When most people hear about the national deficit or the national debt they say “Oh yeah that’s terrible! Those politicians can’t stop spending and borrowing money.” What most fail to realize, is that it is our money that is being taxed and inflated just as it is our debt being chained to our wrists and ankles. What’s even worse is that most people see the numbers and think how bad they are, then move on to the next thought. Let’s stop for a second to think about the effect of the numbers for a second.

First, will the debt be paid back? If so, we will all either be taxed directly or taxed with inflation to pay the debt off. Both of which will be crushing our already weak economy. You will see your paycheck shrink and/or payroll taxes increase as the government taxes its way into the black. The economy will suffer tremendously as our tab gets called. If we think unemployment is bad now, we will be amazed how terrible it is at over twenty-five percent.

Now onto the specifics… Let’s say we pay it back by direct taxation (without inflating our currency). That means that the taxpayers will be paying back more than $14 trillion dollars, not including interest. How does that calculate? $113k per taxpayer at this moment. Oh what’s that? You don’t have a spare $113k? Oh well I’m sure the Chinese and Japanese will be fine if we just don’t pay them. The interest on the debt along with the compounding effect of increased taxes on our economy will be detrimental for decades to come.

Or… Let’s say we pay the debt back by printing currency and inflation. Do you have any savings? What about retirement? Do you have any investments? Well their real world value just plummeted. When our “Federal” Reserve decides to print money to pay bills (also known as monetizing debt). Anyone with investments or savings backed by the United States dollar just lost a tremendous amount of their value. This also means many countries around the world will stop using the dollar as their global reserve currency. It would be the perfect timing for them to move into a true currency. This is another step into economic oblivion for the United States. A currency crisis will destroy our country’s economy and create political turmoil more than likely resulting in war. We cannot fathom how terrible a currency crisis would be in our country.

Now let’s think about the people we owe this debt to. We’ve never known either Japan or China to be militaristic in their actions have we? Are we all so brainwashed as to believe that the Arabic countries rich with oil are going to stick to the dollar when we finally have our tab called? Will China and Japan pay us any attention when they realize we can’t pay our debt and neither can we create barely a single item in our country that can’t be made elsewhere? Who would truly be surprised that in twenty years the B.R.I.C. (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries as well as the oil and energy producers are the strongest nations in the world? Where does America fit in after defaulting on the national debt and not being able to produce anything since industry has left and taxation hinders the economy?

Our freedom, quality of life, and livelihood is tied an incredible amount to our debt. Our collective future and the future of our children is tied more to our debt than most any politician would ever tell you. We cannot maneuver our country when we have over $14 trillion of debt tied to our ankles. We can’t tax our economy to death to pay for this debt. We can’t print the debt off without destroying our currency and therefore our economy. Our only saving grace is that China and Japan haven’t really figured out we’re not good on our debt. What do you think is going to happen when any one of these options of payment or non-payment have to be faced today? Please take a look at the graphic:

When you have a chance, check out the site yourself. Watch the numbers grow before your eyes. Does it merit a response right now? If not, you have to acknowledge, at some point, it will matter.

We will either drown in our own debt while a country that is more self reliant (most likely China) will grow to become more powerful economically and militarily than the United States. We will either become a group of people voting for the most hand-outs or for we will remove the broken system and start being responsible for ourselves. That is, unless you and every other taxpayer has a spare $113k lying around.

Oh I’m sorry, I forgot to mention the promises we’ve made on our own citizens. Make that $348k per citizen (taxpayer or otherwise). Don’t worry. The numbers are growing. Does it matter yet?