3 ms·
$100T: Unfunded entitlements are twice as large as the national debt
- cs702 4y agoThis is a highly ideological opinion piece written by someone who fails to acknowledge many inconvenient facts, including: the federal government pays these "entitlements" (really, upcoming obligations) every year; annual federal government deficits, i.e., after paying all such obligations, have averaged ~3% of GDP for a long time, so the government's ability to pay such obligations has grown with the size of the economy; this is despite federal income tax collections and marginal tax rates being at or near their lowest levels since their peaks during the 1940's and 1950's (!!!); and finally, governments cannot have a surplus unless the private sector in the aggregate has a deficit of exactly the same magnitude over the same period (adjusted for net exports, which are immaterial in comparison). I wonder if the author even understands NIPA tables and their accounting identities.