Prof. Antony Davies: America's Debt Visualized

how far in debt is the US government let's put the numbers in perspective if we stacked up individual $100 bills 100 million dollars would look like this if we added up the annual incomes of everyone in the top 1% they would total about two trillion dollars that's 20,000 pallets of 100 million dollars each this is the total value of all assets the US government currently owns about 3 trillion dollars in 2016 the federal government collected about three point three trillion dollars in taxes and spent four trillion the government had to borrow the difference which brought its total debt at the end of 2016 to almost 20 trillion dollars for comparison the annual output of the whole US economy is only 18 trillion dollars but there's more in addition to its debt the government owes what are called unfunded obligations these are future Social Security and Medicare payments that the government has promised to retirees but which it does not have the money to pay the present value of unfunded obligations is about 70 trillion dollars that means that the total amount of money the US government either owes or has promised and cannot pay is almost 90 trillion dollars that figure is nearly 40 percent higher than it was just five years ago and it's about ten trillion dollars more than the annual economic output of the entire planet the United States government owes more money than any other government ever in human history at 20 trillion dollars the federal debt is so massive that many people don't even understand the words and numbers used to describe the amount but if we look at the physical size of the dollars comprising the government's debt we can start to see how extremely serious a problem the debt is even when people can visualize the magnitude of the government's debt they often ask why does it matter why can't the government just keep far away the answer is that it can't because eventually the debt becomes unsustainable the federal government has borrowed so much money that it is running out of places to borrow more somewhere between now and then government will run out of financial school when that happens three things follow the government could be forced to make significant cuts to public services the government could be forced to increase taxes the Federal Reserve could be forced to monetize government spending by printing money these options are drastic and their consequences would be disastrous but there is still hope our responding won't be large enough to sustain the government we have today for another five to six years so one solution is to freeze total government spending for five to six years to give the economy time to grow large enough to support the government at the end of those five to six years the government would have its first balanced budget in decades government spending could then resume growing so long as it did not grow faster than the economy the government's massive debt would remain but it would have stopped growing and if the government continued to restrict its growth to match that of the economy over the next century the economy and with it the government's tax revenue would have grown so much as to make today's massive debt trivial if you would like to learn more about how we can pay down the debt click here to see the full video and subscribe to learn Liberty

Channel: Learn Liberty

Views: 306,651

Keywords: US debt, national debt, us national debt, what is the national debt, government debt, american debt, federal debt, current us debt, 360, 360 video, professor, Antony Davies, Ant Davies, Learn Liberty, libertarian, liberty, Institute for Humane Studies, us debt clock, us debt crisis, central banking, federal reserve, economics, money, recession, debt, us debt ceiling, us debt 2018, economy

Id: ErUZjM16r1M

Length: 3min 20sec (200 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 18 2017