No. of Recommendations: 2
Apparently this guy is respected. Not some crackpot. I read this in my feed (I think Fortune), but I'm linking Yahoo Finance.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/national-debt-isn-t...According to Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model and one of the country’s most respected fiscal economists, that $39 trillion number is a polite fiction. The real tab, he argues, is closer to $100 trillion.I'm not an accountant, and don't want to be. I'm assuming the accounting distinction he is drawing is significant, and not some "trick" accountants play to draw the picture they want.
No. of Recommendations: 8
>i?I'm assuming the accounting distinction he is drawing is significant, and not some "trick" accountants play to draw the picture they want.
He is using "unfunded future obligations", a common trick among SS and Medicare opponents.
It has to do with the accounting distinction between explicit obligations — legally binding debts the government must repay — and implicit “pay-as-you-go” obligations — expected future spending commitments that carry moral or political, but not legal, force.
SS and Medicare are "pay as you go" obligations. He is counting projected future outlays, but not the future tax revenues. Someone once said "figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure". Remember how Bush #43 kept barking that SS would be "broke" in a few years, implying SS benefit payments would stop entirely. Not surprisingly, he was lying through his teeth, as he pushed SS privatization, which would actually increase the Federal debt, but line Wall Street's pockets. If the government did absolutely nothing, when the trust fund runs dry, (per the last estimate I saw) SS would still be paying about 76% of scheduled benefits from current FICA tax revenue.
Steve
