Someone was recently posting links to this video to a chat group I’ve been spending altogether too much of my time on since I broke my ankle and have been rendered mostly housebound.
The problem is that it uses an odd measure of the national debt, one that might not sound odd at first (and in fact, to many, it will sound completely reasonable): the inflation-adjusted amount of the debt.
But think for a minute. Is a bank equally likely to make all $100,000 loans? Of course not! They don’t just consider the amount of the debt a borrower is taking on, they factor in things like the borroer’s income and wealth, to get an idea of how easily that person can pay it back.
So what really matters is not the absolute amount of the debt, but the size of the debt in relation to the economy. And that, while higher than average, is not unprecedented in our history like that misleading video makes you think the debt will be.
The economy has grown quite a bit since World War II (and at a rate above that of inflation), after all.
So what’s going on, then? Why the sudden concern (after eight years of increasing debts and a serious recession that provides good justification for deficit spending)? Easy. The debts that Dubya ran up were mainly for military spending. Obama wants to engage in social spending as well. And that spending threatens to reduce the level of privilege and inequality in society.
It’s the same reason why "balancing the budget in seven years" became such a burning right-wing priority after the Reagan/Bush years and the end of the Cold War: they were desperately afraid money might be spent, not because it might be spent, but because it might be spent on policies they don’t like.
There’s people out there — wealthy, powerful people — who like the fact that there’s no universal health care, a large and growing level of inequality, and a bloated imperialistic military. They want to keep things that way, and they’ll use scare-mongering to do so
And, tragically, many well-intentioned people (who might be very sympathetic to the idea of making US society less class-stratified and militaristic) will get suckered in by it.
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