Dave Johnson spells out what the US national debt means:
As I write this, the US national debt is about $9.17 TRILLION dollars. This debt is the amount we have borrowed to pay for our government since the Reagan tax cuts – compounded by the Bush tax cuts. This is because of a choice we made – yes I say WE, because this government is US – to borrow and pay later instead of pay now.
Don’t for a minute think that you do not owe that money. It comes to about $30,000 for each American, including infants. If you are a family of four you now owe about $120,000 thanks to those tax cuts. YOU owe this money, even though the tax cuts have primarily gone to the very rich. You WILL be paying it, one way or another. Don’t think that debt like that just goes away.
So where did it all go? Much disappeared into the gaping maw of Iraq of course, where some of it simply disappeared but most of it was scooped up by entities like the ones in the title for dodgy reconstruction projects. Quite a lot also went on other military boondoggles: aircraft carriers, attack submarines, three different fighter projects, missile defence, over engineered combat vehicles, etc. And of course anti-terrorism funding was expended hugely as well: got to keep all those public swimming pools in Buttfuck, Texas well protected!
And thanks to the tax cuts, much of the money needed to pay for these toys now has to be borrowed and borrowing costs money. A lot therefore is spent paying the interest on those loans. No wonder there’s no money left over to rebuild New Orleans.
So what will you, mr and mrs average taxpayer notice of all this? More indirect taxes, less government services, more decaying infrastructure, that’s your future. The US is the richest country in the world, but not for you. You’re not rich, so you don’t count. The best you can hope for is spending the next few decades paying off the Bush spending splurge while your betters count the profits they made of you.
Of course, there’s always the Russian solution.