The Burden of the Debt and Deficits in 7 Charts
October 2, 2015—In the middle of the 2016 election cycle circus, reflexive, hot-button issues such as gay marriage and immigration dominate the headlines. Scant attention has been paid to the critical issue of the ever-rising national debt.
This will certainly change as Congress prepares to vote on raising the debt ceiling later in the fall. The question is, to what degree will the issue be distorted and the consequences obfuscated?
Here, we’ll use St. Louis Federal Reserve FRED charts to help illustrate the immediate and long-term consequences of deficits and mounting debt.
The U.S. national debt today stands at nearly $18.4 trillion. That’s $18,400,000,000,000. The chart below depicts the Total Public Debt. Note that the debt reached $1 trillion in 1981. In just 20 years, by 2001 when George W. Bush took office, it had risen to $5.7 trillion. By the time Barack Obama assumed the presidency in 2009, it was some $10 trillion. And again, today it’s nearly $18.4 trillion. The problem with debt is that, well, it’s debt. More deeply, debt slows economic growth by reducing national saving and investing. It also destroys the process of capital accumulation. Here’s the Total Public Debt:
Read the rest here: http://www.voicesofliberty.com/artic...cits-7-charts/
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