No More Debt!
horror of what we have done, but the reality is that it may be far too late to reverse the damage that has taken place.我們已做的恐怖東西，但現實是，它可能已經太遲去扭轉已發生的損害。
The amount of money that the U.S. government spends is absolutely mind blowing. For example, did you know that the U.S. Congress will spend about 25.4 percent of GDP this year?
美國政府所花的金錢數額，是絕對地令人興奮的。例如，你是否知道，美國國會今年將花費約 本地生產總值的25.4%？
It is hard to continue to say with a straight face that we are not a socialist nation when the government is spending that kind of money.
它是很難繼續板著臉說，我們不是一個社會主義國家，當政府在支出那種錢。
And that is just the federal government - state and local governments spend massive amounts of money on top of that.
而這僅僅是聯邦政府 - 在那之上州和地方政府花費大量的金錢。
But we will get to that in a minute.
不過我們在一分鐘時間會到那。
First let's examine the horrific amounts of debt that the federal government is piling up.
首先讓我們來看看可怕的債務數額，那聯邦政府是堆積如山的。
In an article that we recently authored on another website, we noted that back in 1950, the total debt of the U.S. government was only about 257 million dollars.
在最近一篇我們在另一網站撰寫的文章，我們注意到早在1950年，美國政府的總債務僅約 2.57億美元。
Just think about that.
試想一下。
From the creation of the United States until 1950, we had accumulated only 257 million dollars of debt.
從創建美國直到1950年，我們只已累積有2.57億美元的債務。
Today, the U.S. government accumulates over 4 billion dollars more debt each day.
今天，美國政府每一天累積超過 40億美元更多的債務。
Let that sink in for a bit.
讓那 被聽進去一點。
We have a national debt that is exploding so fast that it is hard to even put the horror of it into words.
我們有一項國家債務，那是爆得如此快，因此它是甚至很難以筆墨去形容它的恐怖。
According to Erskine Bowles, one of the heads of Barack Obama's national debt commission, the U.S. government will be spending $2 trillion just on interest on the national debt by 2020.
據奧巴馬的其中一個國家債務委員會頭頭厄斯金鮑爾斯，到2020年美國政府將斥資 2兆億美元，衹為國家債務的利息。
So just how big is 2 trillion dollars?
那麼到底2兆億美元是多大？
Well, the entire U.S. government budget is less than 4 trillion dollars for the entire year of 2010.
嗯，2010年全年整個美國政府預算是少於4兆億美元，。
So how in the world are we going to be able to afford to pay 2 trillion dollars in interest when the year 2020 rolls around?
因此，我們將如何能夠負擔得起，在2020年來臨時去支付2兆億美元的利息？
It is hard to even conceive of amounts of money that large.
If you went out today and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
Are you starting to get the picture?
But things are even worse than the official numbers tell us.
If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion to $5 trillion.
Do you think a great politician can come along and fix that kind of a mess?
No, not under the current system.
But it just isn't the U.S. government that is the problem.
As we have written about previously, state and local governments across the United States are completely broke.
In fact, it would be easy to make the argument that many of the states are in even worse financial position than the U.S. government is.
California is totally broke.
Illinois is in even worse shape.
There is a very real possibility that we could see a number of U.S. states actually default on their debts in the next few years.
Of course the federal government could step in and bail them out, but that would just add more debt at the federal level.
Meanwhile, the states continue to borrow money at a staggering pace.
It is being reported that the 50 U.S. states have racked up a record $2.4 trillion in bond debt during the recent economic downturn.
Ouch.
But things get even worse the further down the road you look.
Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the combined pension liability of the 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars.
So where in the world are the 50 states going to get an extra 3.2 trillion dollars to meet those pension obligations?
What a mess!
America has become absolutely addicted to debt and it is destroying us. If you add up all government, business and consumer debt, the total is equivalent to approximately 360 percent of GDP.
In case you were wondering, that is really, really, really bad.
We have built an economy on debt and paper money and now it is starting to implode.
The truth is that we are all to blame. There are very few of us that have not run out and piled up debt at some point in our lives.
At the end of 2008, the total credit card debt owed by American consumers totalled more than 972 billion dollars.
That amount is greater than the GDP of the world's 122 poorest nations combined.
Needless to say, America has a debt problem that is not sustainable.
This giant bubble that we have created is going to burst.
In fact, it has already started bursting.
The prosperity that we have been enjoying for the past couple of decades has been based on a lie. We borrowed and borrowed and borrowed and we came to think of the affluence that all of this borrowing afforded us as normal.
But now we are going to learn some very painful lessons as a society. The "good times" that we are enjoying are going to go away. Society is going to undergo dramatic changes. The entire economic system is going to implode.
So are you ready for all of this?
You better get ready.
You still have a little bit of time to prepare, but time is running out.
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