when did the usa get so heavily in debt that economic collapse had to happen. serious question. was it during vietnam.
It started in the 1960s when we decided to spend so much money to get to the moon before the soviets. Shortly after we had to go off the gold standard because we spent so much.
It was earlier, and much earlier. You could say when America was created they have oscillated between being too deep in debt, and collapsing. When America was founded the revolutionary war had debt. When the civil war went on it was the first time America took on quite a bit of debt. The Fed was created because America had too much debt and JP Morgan bailed out the US. In the second world war the US sold war bonds because they were too much in debt. If you read 30 years in Wallstreet, old book that was written in 1949 you see the same old argument of today. The issue here is that the Republicans are making a political issue on what they and the democrats have been doing for decades. Sure Obama is not helping, but let's be frank Bush Junior just kept on heaping on debt in the name of a "war".
Well, yeah you could go back that far to see when it started, but there was a point in time when it became inevitable that we were not going to pay it back. Its like a guy that runs up his credit card. The first few 1000 dollars he still has a chance of paying it back. When he gets to 50k in credit card debt, he says "what the hell...might as well max it out before i go BK, no chance of me paying it off now" That happened with the race to the moon. That was the point when it was getting obvious we would not be able to pay back our debt (at least not pay it back in gold)
this is probably the case. this is what i mean this time it is not resolvable so i would say it was around the sixties. interesting though it means the cold war ruined communism and capitalism. perhaps they might have both worked under different situations.
There were repeated warnings about it as far back as mid-80's before we lapsed into debtor status. You need to remember that derivatives were the dynamite that ignited this implosion. Massive deficits + derivatives = Point of no return. Oh yeah, and leaders like Cheney who said deficits don't matter.
Vietnam was part of it. The another part was LBJ, medicare program. Fwiw, the mafia flourished during this era partly because of resistance to increased taxes and an upsurge of an underground cash economy to evade taxes. Next big boost was the growing use of MC / Visa. I was in retail around 1983, the cc business was gaining speed and enabled us to go toe to toe against Sears and other retailers who financed their own recievables.
Well... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt In 1950 the debt level was very much the same as now. Yet the American economy managed to pay it off and down. America can pay down its debt, but it will be hard. Here is how America needs to change. Slash it's military machine to the same size as the rest of the world, which would mean about 150 billion. That would in itself save about 600+ billion. Then they need to coordinating themselves. I mean like why are there so many darn agencies? Start chopping them down and put together what needs to be together. Germany did that recently and it saved quite a bit of money and time. For example Germany combined unemployment with welfare. Next they need to simplify the tax system into a stepwise flat tax. Though I have very little hope that it will happen....