National Debt: Who Cares? | 5 Minute Video
The U.S. national debt is massive – so massive that most Americans cannot comprehend it, much less solve it. But a crisis is looming, and a day of reckoning that will affect every American is coming. The Manhattan Institute’s Brian Riedl explains how we got here and what you can do about it.
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Script:
In the 1958 movie, The Blob, starring a young Steve McQueen, a giant, expanding mass—a blob—threatens to destroy an entire town and everyone in it. It keeps growing and growing, and no one can stop it.
The United States debt is like that blob. Unlike the fictional blob, it threatens to destroy more than an entire town; it threatens the entire nation.
Where is Steve McQueen when you need him?
Here are some numbers.
The national debt currently stands at $22 trillion dollars. That’s trillion—with a ‘T.’ Ten years ago, it was $10 trillion dollars. Ten years from now, it’s projected to be $34 trillion.
The interest payment on our debt is currently $300 billion dollars per year, heading towards a projected $1 trillion dollars within a decade. At that point, a fifth of all federal taxes will go towards the interest on the debt, not education, infrastructure, and defense—you know, the stuff government is supposed to do. And that’s with historically low interest rates. Imagine if those rates normalized. Well, maybe you don’t want to imagine it because that picture is very dark.
In a better world, voters would be marching on Washington, demanding that our politicians dig us out of this hole before we’re buried in it.
In the real world… almost no one cares. But we should care. And any thinking person, left or right, understands why. No individual and no nation can accumulate debt indefinitely. Europe was able to bail out Greece with some loans a few years ago. But Greece is a small country. If the US goes ‘boom,’ there’s going to be no one to bail us out. So what’s driving the debt? And, more importantly, how do we drive ourselves out of it?
The debt has been growing for decades. It got supercharged by the 2008 recession. Revenues fell while spending soared. Under President Obama, the debt doubled from $10 trillion dollars to $20 trillion. In the first two years of the Trump Administration, we’ve added another $2 trillion dollars.
So what are we to do?
First, we need to identify the primary source of the problem. It’s pretty basic. You can talk about defense spending, welfare spending, or bloated budgets all you want, but it really comes down to two programs: Social Security and Medicare. Unless we get a handle on these monsters, the debt blob will continue to expand until it overwhelms us.
According to data from the Congressional Budget Office, these two programs alone face a $100 trillion-dollar shortfall over the next three decades. How is that possible?
Well, for starters, you’ve got 74 million Baby Boomers rolling into retirement age—10,000 a day. On top of that, Medicare recipients typically receive benefits that are triple the size of what they paid into the system. Without some serious adjustments, these programs are going to fail. This is not the fault of retirees. It is simple demographics and math.
Paying all promised benefits would require either raising the payroll tax from its current 15.3% to 33% or imposing a 34% national sales tax. No—squeezing the rich, slashing defense, or eliminating welfare won’t come close to paying the bill. Neither will any plausible level of economic growth. The $100 trillion-dollar hole is too big.
For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/national-debt-who-cares
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SS and Medicare are the Monsters? How about addressing the overgrown military budget for country that isnt even at war!
Great video
10 years ahead from 2019 will be $34 Trillion Dollars? Sorry Brian you are wrong this time, United States reached $34 Trillion Dollars debt just 4 years after this video has been released
One question:
Haven't a large amount of funds that were originally in the Social Security/Medicare budget over the years been "borrowed" and then diverted to other programs?
I love your video
And glad to see someone who gets it
Taxing the rich isn't the solution
This has to stop!
Insanity!
this aged like fine wine
current DEMOCRAT admin. cost of illegal immigration : $ 150.7 BILLION
Ah, a national debt of only $22 trillion. I remember it like it was yesterday.
Our debt is as fake as the money system it relies on. If we payed every dollar we owed back to the bank, there wouldn't be any money in circulation.
This is insanity!
