When you stop to analyze how our debt will affect our country in the future, take a moment to consider this idea. The unimaginable amount of debt we are currently carrying has made our country more vulnerable than ever before. Forget about the "war on terror", our country is financially incapable of fighting any type of "real" war right now. Anything more than a conflict (Iraq and Afghanistan are conflicts - just ask WWII vets) would push our debt to unsustainable levels. Consider the chart below, which shows the U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP. Many of you have seen these charts before, but this does not tell the whole story. At first glance we see that the total ratio of debt today is below that of the WWII era. That might seem encouraging to some, however the story is not complete. Let's go ahead and add the unfunded liabilities, which would take us right up to near WWII levels. We have the same ratio of debt today as we did when we were fighting for the survival of our country during the greatest war the world has ever seen?? Unbelievable! Think about how much debt we would have to incur to fight a war right now against a formidable enemy. The problem is, it does not matter how much debt it would take, because we would not be able to issue any additional amounts of debt, period. Who is going to buy that debt? Good luck with war bonds, the general population in the U.S. is already drowning in their own debt and they don't have 2 nickels to rub together.
This is just one example of how enormous debt levels make our country less safe. We cannot run our debt levels during peacetime at wartime levels. We must make sure we have enough "available credit" for emergency situations. We are setting ourselves up for complete disaster if this continues much longer.
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