40+ year long raid of the Social Security Trust Fund.

Every time someone says that my numbers are bogus (and I think you're about #5 in this thread), I can't help but think back to Liar, Liar:
Fletcher: Your Honor, I object!
Judge: Why?
Fletcher: Because it's devastating to my case!

However, I do want to respond to one point of yours, which is the idea that you'll never get your SS/Medicare back. There is one extremely important component of Social Security that even young people sometimes benefit from: Disability benefits. If you suffer an injury that will keep you out of work for 12+ months, you can get compensation. This is, of course, assuming you've been paying into SS for long enough (which varies based on your age and a whole host of seemingly random factors)

There are a non-trivial number of people that collect SSDI (my dad among them after a series of brain injuries initially caused by an aneurysm. We'll also ignore those born disabled that still collect SSDI even though they'll never work in their lifetime. Further, though there are a lot of people that illegitmately collect benefits as well, but we'll ignore them for purposes of this discussion). That said, you can't really even consider them as much more than statistical noise in a discussion of whether or not you're going to collect benefits because if even a large minority of every 30, 40 or 50 something started collecting early, we would have bankrupted ages ago. Yes, there is a 1 in whatever chance that it'll be you that ends up disabled and you'll actually get back what you pay in, but there's also a 1 in whatever chance that you're going to die early and not receive a single dollar in benefits, save the $250 death benefit, and neither will your kids unless they're under 18. On the other hand, if you die at age 58 of a heart attack, your 19, 25 and 30 year old children could have received the money you would have invested had the government not taken it from you. Of course, that gets us back into the debate about whether or not SSI should exist in the first place - it's something you either believe in or don't and there is plenty of m

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

My numbers came from usdebtclock.org

The Times article you cite mentions the mythical "fund" that won't be exhausted until 2037. The 1967 amendment to the Social Security Act made it so that, any time Social Security ran a surplus, the money would go to the general fund in exchange for an IOU to be paid back later by Congress when Social Security was in deficit.

Those IOUs are what they're counting on as a "fund" and that money is flat out non-existent. The general fund is already running trillion+ dollar deficits without having to pay back the Social Security Trust Fund, meaning the money will either have to come from borrowing (sell more debt to China or to ourselves through the Fed), inflation (print more money to cover the deficit), taxation (which is likely to cause a revolt amongst working age people, especially younger ones, and will give them less money to prepare for their own future or current needs) or a reduction in payments (either through age increases, directly decreased payments, etc, which will likely cause a revolt amongst retirees and near retirees).

The "Greatest Generation" and the 1910s/30s/60s progressives sold today and tomorrow's generations down the river. We can only continue to ignore the reality of it for so long because it's going to come crashing down soon.

Nice idea!

I'd like to designate my share to said plan.

National Debt (credit extended to US by foreign nations) == over $140,000 per US household
Personal Debt == about $80,000 in mortgage and $10,000 in credit cards per USH
Unfunded Liabilities = $110,000 promised to Medicare and SS recipients (future retirees) per USH
==
TOTAL $230,000 currently owed plus $110,000 promised but unfunded = $340,000 per USH (approximately)

Yeah this cashfree, live on nothing-but-credit society is working out really great isn't? Oh and the claim the US is the "richest nation" simply isn't true. When a person is in debt, he is poor not rich. Now maybe we are not "as poor" as Greece (we don't owe as much per home) but we're still not as rich as Norway or Saudi Arabia with their abundant stocks of wealth, and zero debt.

Source (plus some googling)
- http://usdebtclock.org/

Much as some intentionally-childless moan about "having to support other people's children", technically it is the other way around. By deciding not to have children, you aren't "receiving less from the government", economically you are co-investing less in future taxpayers.

Sounds like a pyramid scheme. Wake me up when anyone gives a damn about lowering the national debt. http://www.usdebtclock.org/

From a tax and social policy perspective, in the current system, it is the height of selfishness to decide to be childless and put neither the money nor the child-rearing effort into maintaining society into the future.

Methinks it is the height of selfishness to expect other people (current or future generations) to raise or pay for YOUR kid(s), that YOU decided to have -- noone else!

Perhaps if we were experiencing under-population or going extinct you might have a point, but when I get stuck in traffic I sense the opposite.

It is the "height of selfishness" to be childless? REALLY?

I'd love to meet these you alude to that are ready & willing to have sex with me!

Or maybe I should adopt?

The fact that there even *are* children that need adopted is evidence that not all people who have children should.

How about we teach the children that to maintain society, they should learn how to take care of themselves, rather than have them rely on easy targets (childless people) for handouts all the time?

