Scott Sumner, The Hill: Our deficits may finally be coming home to roost
With a new Congress set to take office, the most recent projections have the U.S. budget deficit reaching nearly $1 trillion in 2019, or more than double the level of 2015.
The deficit is a perennial topic of discussion for politicians, reporters, pundits and economists, yet many people have difficulty understanding why it’s a problem.
Spending more than we take in sounds irresponsible, but how does the deficit actually impact the life of average Americans? The downside is especially hard to see when deficit spending generates immediate benefits, while the costs occur well into the future.
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WNU Editor: Spending money that you do not have .... and then spending more with the expectation that future government will be responsible for it, is the state of U.S. government finances for the past 40 years. One day this will come home to roost .... and probably sooner rather than later.
First, this chart is wrong; our Debt Vs GDP is already over 100%, the other thing is this does not reflect any new situations and just provides an exponential curve going upwards at the end to scare the reader. The other thing that I don't like about these curves is they never show Debt compared to GDP. If you look at the GDP growth over the last 20 years, it's incredible as our debt growth as slowed over the same period. One should be able to draw a conclusion that if this stays the same then our ability to maintain this level of debt grows each year.
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