Debt-to-GDP hit bottom on the last Carter budget? Interesting. Just more evidence that US voters love the big gov't that deficits buy...
Took 34 years to get it down as much as they got it down, this is going to probably take ummmmm, well its probably going to stay this way for another 89 years. Im just wondering when its going to 150% of GDP and then 200% of GDP. The last time US debt topped the size of its annual economy was in 1947 just after World War II. By 1981 it had fallen to 32.5 percent.
How come the Treasury didn't just print the money out of thin air without creating the $363 billion in debt?
Although I'm usually attacked whenever I say something positive about President Carter, here goes... President Carter understood that business cycles happen and mild recessions happen. He chose to ride out the recession and not mortgage the country's future by running up loads of debt due to tax cuts and stimulus spending. We were off the pseudo gold standard at that point, so there was nothing to stop him from pushing for stimulus. Jimmy Carter understood the dangers of a government running up excessive amounts of debt as virtually all government spending is wasteful and inefficient. Reagan took office after Carter and started the great debt runup that continues to this day ( with a brief interruption while Clinton was President). The reason it's unlikely the government will ever pay off the debt without hyperinflation is because the debt was spent inefficiently. Do you think that with $14T to invest, America would be in this sad shape it is in now (failing schools, crumbling infrastructure, falling tax revenue, underfunded retirement accounts, high unemployment, etc...) if a private company like Apple, IBM, Intel, or Microsoft had instead efficiently invested that huge sum of money? If the $14T had been properly invested, I guarantee you America would be top of the world in every category, have an economy at least 50% larger than it is now, have a base on the moon, have 4 or 5% unemployment, have bullet trains running between cities, and have a budget surplus to name a few items. When you look at how the $12 to $13T in debt piled up after Carter was voted out did not improve anything, he was wise not to use debt just to buy his re-election.
Interesting perspective, and probably the first plausible/believable positive description I've seen of Carter's administration.
Agreed, and that was his downfall. The idea of fiscal limits has been complete anathema to US voters, and you can see that with the speed with which they ran into the arms of "It's (a debt-riddled, lockbox-raiding) Morning in America." Yes, voters *say* different, but they don't *vote* it. And actions, as always, speak louder than words. For all the current fuss about the Tea Party, spending continues to go up, a lot. They haven't demonstrated any ability whatsoever to break out of their niche, and if anything, they have shown how quickly getting into power co-opts "ideals". It's too bad, a republic does best when there are multiple vibrant perspectives.