Debt Clock

It's a lot of information to take in all at once.

In another way it's simple and easy to understand common sense. The buying power of the dollar is devalued as you put more and more money out in circulation. It takes more money to buy the same thing.

This Friday came around and when you got your paycheck you walked out of the grocery store with five bags of groceries.

A year from now you might only walk out with four bags of groceries. Your weekly paycheck won't buy as much.



Lol ... i must be old cause i can remember when you could get a bottle of Coca Cola out of the vending machine for a nickel.



Not quite sure what they're driving at with the dollar to gold ratio. They're listing gold as being 8,133.00$/oz. The current spot price is about 1.328.00 USD/oz. Something is a bit cattywampus there.

Originally Posted by CopperHeadAKA

Look at the Dollar to ( gold sliver copper ETC ) Ratio as compared to 1913
on the far right side

The price of gold and silver was controlled by the government until the 1970's ...

I believe i understand ....

As the story goes the dollar was 100% backed by gold way back when. I think it was sometime around the Roosevelt administration that they gradually began to de-couple the value of the dollar from gold. They completed the process sometime during the Nixon administration.

This part makes sense. In order to expand the size of your economy you have to expand the money supply. If the monetary unit is tied to physical gold it's limited to the amount of gold you have on hand to back it up.

Once we were unchained from gold we could expand the money supply as much as needed.

In a weird way this applies to the debt clock too ! See ... as we expand the money supply it devalues the dollar AND devalues the debt. We could run the debt up to 100 trillion dollars and it wouldn't be a problem as long as we devalued the dollar accordingly. Neat trick huh ?

The government of Zimbabwe inflated their currency by one million percent a number of years back thus cancelling their national debt.

There was a huge cost in human terms.



Something similar is happening here. Our standard of living has been declining. The moderately wealthy have been driven down into the middle class. The middle class has been driven down into the working class. The working class folks have been driven into the dust. It's brutal ....

I think that if people understood there might be a chance to turn things around. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.Every time they increase the debt -or- inflate the money supply to compensate it comes out of your hide. Doesn't matter if you're rich or poor cause we're all affected by it.

Germany had a huge hyperinflation issue after World War 1 ... As far as I am aware, Venezuela has the worst inflation issues at the moment ...

About the same age here. The way i figure it ... i probably don't have much more than twenty years left. For all i know it could be a whole lot less. You can always make more money but you can't make more time.

It makes the most sense to spend what time you do have left wisely.

When i'm on the job it's about making money so the sensible choice is to do the thing that pays the most.

When i'm off the job it's about doing the things that i find enjoyment in and living life to the fullest. Scrapping for me is just a hobby. The pay is pitiful but it's fun and relaxing and i learn new things all the time.

What value can you put on gaining new knowledge and more skills ? I dunno ... sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't.

When you look at the debt clock it's plain to see there's a problem. JMHO but i think the folks running the show have lost their minds to think that what they're doing will ever work. No doubt, it will all work out just the way it's supposed to.

There's no point in worrying about things that well beyond your control. If it all goes sideways then it all goes sideways.

Life goes on.

They can't be broke, they still have a printing press!

Originally Posted by t00nces2

They can't be broke, they still have a printing press!

Venezuela no longer has enough hard currency to pay for the paper stock to print their funny money. So in their case they are broke. Last time I was there was 2002. Almost everyone we knew long has left the country.

Venezuela, Germany, Zimbabwe, and a lot of other places. Things aren't great in France, Greece, and Spain right now. We had our own Great Depression of the 1930's. Money was really hard to come by back then.

The thing is that most people are entirely dependent on the cash economy for their daily needs. That's especially so for people living in the city. They go work their job and use the money they've earned to buy everything they need to live.

In a way it's like being trapped in a cage. See .... the government takes a portion of your earnings in taxes. You've got no say over how much they take. If they take a small portion it's not so bad. When they take bigger and bigger portions you're left with less and less to live on.

That's what sucks. See ... currency inflation is an indirect hidden tax. If you want Obamacare -or- a powerful military all these things have to be paid for. The growing national debt has to be paid as well. It's coming out of your pocket and it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor.

When it gets to the point that they're taking more than half of what you make then you become a slave to the system.

Some people think that's the way it should be. They feel that most of what you make should go to the government.

It's something to think about .....

What do you think is right ? How much is too much ?

If we can stop using oil, most of this mess would just disappear.

Originally Posted by HipoGear

If we can stop using oil, most of this mess would just disappear.

For whom?

Originally Posted by HipoGear

If we can stop using oil, most of this mess would just disappear.

Of the 7.4 billion people on this planet right now, I believe over 6.4 billion would die of starvation or war if the flow of oil stopped ...

The main problem is that we're living well beyond our means. It's costing somewhere around 1.5 trillion to run the Federal government every year. We take in about half of that in tax revenues. We're having to borrow the other half. That's why the debt clock is spinning up as fast as it is.

It's just common sense that we can't live that way.

It really doesn't matter if it's more social programs or a shiny new battleship ... the money just isn't there to pay for it. We can't even afford what we've already got.

The hard part is that you're going to run into problems whenever you get a mixed group of people in congress. They go into a room and try to work out some kind of budget but they can't agree on anything. You sure as hell don't want to cut old lady McFarland's social security check. On the other hand it is a big bad world out there. There are more than a few Hitler's and Stalins running around. If you've got a strong military it discourages them from getting ideas in their head. If you're perceived as weak they won't hesitate to beat you up and steal your lunch money.

~There's no easy fix for this.~

The only thing i can think of is for everyone at the table to agree to set their differences aside for awhile. Take another run at it and work out a ten year plan to bring us even up again.

They can always go back to bickering over how to spend the money once we have some money to spend.

Originally Posted by RLS0812

Originally Posted by HipoGear

If we can stop using oil, most of this mess would just disappear.

Of the 7.4 billion people on this planet right now, I believe over 6.4 billion would die of starvation or war if the flow of oil stopped ...

They say 90% would die innthe first year if just the power went out.

Originally Posted by starbits

About 2/3 of electrical power shut off.

False.

Coal and natural gas produce 2/3 of the power in the US. Liquid petroleum generates 1%.