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> When considering that the national debt is directly related to inflation Actually, it's not. Inflation is related to interest rates and the "value of the do
by anamax 16y ago
> When considering that the national debt is directly related to inflation
Actually, it's not. Inflation is related to interest rates and the "value of the dollar", both of which affect our ability to pay off the debt, but the debt itself, the number of dollars owed right now, is independent of inflation.
> this pledge could reduce that significantly
It's less than 10% of the admitted debt, $8T, and that number is significantly less than the unfunded liabilities (SS, Medicare that folks think that they have pre-paid).
And most of those folks are giving their money to charity, not to govt, so it's not providing govt revenue that can be used to pay off govt debt.
- Retric 16y agoThe debt is not indexed to inflation or GDP. So, 13.3 Trillion * 3% = ~400Billion per year so an 400B "increase" would represent zero increase in inflation adjusted debt. In other words if the debt increased 0$ in a given year we would have effectively paid off ~3% of it. PS: The actual increase in debt over the last few years has still been ridiculously fast. Defense-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $216 billion and $361 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S...) Basicly we are putting the entire DoD budget on Credit Cards.
- jbooth 16y agoMan, remember in 2000 when that guy was talking about lockboxes? What a dork!
- sliverstorm 16y agoless than 10% of your debt is still progress.