January 11, 2019

The Actual Cause of the Massive U.S. National Debt

Ultimately speaking, Washington and the Lobbyists are the cause.
The Causes:  1} The Bush Tax Cuts (and overseas tax havens of the rich),
2} The Trade Balance Deficit, 3} Exorbitant DOD/NSA/CIA/HLS budgets,
4} Disparate-waged corporations who paid its full time employees wages so
    low that they needed to be given food stamp allotments, while the corpora-
    tions profit at the expense of federal taxpayers who pay the corporations'
    wage discrepancy for them.  The taxpayers are paying these corporation's
    wages-due for them..
_________________________________________________________________

A certain TV star recently mentioned on air that the food stamp program consists
in taxpayers helping huge corporations such as McDonald's, Walmart, and KFC
pay their underpaid workers who can't afford basic necessities, while corporate
management makes much more than their predecessors of decades past.

Reagan's former budget director was seen on TV air waves the same evening,
stating that the Bush Tax Cut was a disaster which cost America $4 trillion in
tax revenue.  This was known in 2010.  So, the economics expert was remind-
ing us of something that was already known ... but which was left to be forgot-
ten, via the insistent diversionary tactics of right winged conservatives.  None
the less, if it weren't for the Do-nothing 112th Congress, America would have
a much lower national debt than is has today.  Yet, FoxNews blames it on the
president.  In fact, the Bush Tax Cut was the #1 contributor to the rise of the
national debt.  Furthermore, the obscenely wealth never need personal income
tax cuts.  In their future is 21st Century version of the Nuremberg Trials, due
to the exploitation of sweatshop workers throughout the dictatorial venues of
the world.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/09/putting_the_39_trillion_extens.html

Directly below is the link to an educational slideshow for orientation purposes.
It guides a person through a brief history of what has been occurring since the
start of the Reagan years, and it's written very simplistically.  It shows how the
Republican rhetoric about the debt is a skewed con game that misinforms people.
It contains bits of added facts hard to find anywhere else  . . .  and it is for people
with no background in Economics.

******************************
http://zfacts.com/book/export/html/81
******************************

Next comes the reality check confirmed by world renown US News and World Re-
port by which the Democratic States pay more tax dollars than they receive, while
the Republican States receive more tax dollars than they pay.  This is extremely
logical in light of the existence of farm subsidies, coupled with the fact that the
farm states are Republican.  In as much, lying propagandists having been deceiv-
ing rural Americans into thinking that the cities have been leeching on off them.
The reality is that the subsidized farmer has been receiving city dollars, for their
sustenance ... or windfall profit.  So, the rural people need to start displaying re-
spect for the northern city dwellers ... and suburbanites ... without whom rural
folk could not economically survive.

http://www.bluemarblealbum.com/2014/01/blue-states-pay-more-taxes.html
________________________________________________________________

I remember being told by a Ron Paul supporter that, if we had deregulation, the
national debt would be paid-off in five years.  Of course, he had zero training in
economics and/or accounting and/or international finance, etc.  Furthermore, the
non-government group called the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
concluded that Ron Paul's plan would merely reduce the federal debt to 76% of
GDP by 2021.

Moreover, America had pivotal instances of deregulation under Bush II, resulting
in the Great Recession of 2008/09.  This included the repeal of Sections 20 to 32
of the Glass-Steagal Act and the Phil Gramm rider placed in the Commodity Fu-
tures Modernization Act of 2000.  Even at the end of his administration, even
though he destroyed the economy and turned America into a Paranoia State,
George Bush II kept pushing for more deregulation.

http://www.newser.com/story/41383/huge-bush-deregulation-push-before-jan-20.html

Instead of radio talk show propaganda or TV sound bytes, visual aids of the United
States National Debt would help put things in perspective.  The links below provide
the aid.

America had a higher debt per GDP shortly after WWII than now.  The fact that the
U.S. was a manufacturing nation, and not a sweatshop import nation, is what saved
it.

In the 1950s McCarthy era, military spending was ridiculously high, in terms of its
percentage of the GDP.   After all, constructing a vast nuclear arsenal is extremely
expensive.

