The Value Of The National Debt

U.S. National Debt The U.S. national debt has reached an alarming proportion. As it steadily increases, it's effect may not be felt now, but it will be in the future. Paul Gregory and Roy ruffin, in their book entitled Economics, linked deficits with inflation in the long run (251). Demand-side inflation of this type fails to increase the GDP, but instead just increases prices.

The largest debt holders (entities to which the federal government owes money) of the public debt are foreign governments and investors (about $6 trillion), the US Federal Reserve ($2.5 trillion), various mutual funds (about $1 trillion), and state or local governments ($800 billion) [7]. The remaining one-third of the debt is classified as intragovernmental holdings, which are accumulated when the Treasury borrows from trust funds financing specific government programs for use in the general budget [6]. For example, the Social Security ran a surplus while the baby boomers were in their working prime and tax revenue was high, so the government has historically been able to borrow from the Social Security and Disability Trust Funds to pay for other expenditures [8]. As a result, Social Security is the single largest stakeholder in the national debt holding securities worth $2.8 trillion. Other government accounts that are owed money include the Office of Personnel Management and the Military Retirement Fund

The federal budget is known as the notorious economic tank from which money is distributed to various programs. The money used every fiscal year, which begins October 1st and ends September 30th the next year, belongs to the people. The government raises this money through taxes and they spend it on national defense, Medicare, and social security. The federal budget is an exercise in making choices, and those options will certainly affect individuals living in the U.S. These choices cause debt to pile up on the government, who is struggling to make it disappear. The deficit and debt of a government gauges how well it is being run and how well it has been run in the past. According to The Economist the national debt is the total

The United States national debt is large. The U.S. Debt-to-GDP ratio has grown to over 60 percent in recent years. We are more than $15 trillion in debt. In this paper I will address the federal budget, the United States debt, and the resulting impacts on society in several sectors.

We hear about the debt almost every day: news talks about it, politicians argue about it, even President Obama gives speeches on it. So what is the significance behind it? In this article I am going to explain briefly what the national debt is, how big it is, and what it has to do with us.

Segal (2010) points out that America has not had a balanced budget since 2001. In 2008 the US national debt held by foreign holdings was at 48%, while the public debt was at $5,461 billion (Segal, 2010; National priorities org, 2014). The national debt last reported was on October 2013 and had reached 17 trillion dollars, the same amount as the debt ceiling (National priorities Project, 2013).

The total United States national debt is now over 19 trillion dollars and our Congressional leadership shows no signs of accomplishing any significant changes to make the situation better. That 19 trillion equates to almost $59,000 for every citizen of the United Sates. Sound financial practice is to not spend more money than you earn and borrow only for emergencies. It appears our Congress is incapable of adhering to sound financial practices as in the last fifty years there have only been five years when the U.S. recorded a budget surplus. Between 2009 and 2012 the U.S. added 5.5 trillion dollars to its national debt.

One trillion dollars is an astounding amount of money. What if I told you that the United States of America is in debt not just one trillion dollars, but nineteen trillion dollars in debt, as of 2016. As time goes on, the United States only continues to rack up more and more debt. It is estimated that in just 4 years, our national debt will increase by about 2 trillion dollars. The truth is, our country has been battling debt ever since it was founded. Today, with the debt increasing so fast, every politician is striving to balance the budget, so the United States can continue to be the best country it can be. If the United States cannot dig itself out of this ever deepening hole, national security will become an issue, influential power will be stripped away, and ultimately quality of life in this nation will become extremely undesirable. I believe the United States national debt is a huge threat to our country and something must be changed in order to battle this crisis.

So what is the National debt? It is when government spends more than it collects in taxes. Then the government has to borough the difference by selling interest baring IOU such as US bonds. For example a Us bank buys a one hundred dollar US bond it gets to loan out ten times that amount so the bank not only gets back the one hundred dollars plus interest from the federal government it gets to loan out another thousand dollars it doesn’t have and charge additional interest. Therefor banks get to make money out of nowhere. Plus if you think about it, that is one of the reasons that the biggest buildings in any cities are bank building. Debates about defense spending are arguments about our defensive strategies. What you spend depends on what you want to do militarily, which depends in what creates security. “A more modest strategy of restraint starts with the observation that power tempts the United States to meddle in foreign troubles that we should avoid” (Friedman). But what does restrain mean? It means fighting that temptation of minding someone else’s businesses. The Congressional Budget Office and the Office

The US national debt has become an important topic in recent years and needs to be looked at moving into the future. This is the amount owed by the federal government of the United States. This debt is made up of debts held by the public and also debts held by government accounts. The extreme amount of our national debt should be seen as a problem and will need to be fixed. The amount owed is getting to the point where it needs to be taken care of and lowered to a point that is controllable. There are consequences if the national

National Debt in the U.S. has expanded rapidly throughout the years. In 2012-2015 it has increased by 70 percent. Most spendings are obviously spent by government in unnecessary facilities. Many people ask why is it affecting us and why has the government not issued a reform to solve it. This worries us because it doesn’t only involve an internal debt but a national debt as well.

The United States of America has carried some amount of federal debt every year since the country was founded. From this empirical evidence, it can be said that debt itself is not damaging to an economy. After all, the country has had periods of rapid growth and economic booms while carrying different amounts of debt. It is also plain to see that a very large amount a debt, an amount that could not ever be eliminated without unreasonably inflating the dollar, could have devastating effects. The US dollar is a fiat currency, which holds value only when holders of the currency have confidence in the issuing institution, in this case the US government. In the event the government could not repay its debts, the value of the currency would drop as people lose confidence. The effects on the US economy, households, businesses, trading partners and foreign governments would be disastrous and widespread.

The National Debt consists of the total debt accrued by local, state and federal. Public debt is essentially the federal debt, thus compiling the staggering number that already exists. The debt deficit to me is astonishing. Currently, the total public debt in the United States, as of December 16, 2015, is $18,788,138,221,346.49. This includes $13,600,726,418,253.26 debt held by the public and $5,187,411,803,093.23 by intergovernmental holdings (usgovermentdebt, 2015). High GPD is not anything new to the United States. The all-time high was 121.70 percent ($18827323.00) in 1946 and a record low of 31.70 ($253400.00) percent in 1974 (United States Government Debt to GDP, 2015). The way we are spending, and the debt we are accruing, it would

Throughout most of the country’s history, the United States’ federal government maintained a reasonable level of national debt. For example, the total national debt in 1981 was $998 billion. Since then, however, the government has generated significant budget deficits, and the level of debt has risen to $16.7 trillion in 2013 (Calleo, 39). Budget deficits are caused

The Governments debt as a percentage of GDP, otherwise called debt to-GDP ratio. This is the measure of national debt a nation has in rate of its Gross Domestic Product. Fundamentally, Government debt is the cash owed by the focal government to its leasers. There are two sorts of government debts: net and gross. Gross debt is the amassing of exceptional government debt which may be as government bonds, credit default swaps, coin swaps, unique drawing rights, credits, protection and benefits. Net debt is the contrast between gross debt and the monetary stakes that legislature holds. The higher the debt- to-GDP ratio, the more improbable the nation will pay its obligations back, and more probable the nation is to default on its obligation commitments.