The U.S. must start to prepare for challenges posed by an aging population with a credible plan to gradually reduce a soaring public debt, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday.
Health spending is set to increase over the long term as the U.S. population grows older, posing challenges to the country’s already strained finances, the Fed chief warned.
Too little, too late.
Yeah, #1. Adding another super-expensive entitlement was the very last thing we needed when the federal government was already drowing in red ink and the crunch of paying for the already existing entitlement programs for the aging Boomer generation is still yet to come. 10,000 Boomers are retiring every day now, and we all know that Social Security and especially Medicare/Medicaid are underfunded.
David Handy+
It is now impossible to tax our way to a balanced budget.
Don
#3 Don,
You are absolutely correct.
Current GDP is about $14 T. Current debt is about $13 T.
Social Security liability is about $14 T.
Perscription Drug liability is about $18 T.
Medicare liability is about $75 T.
Total liability (not counting current debt) is about $108 T.
Total National Assets are about $72 T.
What that means is…we could sell every asset in the nation and tax the entire GDP and have about $86T. That’s it. That’s everything.
Remember the current liability is $108 T and the current debt is $13 T, so that adds up to $121 T.
$121 T
-$86 T
——–
$35 T
So, we are $35 Trillion dollars upsidedown with no way to dig out.
We are bust.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Precisely, #s3 and 4. Even if the “patriots” that I see on various blogs praising higher taxes for all those over the magical $250,000 per year income level got their way and levied truly confiscatory taxes, it wouldn’t begin to pay for our liabilities and national debt.
And the current administration, admittedly dealt a fiscal mess, has decided to double-down and spend at a rate that makes even the previous administration look fiscally prudent by comparison.
Of course, we will soon enough see Rahm Emanuel’s dictum on crisis exploitation once again used to force through a VAT, which can then be leveraged up and up as the worsening crisis demands. But, after all, that’s the patriotic thing to do.