From Deseret News archives:
Nonstop borrowing places U.S. on road to big financial disaster
Profligacy rules in D.C. and in our homes
You owe $145,000. And the bill is rising every day.
That's how much it would cost every American man, woman and child to pay the tab for the long-term promises the U.S. government has made to creditors, retirees, veterans and the poor.
Our profligate ways at home are mirrored in Washington and in the global marketplace, where as a society America spends $1.9 billion more a day on imported clothes and cars and gadgets than the entire rest of the world spends on its goods and services.
A new Associated Press/Ipsos poll finds that barely a third of Americans would cut spending to reduce the federal deficit and even fewer would raise taxes.
If those figures seem out of whack to you, if they seem to cut against the way you learned to handle money, if they seem like a recipe for a national economic nightmare well, then, at least you're not alone.
David Walker, who audits the federal government's books as the U.S. comptroller general, put it starkly in an interview with the AP:
"I believe the country faces a critical crossroad and that the decisions that are made or not made within the next 10 years or so will have a profound effect on the future of our country, our children and our grandchildren. The problem gets bigger every day, and the tidal wave gets closer every day."
Certainly, there are those who feel such comments bring to mind the preachers who predict the end of the world at a specific time and place, and have always been wrong. And undeniably, borrowing isn't all bad easy access to money has been a critical tool in building America's businesses, from mom-and-pops to multinationals.
But something has changed. More than two centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin warned: "He that goes aborrowing, goes asorrowing." Now, a laugh-til-you-cry commercial portrays a man with a beautiful home and car declaring: "I'm in debt up to my eyeballs. I can barely pay my finance charges. Somebody help me."
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