The national debt is $34.62 Trillion, the equivalent of $102,775. per U.S. citizen.

How did it get that high?

When President Trump took office in 2017 the national debt was about $19.6 Trillion. This means, over the last 8 years, under the direction of President Trump and President Biden, the national debt has nearly doubled.

Why? What’s happening that is so radically different from any time in our history?

Here are a few reasons:

1. COVID – The government virtually shut down the economy and then propped it up by printing and distributing new money.

2. Chronic Disease – We’re currently spending 17% of our annual GDP ($4.3 Trillion) on healthcare and most of that pays for chronic illness. This expense dwarf’s military and security spending ($1.3 trillion). Chronic disease is bankrupting the country.

3. War – We have a robust military-industrial complex always looking for new customers. This creates incentive for new wars, new reasons for war, and it all costs money.

4. Corporate capture of federal agencies – Business and government should have different motives and incentives. Unfortunately, large corporations and industries have captured government agencies and use them to advance their interests, turning government into business and thereby corrupting their incentives at the expense of citizens.

5. Printing Money – During the administrations of Presidents Biden and Trump, the U.S. government has printed more money than had been printed since the founding of the country.

Okay, so my share of the national debt is $102,775, big deal, I never get any nasty letters from a collection agency. Does that debt even have any affect on me?

It does.

1. A large national debt will push interest rates higher.

2. This means it’s more expensive to borrow money.

3. If you’re a business, you pass that cost on to customers, making your products more expensive.

4. For an individual, it makes it harder to finance things like a home or a car.

5. These factors create inflation and slow down the economy, negatively impacting everyone’s standard of living .

6. GDP grows more slowly.

7. It destabilizes the dollar which in turn threatens the strength of the county.

Can our current, enormous debt ever get paid? Can we ever balance the federal budget?

We can, but the ways to accomplish this aren’t always popular and therefore politically risky. Here are the options and a few suggestions for each:

Option 1 - Cut spending.

Use available data about health and disease to truly solve the chronic disease epidemic and save money we’re currently spending to ‘manage it.’

Stop promoting war.

Option 2 - Raise taxes and collect more money.

Just over 50% of total tax revenue comes from individual income taxes. Some States are experimenting with a millionaire’s tax, raising taxes on income over a million dollars a year. These States are collecting more revenue.

Corporations contribute about 9% of federal revenue. Corporate taxes could be increased, although in today’s global economy it’s likely corporations will use international strategies to avoid taxes within the U.S.

Restore the integrity of government and restore a true separation between private business and government.

Option 3 - Stimulate the economy so there’s more money to tax.

Don’t over-regulate. Stimulating the economy is, for the most part, a matter of getting out of the way of private enterprise and letting creative private citizens solve problems and profit from their solutions.

Balancing the budget and getting the national debt under control can be done. Because there are different approaches and every approach impacts people in good and bad ways it will always involve give-and-take and negotiation.