Why do most countries have national debt and what went wrong in the USA ?

My mother always refused to borrow money and as a child I can remember that we had not much luxuory but always had good food on the table. We never got evicted from our home and never had any other serious financial problems. If we needed a new washing machine she could always buy it with cash....one day she surprised us with a new car.

One day I asked her what her secret is and she told me that she saved little amounts of money for each expensive and necessary household item and that way able to buy or pay for repairs when something broke down.

I understand that you can not compare a family household-finance with the 'household' finance of a country but is the basic idea not the same?

Each year there are new Phd's, doctors and what not specialised in economics but it is as if they have no idea about how a household budget is made and how it should work. Or is it that these economist understand their science but nobody in government wants to hear what they have to say.

How could the national debt of the USA could get out of hand this terrible?

For all I know the USA is a country with smart, creative and hardworking people and are there people guarding the financial health of the country at all times in order to protect the american way and standard of living.

But something, somewhere must have went terribly wrong....the financial health went into a downward spiral and nobody noticed, didn't care or couldn't find a solution.

I did some Google on the US national debt and found THIS site
It shows a Debt Counter and it is shocking to see what the average increase is per day is. For people interested there is a FAQ list about the US debt

I also found THIS official US government site about the national debt. The government does it utmost on this site to inform its citizens about the debt and come with (funny) creative solutions when it comes to reducing the debt if there is a citizen too much worried and wants to help out:

How do you make a contribution to reduce the debt?

There are two ways for you to make a contribution to reduce the debt:

You can make a contribution online either by credit card, checking or savings account at Pay.gov
You can write a check payable to the Bureau of the Public Debt, and in the memo section, notate that it's a Gift to reduce the Debt Held by the Public. Mail your check to:

Attn Dept G
Bureau of the Public Debt
P. O. Box 2188
Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188

HERE is some information about the history of the US national debt.

But it is not only the US that has built-up an incredible national debt....most countries have. So, I am probably and most likely naive if I ask.....is it necessary for a country to have a national debt?

To compare the US national debt with some of the other mayor "players" in the world I have found THIS web-page.

What will it do for a country to have NO national debt, or does nobody really know because that is a theoretical situation? We all know what a terrible national debt can mean for the common man on the street...What would change for that same common man when his country has no national debt but has 10 trillion to spent?

Now the US government speak to its citizens to be a good patriot and to show american spirit and overcome this nation wide financial problem. Is the US government able to come with a good plan if their first plan failed miserably?

Anyways...a lot of questions...What would in your opinion be the best way to get rid of the national debt...how long would it take anyway? Would it be worth to put in all the effort for a clean slate, what will you receive in return? What can a government do to prevent such a incredible debt from happening?

Thanks for reading my thread.

reply to post by zatara


If the whole world is in debt, who pays for that debt?

2nd.

Conflict usually costs a lot.

For instance the UK only paid off its world war 2 debt to the USA in 2006. Thats 67 years of debt for that one conflict alone. World War 2 lated 6 years.

Iraq = 9 years
Afganistan = 10 years

It all adds up.

reply to post by BIGPoJo


That's the same question I have been asking for about four years now.

What has happened to all the money. Well, actually most of the money consisted of numbers on a bunch of balance sheets.

It just looks to me like all these high powered accountants could get together and find out who owes who how much. Move all the numbers around and see how they all ballance out.

It would be kind of funny to find out that even though everyone is in debt to everyone else, the bottom line was still a zero sum amount.

The world is in debt because we use a fractional reserve system of currency. Basically a really simplified version of why we are in debt would go something like this;

The Federal Reserve/Bank of England(in my case) are actually private companies owned by private banking investors like the Rosthchilds. > These private companies lend the money to the government in return for government bonds, which are basically certificates saying we (the government) will pay the money back to these private companies one day, a US bond is worth more than a Libyan bond because the US is more stable and thus more likely to make good on its promise.

So to have a money supply at all the government has to go into debt as it lends the supply from a central bank (the fed), as the money supply increases (inflation) so does the debt to these banks which are purposely named to sound like official branches of government.

That's before we even get to countries also lending of the World Bank which is basically another collection of private companies and that's before you get to countries lending off of each other.

At the moment all the money is going back to these private banks, the fed and the BoE causing deflation in the currency and thus a lack of money supply causing people to loose homes and jobs.

I might have some of the details wrong but that's as I understand it.

this is a big topic that has many elements

yeah the fractional reserve banking system plays a huge part other parts consist of:

outsourcing
rules and regulations that are nothing more than government sanctions

that have led to increased unemployement that has increased welfare and the creations of medicaid and medicare and social security that have contributed to the result.

