Debt ceiling ... Cornyn tells Cruz to STFU...or something like that!

I think borrowing is a good idea also.

But borrowing more than one can pay back in a reasonable period of time is not. Originally Posted by LexusLover

Sorry about giving out the secrets

A "reasonable time" for a person on a house is now 30 years and people only live 80 years or so (and the first 20 don't count). People make say $100,000/yr and buy houses for $200,000, $300,000 or more. My dad made $5000 when he bought his house for $15,000 in 1960. What is "reasonable:"?

A sovereign nation isn't a person and ours has lived 235 years, the GDP is ~$17 Trillion, the debt is now about $16.5 Trillion or so. Is that big debt? Not when compared to the person above and not when compared to Japan today.

We print the money so technically we can pay off the entire debt instantly if we wanted to and can always and forever pay the interest and payments as long as they are in dollars. Except for Andrew Jackson (a homicidal sociopath of a President if there ever was one and not a good economist) who paid it off once and sent us into a depression, the intent has never been to pay it off. I won't even explain the reasons for that to you here.

The risks in paying it off have to do with how we pay it off. If we only print money, then we risk inflation, probably hyper-inflation if we do that fast. If we tax to pay it off (huge taxes) we risk throttling growth and sending the country into a deflationary spiral with high unemployment (which makes the debt relatively bigger and more borrowing necessary to jump start the economy and raise aggregate spending). The best way to pay down, not off, the debt IMHO is to manage it and grow our way out of big debt.

The real adult question is how do we manage the economy and the debt along with taxes and borrowing to grow the economy and pay down the debt. Too bad almost no one is discussing that.

from 1790 to 1849 this country borrowed ... not a cent was paid back.,... 60 years later the country existed without so much as a hiccup or tax

go fishing and relax... THE END isn't near, this is America Originally Posted by CJ7

It was actually 1835 when Andrew Jackson paid the entire debt off and a horrible depression ensued. Since then the debt has not been paid off, though it has grown and shrunk.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/...-it-didnt-last

And this is why CJ is one of the dumbest poster's in the forum...............

In 1835, under president Jackson, the US paid off ALL of it's debt !

FACT JACK !

[QUOTE=CJ7;1054994360]from 1790 to 1849 this country borrowed ... not a cent was paid back.,.../QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Whirlaway;1054994412]And this is why CJ is one of the dumbest poster's in the forum...............

In 1835, under president Jackson, the US paid off ALL of it's debt !

FACT JACK !

from 1790 to 1849 this country borrowed ... not a cent was paid back.,.../QUOTE] Originally Posted by CJ7

look at 1835 shit for brains ..

https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/...ebt_histo1.htm

And this is why CJ is one of the dumbest poster's in the forum...............

In 1835, under president Jackson, the US paid off ALL of it's debt !

FACT JACK !

from 1790 to 1849 this country borrowed ... not a cent was paid back.,... Originally Posted by CJ7

Originally Posted by Whirlaway

Yeah, and along with the other stupid policies threw the country into the longest Depression we have ever had, 6 years before the economy grew again, causing us to borrow again even more.

Oh, also, the debt gets paid off constantly. Securities are always being paid off and more and different ones issued. We owe most of the debt to ourselves anyway so anyone who is all that concerned about paying it off rather than managing it properly is actually the "shit for brains".

Oh, and I did the math on what we paid in interest for fiscal 2013.

$ 225.74 Billion in interest
$16740.0 Billion ($16.74 Trillion) in debt.
==================
1.3% interest (and we print the money)

I'd take a loan like that any day (especially if I owed myself most of it) no problem.

BTW, we paid ~$300 Billion in cost overruns on weapons systems for the DoD. Now who is "shit for brains"

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...u-should-know/

The question you all want to dance around is, does there come a point when adding to the debt becomes counterproductive? Why won't you answer that?