Given my knowledge of the various schools of political philosophy to which many of the founding fathers subscribed I would tend to agree with your assertion that they bore an inherent suspicion of statism. However these suspicions should not be taken out of context, their principal concern would have centred on the maintenance of a large standing army. Many of them held quite socialist views in fact (this was back in the days when socialism wasn't a dirty word in the states). Yet in spite of this heritage, today the United States of America maintains just such a standing army (as well as a standing navy, air-force and various federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies) with an annual military budget well in excess of $600,000,000,000 .

Any objections levied against universal healthcare on the grounds of liberty are in my opinion rendered moot by the fact that one of the greatest threats to liberty, a large standing military infrastructure controlled by a unitary executive, is already well established within your government culture. Furthermore cries of "We can't afford universal healthcare now" are also rendered moot by the fact that, somehow, the United States government manages to scrape enough money together to fund a disproportionately large standing military including the largest arsenal of nuclear warheads on Earth. If a nation can afford to trade liberty and money for their military, especially during a time of relative peace, then it can afford to provide at the very least a subsistent level of medical care to all of its citizenry. Even those fortunate enough to spend their days pulling down a minimum wage serving 'burgers and fries' through a hole in wall to middle America.

Also, I can't quit see how this legislature or indeed universal healthcare in general can constitute a threat to liberty. The central idea of universal healthcare, at least in so far as it is implemented within Europe, is to provide healthcare at cost and eliminate the profit motive. Such an approach to healthcare should benefit the vast majority of citizens, even accounting for subsides to the poor paid for by wealthier members of society. The founding fathers wished for a free and fair society, but without universal healthcare that cannot be (see The Second 'Economic' Bill of Rights)

Oh, I would love to hear you detail exactly how the government has been gouging you in particular.

It's not me I'm personally worried about. It's my kids. You're right, they don't actually raise taxes now to pay for their spending... they borrow money to pay for it. The boomer generation has had a grand time of it. Millenials+? Not so much.

Hmmm, how'd all that rampant borrowing work out in the housing bubble again?

have dug up dirt on Robert Allen Stanford [CC], a man slated to go on trial this month for his alleged part in an $8 billion Ponzi scheme.

Why can't we bring up criminal charges against Congress for their Ponzi schemes? This guy is a small-timer compared to them. Social Security: $14 trillion, Medicare Presscription drugs $18.6 trillion, Medicare $74 trillion.

Source USDebtClock.org.

I, with a straight face, will put on the public record that I think Palin would have made a better president than Obama.

However, I feel a person selected randomly off the street would more likely than not made a better president than Obama.

My dog could do a better job than Obama, or Bush for that matter. My dog would do nothing but hump my leg and lick himself rather than Obama/Bush which do nothing but rape our children's future (ie, $12 trillion in official debt, $106 trillion in unfunded liabilities).

Here's a website that claims the debt + unfunded liabilitoes (SS/medicare) == $340,000 per citizen. That sounds too high to me and I don't really agree with their calculations, but here's the link so you can see yourself:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Well he devalued the dollar from $1.30 Canadian to $1.00 Canadian by running the Central Bank Monopoly's printing presses on overdrive. Yay. This is not good for us, but the world is thrilled with the weakening of the paper dollar.

Let's see what else. Oh yeah he now has the power to declare a "national emergency" and shutdown the internet. I don't think Obama will abuse that power, but what if the next president resembles Julius Caesar? Today a president, tomorrow a dictator for life, and death to the Republic.

Oh and I forgot - The uncontrolled spending ($700 trillion bailout plus $800 billion stimulus plus $900 trillion healthcare bill) means the national debt will rise from $110,000 to $200,000 per American home by 2016. Add another $250,000 for promised but unfunded liabilities like Medicare and SS and you have about $450,000 hanging over ever home... more than the property is worth.

See more here: http://usdebtclock.org/

BTW I don't blame all of this on Obama. Our last three presidents all deserve "credit" for this debacle.

Pay me now or pay me later. The debt is still being accumulated, whether it's going on your personal credit report or the national debt. Unless you are saving up before attending the higher education, you are attending now and paying back later. Sounds a lot like borrowing to me.

Too bad your reference is old

Canada Debt is now less that 500B not 868B http://www.debtclock.ca/
US debt is now over 11T, not 8T http://www.usdebtclock.org/

so your numbers are totally useless.

Oh I doubt very seriously that on your worst day you could blow cash like we Americans. We have cash blowing down so good we ought to petition to have it made an Olympic sport. Just look at this and be glad that ain't you.