*unemployement,medicare,medicaid,socail security destroy trillions of wealth creation.

more people in this country are consuming other peoples wealth instead of creating their own

and the debt breaks down really only to this yeah we borrow money from other countries when we shouldnt be

but the major creditor of the us debt is the people of this country.

just think of it this way the government owes you money more than anyone else and what i mean by that are the promises made by those social programs and goverment pensions.

That part of the matrix is designed, the people in governments have little say on the matter, nothing they can do will stop the pilviging of the middle class, they are merely the story tellers, the spin doctors, What you've stumbled on here, is the evil ways in which the eliteist plan is moving onward, what better way to depopulate the planet, than to make food to expensive for them, pay them less, decrease the value of all possessions and soon to be what remains of people savings and investments, the markets collapse isnt far off, the world we live in will now will seem like a fairy tale compared to what life will be like in the coming years. Its designed soon people will be cueing up to join the army for means of an earning, the push for recruits is on, anyone else notice the increased volume of war movies, survival programmes and army recruitment adds on the t.v & radio. Softening and preparation of the masses minds is well underway. Iv heard a lot about a WWIII and if you open your eyes, its plainly obvious its close, if not already happening in the guise of an arab spring.

Start buying goods made in the U.S. Check your labels everytime you shop and punish those corporations that sent our jobs overseas. Do this and manufacturing jobs will fluorish. We want jobs right. We need to create a demand for american products and then the gov't. will have plenty of money to reduce the debt as long as they spend it wisely. Do your part tell your friends and family and start a real revolution. The American manufacturing revolution.

While correlation does not prove causation, and there are no doubt many factors contributing to national debts, in terms of The United States of America, there is an undeniable correlation between the so called "Personal Income Tax" and the U.S. National Debt:

The so called "Personal Income Tax" was legislated in 1913 following the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment. These are the figures of the U.S. debt history from 1900 to 1912:

07/01/1912 2,868,373,874.16
07/01/1911 2,765,600,606.69
07/01/1910 2,652,665,838.04
07/01/1909 2,639,546,241.04
07/01/1908 2,626,806,271.54
07/01/1907 2,457,188,061.54
07/01/1906 2,337,161,839.04
07/01/1905 2,274,615,063.84
07/01/1904 2,264,003,585.14
07/01/1903 2,202,464,781.89
07/01/1902 2,158,610,445.89
07/01/1901 2,143,326,933.89
07/01/1900 2,136,961,091.67

While there is a steady increase in that national debt, it is a gradual and incremental increase. Here are the figures from 1913 (the year the so called "income tax" was created, along with the Federal Reserve) to 1923:

06/30/1923 22,349,707,365.36
06/30/1922 22,963,381,708.31
06/30/1921 23,977,450,552.54
07/01/1920 25,952,456,406.16
07/01/1919 27,390,970,113.12
07/01/1918 14,592,161,414.00
07/01/1917 5,717,770,279.52
07/01/1916 3,609,244,262.16
07/01/1915 3,058,136,873.16
07/01/1914 2,912,499,269.16
07/01/1913 2,916,204,913.66

Nearly a $20 billion increase in just a decade! Someone, somewhere, in the hallowed halls of government, figured out real quickly just how much of a cha-ching factor "income tax" really was. Here are the national debt figures from 1924 to 1934:

06/30/1934 27,053,141,414.48
06/30/1933 22,538,672,560.15
06/30/1932 19,487,002,444.13
06/30/1931 16,801,281,491.71
06/30/1930 16,185,309,831.43
06/29/1929 16,931,088,484.10
06/30/1928 17,604,293,201.43
06/30/1927 18,511,906,931.85
06/30/1926 19,643,216,315.19
06/30/1925 20,516,193,887.90
06/30/1924 21,250,812,989.49

Given the dramatic leap from the previous decade, this decade leading up to the great depression suggested either a stabling off of plunder by government, or a conservative restraint in that plunder, but it clearly remains plunder, both by the "income tax" they are sucking up from the People, and the national debt they are sustaining, even increasing, by using the People, and their taxed monies as collateral. From 1935 to 1945 the U.S. saw a great depression, and entered World War II, both serious issues for America, but no graver and serious problem arose for American's during this time than Franklin D. Roosevelt. Here is what happened on his watch:

