Pretty much. Don't get me wrong, we are spending too much. We've laid a lot on the altar of economic growth, much of which has been offset by the events we either started or got pulled into over the last decade. From oil to war to natural disasters to industrial disasters to the banking collapse, confidence has not been strong since 9/11. Americans have been insulated from most of the effects of all that by use of the national debt. The Tea Party has given us a wake up call on the economy and our debt, and that is a good thing. Because I agree with them when they say it feels like the entire banking crisis basically got white-washed with tax payer dollars, and most of those guys got off scott free.
Americans aren't made of tissue paper though, and neither is our domestic economy. While tax increases might have an impact on growth, which is honestly doesn't need another hit, it's less of an impact than default. I think as a country, we can take tax increases in the pocket book, because honestly we're going to either way. All of this shit has a trickle down effect and the public is where it stops, the other side of trickle down economics. If we're going to be saddled with all this shit anyways, why not accept higher taxes rather than more lost jobs, more worthless investments, higher prices and a total inability to borrow?
The true irony of this is that, if we default and our credit rating slips, the VALUE of our debt that we currently have goes up by magnitudes. It's estimated we save $250 billion a year easily on our debt because of the interest rate we have. If our credit rating gets shot, the debts we do have to pay will suddenly balloon in size because of the increased interest and we're guaranteed to default on some of them.
So not raising the debt ceiling causes us to default on some bills, which trashes our credit rating, which increases the interest rates on our remaining obligations, which we're even more unable to pay for now than we were before. Great plan, guys!
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Topic: The debt ceilling (Read 40133 times)