Make America solvent

For decades, I've wondered aloud why crime hasn't been more of a national issue during elections. Violent crime rates were much higher in the 1990s, for example, but the platforms of both parties gave it the shortest of shrift.

This year, "Make America safe" has taken a front and center place at the Republican convention in Cleveland, and crime will probably get some consideration with the Democrats in Philadelphia next week as well.

Law and order is imperative in civilized society and crime is generally local, but where it's bad, it's very bad. The victims suffering in those neighborhoods are among our country's most vulnerable, and their plight has deserved national attention for some time.

However, as pleased as I am that crime is finally receiving its due as a critical campaign issue, which can only help in pushing a down-tracking trend further downward, there is another dangerous topic where the trend isn't only going the wrong way, it's accelerating.

That subject is our national debt, and how to make America solvent again.

It seemed unfathomable back in 2009, early in the Obama administration when the national debt was already $11 trillion, that government economists were predicting it to hit $16 trillion by 2012.

Just a decade earlier it was a mere $3 trillion. It's now mid-2016 and the total has crested $19 trillion.

By the time Obama leaves office in January, his legacy will likely include a national debt north of $20 trillion.

That's $20,000,000,000,000, to put it in full numerical perspective.

According to the U.S. Debt Clock, a website that tracks a computer screen full of national financial figures and data in real time, the official national debt is $19.356 trillion (how crazy it is to be rounding in the billion-dollar place).

The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), which is the market value of all goods and services produced in a year within American borders, is $18.342 trillion.

The resulting debt-to-GDP ratio is 105.5 percent. The only time it's ever been that high in U.S. history was during a few of the World War II years. As recently as 2000, the ratio was only 55.9 percent. Back when Ronald Reagan swept into the White House, the national debt was but 36.1 percent of our gross domestic product.

As beyond comprehension as a $20 trillion national debt is, it grossly under-represents the nation's total indebtedness.

Unlike businesses, the government is not required to count unfunded liabilities--Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, for example--as official debt.

The "U.S. Unfunded Liabilities" button at the debt clock site shows a beyond-scary $102.9 trillion. Even scarier, it's growing by $1 million every 7 seconds. Or by half a billion dollars every hour, $12 billion per day.

Divvied out over the nation's 120 million taxpayers, the total national debt including unfunded liabilities comes to an average of $859,199 per taxpayer. A frightening asterisk to that unsettling statistic is that while the U.S. population has increased 15 percent since 2000, from 282 million to 324 million, the workforce has actually shrunk by nearly four million people. Worse still, median income grew only 6 percent in that 16-year period, adjusted for inflation.

Looking ahead isn't easy, even with crack actuarial assumptions surrounding the various generations, but the Congressional Budget Office's latest report is ominous.

The CBO discounts the national debt by excluding inter-government debt, so it's debt-to-GDP ratios are lower (its figure for 2016 is only 75 percent), but projections are worrisome nonetheless. Projecting out 30 years, government obligations will outpace economic growth, producing a discounted debt-to-GDP ratio of 141 percent.

It's hard to comprehend that even if we more than triple our nation's economic output by 2046, we will still have a debt ratio twice what it is today--with all the financial peril that entails.

The CBO report's sterile verbiage: "A large and continuously growing federal debt would make a fiscal crisis in the United States more likely."

In the height of election season, neither party wants to talk much about fiscal responsibility. Budget realities, especially if a little austerity is involved or implied, garners few votes compared to entitlement promises.

But the path we're on is a shaky one. Other countries that have let debt exceed national product in such measures have suffered mightily.

It's worth remembering that Congress approves the budget and appropriates money. Keep that in mind as the voting season approaches.

The laughter has died

There have been many kings of comedy in the entertainment world, and Garry Marshall's legacy lands him in the best of company.

Happy Days and its spinoffs were staples in 1970s TV households, and for decades films like Pretty Woman and A League of Their Own and The Princess Diaries gave audiences laughs, tears and warm fuzzies.

"In the education of the American people," Marshall once said, "I am Recess."

My recommendation of classic Marshall comedy is a lesser-known flick full of side-splitting humor called Overboard.

If you haven't seen it, you need a recess. Watch it.

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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.

Editorial on 07/22/2016

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