Here are three things to ponder for those of us who believe in math, markets and sustaining the American dream.
First, despite the president’s words, financially we have never been as vulnerable as a country since the Great Depression and World War II. We have never run deficits this big in peacetime. What happens to them when the economy cools?…
Second, such persistent debt will have enormous consequences for national security — it always does. The historian Paul Kennedy, in his book “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers,” argues that military might without healthy budgets to back it up leads to a hollow force, good on paper but unprepared to fight. I agree. We should all be worried by the fact that we will soon be spending more on interest than on our military…
Finally, our growing debt makes the American dream more elusive, and in doing so weakens us all. A trillion-dollar deficit is nothing more than a deferred tax bill for $1 trillion. For a country that was in part founded on the notion of no taxation without representation, how does this pilfering of future generations’ wealth possibly make sense? Our children, and their children, will have fewer and fewer life choices and chances, thanks to our profligate spending.
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