06/30/1945 258,682,187,409.93
06/30/1944 201,003,387,221.13
06/30/1943 136,696,090,329.90
06/30/1942 72,422,445,116.22
06/30/1941 48,961,443,535.71
06/29/1940 42,967,531,037.68
06/30/1939 40,439,532,411.11
06/30/1938 37,164,740,315.45
06/30/1937 36,424,613,732.29
06/30/1936 33,778,543,493.73
06/29/1935 28,700,892,624.53

A more than $200 billion increase in the national debt. But hey, Roosevelt is a national hero, and treasure because of all the entitlements he got cemented into the American cultural milieu. Who really cares why or how nations go into debt, clearly all people care about is having their nanny state, and to be taken care of and coddled. Let those nameless, faceless "TPTB" worry about impossible debts, we're just the poor unwashed masses, we need to be given jobs at a gazillion bobabazillion dollars an hour, and if they can't give us the job, the wage will do. Don't worry about how it actually gets paid, just tax the ultra rich because they are making mega gazillion bobabazillions.

Originally posted by BigJoninTexas
Start buying goods made in the U.S. Check your labels everytime you shop and punish those corporations that sent our jobs overseas. Do this and manufacturing jobs will fluorish. We want jobs right. We need to create a demand for american products and then the gov't. will have plenty of money to reduce the debt as long as they spend it wisely. Do your part tell your friends and family and start a real revolution. The American manufacturing revolution.

Good luck with that. Little late, doncha think? I've been telling the rubes this for over twenty years, but no one would listen. Tell me, quick, where was that computer you typed this genius post on made? What's that? Tell me, where do I buy an American one? Or really where can anyone buy ANYTHING made in the US? They don't even want you to have Gibson guitars anymore. The only things produced are software and "financial services".

Anyone with half a brain can balance a budget. Even on a national level, it is not that complicated. Spend less than you earn. Hello! Our "leaders" seem to all be retarded, always. "Oops, my bad. We had no idea THIS would happen." They say that EVERY TIME. About everything. And the moronic public always seem to accept the outright lies, like the logical contradiction that so called economic "experts" are destroying the economy. They apparently shouldn't even be allowed to organize a fart contest, let alone run the country. Yet everyone believes all their "Whoopsie" excuses for EVERYTHING. None of this is happening by accident. It is all according to plan.

Ever noticed how the bank always seems to make "mistakes", yet they are always in THEIR favor? Did anyone here EVER have a bank "accidentally" put too much money in your account? Yet they seem to make HUNDREDS of "mistakes" the other way, don't they? It's not by accident. Duh. And that's even though they are screwing you over a dozen other ways already, they just want to try to steal some more while they're at it.

Now imagine letting those same crooks run the entire show. That is exactly what we've got, the Fed being the American version, BIS and IMF putting the same screws to the rest of the world. Libya is ALL about this, nothing else. The "rebels" seemed to feel it important on the SECOND DAY OF FIGHTING to quickly set up a Rothschild controlled national bank. Some "rebels". They felt lacking the freedom of a foreign central bank.

Those Founding Father guys thought that this was so important that they put it IN THE CONSTITUTION. Only Congress shall have the power to coin and print money. There is NO REASON for them to need to "borrow" it from anyone. This GIANT swindle is the basis of all other problems in the entire world today. And this has been going on a LONG time. The US was an experiment to try to break out of this stranglehold, and it worked, for a while, inspiring the greatest flowering of human invention and achievement in history. Then they got us in their chokehold again in 1913.

Ask yourself this, if ALL the nations of the world are "in debt", who exactly are they in debt to? The entire outstanding debt DWARFS the GDP of the entire world by orders of magnitude! How can that be?

This entire system needs to be smashed. All your writing your Congressman, and voting, and peaceful protesting, will do nothing. Nothing will stop it except BULLETS. It is a Hydra with many heads. It is relentless. It never sleeps, or tires. It has no mercy, or pity, or remorse. It will never stop until it owns EVERYTHING and everyone in the world OWES. Even then they will figure out some way to get MORE.

The land of the fee and the home of the slave. That's what they've got in mind for you.

Well, for starters they killed a couple million brown people, threw a lot of folks in jail for a war on plants,

Then they sent you a bill for 2 trillion dollars,

Enjoy it.

I call for revolution,

The expense of war makes me sick,

-GM

reply to post by CaptChaos


My computer as well as all of my electronics are imported. My furniture, appliances, and my entire wardrobe is made in the U.S. Google made in the USA and you can find tons of products made in the U.S. I try not to buy anything that isn't made in the U.S. if it isn't made here I don't want it. I commend you for trying to spread the word years ago; however it sounds like you've fallen off the horse. Get back out there and support your fellow Americans. Everytime you buy something made in the U.S. you help save or create a job. Thanks!