The National Debt
The National DebtThe federal debt of $5.7 Trillion, or $21,000 per child. This chapter covers all U.S. debt,
called National Debt (national debt is here defined as the sum of all recognized debt of
federal, state & local governments, international, private households, business and
domestic financial sectors, including federal debt to trust funds - but excludes the huge
un-funded contingent liabilities of social security, government pensions and medicare).
The National Debt Total is now over $27 Trillion, or $101,000 per man, woman and child.
To get you started since ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, following is one of the
many pictures shown in the Full National Debt Report via its link at bottom this page.
This is A SCARY CHART - showing 4 decade trends of national debt (the red line,
reaching $25 trillion) vs growth of the economy a measured by national income (blue line),
adjusted for inflation in 1998 dollars.
National debt is here defined as all U.S. debt (sum debt of federal and state & local
governments, international, and private debt, incl. household, business and financial sector,
including federal debt to trust funds).
Note from 1957 to the early 1970s each curve approximately doubled - meaning about the
same ratio of debt was supporting national income growth, despite paying on old WW II
debt and covering Korean and Vietnam wars. e’s a representative chart of the many shown
in the main National Debt Report, linked below. Look at that chart. Which line goes up
faster, the red debt line or the blue
Had the economy become less debt dependent after that we would have expected debt to
slow down. But, instead, it took off.
In just the 1990s real debt increased more than two times faster than growth of the total
economy - - despite zero cold wars.
Other charts show the driving culprits were not only federal government debt ratios
(which stopped falling in early 1970s soon after to reverse strongly to the upside -
growing twice as fast as the economy) - but, not to be left out, other main culprits were
accelerating household debt (growing nearly twice the rate of the economy, and domestic
financial sector debt growth (at rates 4 times faster than general economic growth).
This chart clearly shows the accelerating reliance on debt to drive economic growth in the
past 2 decades, compared to prior periods.
After years of successfully ranching in California, Wayne & Jean Hage (she is now
deceased) purchased a large cattle ranch in Nevada, Pine Creek Ranch, in the spring of
1978. The acreage involved is approximately 752,000 acres. However, as it is mostly
desert land, the land’s ability to support cattle is far less than might be supposed from its
size.
Located in the high desert mountains of central Nevada, the remote operation seemed an
unlikely place for a war that would rock the very foundation of federal land management
agencies. Wayne purchased the operation from the well-respected Arcularius Brothers
who sold the ranch because the regulatory pressure by the U.S. Forest Service had
become unbearable. Since Wayne had always been able to work with the agency, he
believed he could resolve...
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