

The America our parents left us - sajid
http://scripting.com/stories/2011/04/19/theAmericaOurParentsLeftUs.html
"The thing we make that everyone wants that no one else can make is the US dollar."<p>"We will go down as the stupidest generation ever. The one who had it all and threw it all away."
======
pwg
The real question should be:

Just what is the point of a "debt ceiling" if, every time we get near it, it
simply gets raised to allow more debt to be aquired?

It is not really a ceiling if it never actually stops the debt from growing.

~~~
davewiner
That's correct. It's completely unnecessary. The budget that was passed by
Congress and signed by the President dictates the finances for the country for
the next twelve months. Its dishonest for a party to have voted for the budget
and then to turn around and blame the other party for the spending it
dictates. The time to have this fight is when deciding on the budget. Not by
holding the economy hostage.

------
cromulent
> It's known around the world that the United States always pays its
> debts...We're pretty much the only country that people depend on this way.

Really? I thought that the US arrears situation with the UN for the last 25
years was well known. I would suggest Finland as a country that always pays
its debts.

------
anonymoushn
This is factually incorrect. If we fail to raise the debt ceiling, we still
wouldn't default unless our tax revenue failed to cover our interest payments
for the year. As it stands, our tax revenue is somewhere between 3 and 5 times
the interest payments we pay in a year.

~~~
arethuza
Doesn't the US government have rather a lot of ongoing expenses that is "has"
to pay?

~~~
anonymoushn
There is a lot of "mandatory spending," but the portion of that for which the
government has a contractual or legal obligation to pay is approximately
nothing.

Evidence RE: Social Security -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemming_v._Nestor>

~~~
jhaglund
I think the argument here is that we inherited a country which always paid
it's debts. If we decide we don't HAVE to pay our debts, then this is a
different country, the world will recognize this and we'll find it more
painful to borrow.

If we abolish every federal institution citizens depend on (social security,
medicare, education, etc.) to pay debts, I think you're asking for a
revolution.

~~~
davewiner
It's much worse than that. We enjoy a special status with the dollar as the
reserve currency. We'd probsbly lose that before we defaulted, just the fact
that we were considering defaulting would be enough. And without a reserve
currencey the world economy would go into a tailspin.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency>