Social Security wasn't created as a retirement plan. It's intent was to provide "social insurance" for people that lived past the average life span of 65ish back in the 30s. Once politicians dipped their hooks in it and politically weaponized it, that it turned into "the blob" that it is
The Gambinos
👍🏻
3 years ago and still nobody cares, Biden cant spend it fast enough and his shit head woke leftist supporters cant see past their cell phones. Titanic is still pointed at the iceberg. Guess we are going down. Glad Im not Tom Cruise.
Subsidizing oil companies, paying CEOs of defense contractors $20 million per year. How about raising the income cap on social security tax. How many employers really want to keep a 70 year old on the payroll? Private pension plans? How many of them have gone bankrupt? Private insurance companies don't make their money by paying out claims.
If only it would've taken 10 years to get to 34 trillion… 2 years later and we're approaching 31 trillion!
why the debt is out of control. #1 Congress and the elites want the system to break. After America goes belly up and the constitution expires, they will bring in a new world order where they have total power and you, the little people, are property.
#2 Vanity. Baby boomers want to feel successful so they can ignore all their incompetence at marriage, war, business, and social engineering that's been a failure for the last 50 years. By pretending to be rich (by borrowing trillions from millennials/genZ), they get to have a false sense of feeling successful. Furthermore, their kids and grandkids who will be paying this bill for the rest of their lives, seem fine with it too since they keep voting Democrat and Republican instead of Libertarian.
WHO IS THE DEBT OWED TO???
The career politicians sucking up a lifelong pension after robbing us blind for thirty years cost more than the social security bill. If I had the money they stole from me it would be enough to retire on. Ovomit got away with food stamp fraud. That's not even the tip of the iceberg.
Fun fact: US accumulated almost 8 trillion more in national debt for only 2.5 years later.
"In 10 years itl hit 35 trillion"
Oh buddy….
Debt matters because who will bail us out???? That explained nothing. Then we can’t pay for Medicare .. ok add it to the debt since more debt matters why?
Old people vote
Imagine making a huge deal of the US debt and then wanting to vote for the former president who increased the debt faster than any other president in history.
There is no national debt morons
Cringe
Well i know what side he is on
So I didn't spend a dime, and now I owe the world. I don't think so. If they ever try to tax us to pay for the debt, I will riot.
The prescription Drug Program is Capitalism you heathen, socialists do not believe in capitalism.
Why not fix the federal debt problem with a flat tax reform and abolish the era of government handouts and social programs and only harm the federal debt and make the problem worse
Don't save in the doller. Diversify in appreciating assets. Just make sure they're not stocks. We're in the biggest bubble in history.
Never gonna happen , especially with the same two political parties that brought us to this point. 2008 was a prime example of this. The fact that no politician supposedly saw this coming ( 2008 that is ) should be a dire warning to any citizen paying attention to their country and how it's governed. But as we know most Americans are simply caught up and never ending entertainment. And when the country does crash you will get nothing but lies and false reassurance from corrupt politicians. Same shit different century . The cancer of power has completely corrupted our political system and way of life.
What about the countries that have free health care and aren’t in debt?
FYI – Amazon didn’t pay taxes in 2018. That also doesn’t help with the national debt.
FYI – Cutting taxes for the rich and increasing military spending doesn’t help the national debt either.
Why don’t we just kill old people? They do literally nothing and they already hate their lives anyways. They have nothing to live for
Ronald Reagan had a good solution: The Balanced Budget amendment. You cannot spend more than you take in. Great idea, but it never passed.
Who Own's The Federal Reserve????
If No One Own's It,Then Aren't They Basically Looping The System?
If Some Individuals Own It , There Name Must Be Disclosed?
Who Own's The Money and What Does Federal Reserve Do With The Profit They Earn.
Listening to Prager U makes me feel better but sadder as well.
M*f* media
Now we know why the democrats wanted to kill senior citizens from retirement homes
My question is" How far in the hole would social security be today if our government would have kept the benefits for retirees, instead of raiding the cache for public assistance and things of that nature"?
Well, it's nice to know the government can push thru JUNETEENTH in less than a WEEK but, can't fix this.
I wonder how much covid's impact on elderly numbers will affect SS and MC payments and life insurance companies.
34 trillion in 10 years? WE DID IT IN TWO