The U.S. national debt as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) was
lowest during the Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter years.  Yes, people rejected
Carter for a Ronald Reagan who would triple the national debt, make America
the top debtor nation on earth, send the unemployment rate soaring to 10.8%,
set America up for the October 19, 1987 stock market crash, give us the Iran-
Contra debacle, and usher in the Savings & Loan Crisis, as well as initiate the
foreign slave labor importation fad which made the U.S. Trade Balance Deficit
astronomical.

America can only be salvaged if the sweatshop waged importation and other
drains to the circular flow, such as Mitt Romney's Cayman Island accounts,
are halted.  A diminishing circular flow is the same as pulling the chair out
from under millions of Americans.

Keep in mind that the "stimulus" was an artificial way of injecting dollars into
the circular flow.  It was temporary.  The surmise is that the Republican Party
really has been destroying America all along, for the sake of a selfish few; for
the sake of  those with lobbyist dollars to fund re-election campaigns.  Inciden-
tally, as of July 2013, the US national debt was $16.7 trillion.

One more thing,  Alexander Hamilton issued bonds to pay for a small portion
of the American Revolutionary war debt.  He paid-off the bonds through an
8% import tariff passed by Congress.

In today's dollars, the Revolutionary War Debt equaled $900 billion, and it was
30% of GDP at the time.  Only 4,000 fatalities occurred on the American side
throughout the eight year war.  Now, the imports of sweatshop labor, coupled
with two wars during tax cuts years, and exorbitant military spending, caused
the debt to spiral upwards.  Look at history for a few remedies.  More than one
remedy is needed, meaning that the Republicans lie when they claim that all
of the ills of America's economy will be solved by reducing the tax rates of the
rich. Those rates were reduced in the Bush II years.  It was one of the four ma-
jor causes of the Great Bush Recession.  During the Reagan Years, lowering
the tax rate of the rich resulted in a 10.8% unemployment rate.

Now, the pushy and quite obnoxious right winged conservative Republican
mouthpieces claim that the debt is caused by welfare and Social Security.
Well, there is a number of pieces of historic evidence which proves the
Republican assertion to be a complete falsehood.  All are focused on the
following history observation:

During the economically prosperous times, such as during the Gerald Ford 
Years, numerous people were on food stamps, welfare, and Social Security.
The economy did just fine in the aggregate, despite rising uneployment and
inflation, during the Ford years.  When it came to LBJ's Great Society of the
1960s, unemployment dropped to 3.4%, and ge was the one who engaged in
the war on poverty.  The economy, as a whole, wasn't collapsing on account
of it.  However, while George Bush II catered completely to rich individuals
and select corporations, the U.S. economy was falling apart.

The unemployment rate through the decades:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/UNRATE.txt

A graphed chart with a bit of added comments.
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

Here is a table outlining deficits ... even per month since 1980.
http://www.davemanuel.com/history-of-deficits-and-surpluses-in-the-united-states.php

Government debt as a portion of GDP (Gross Domestic Product.)
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp

National Debt per presidential term, plus debt's rate of growth.
http://www.skymachines.com/US-National-Debt-Per-Capita-Percent-of-GDP-and-by-Presidental-Term.htm

An article from The Atlantic which contains a graph of the debt spanning from
1790 to the American Civil War.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/the-long-story-of-us-debt-from-1790-to-2011-in-1-little-chart/265185/

A very insightful Washington Post article on the debt which erases from the
reasonable mind the false conclusions of the right wing conservative world.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/why-is-the-national-debt-16-trillion/2013/01/03/e2a85386-55fc-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_blog.html

One very important note:  After WWII, the national debt was 121% of GDP.
Today, it is around 104% thereof.  If you abolish foreign sweatshop slavery
and the ensuing Trade Balance Deficit, you can save America.  If you do not
do so, you will not.  It's that simple.  The greed of few has been destroying
America, all along.  It's so simple that it's like a trick question.  But, there's
no trick involved; only greed and the lack of consciences amongst those
presently in seats of power and influence.  Such was the case with the
112th Congress, Newt Gingrich, etc.
_____________________________________________________________