“A Most Alarming and Shameful Legacy”

Few if any among us are likely capable of truly grasping the size, risk, and ultimate consequences of our existing and seemingly out-of-control U.S. National Debt. Especially given that past and present generations of “We The People” and our elected and unelected representatives in government have amassed a National Debt now exceeding some $36 Trillion ($107,000 per citizen; $271,790 per taxpayer), with a “yearly interest expense” now exceeding a Trillion dollars! And, for another mind-boggling thought . . . paying “only one year” of this “yearly” interest expense debt alone at, for example, the rate of $1 per second, would take more than 31,709 years!

Yes, a truly incomprehensible, out-of-control, and unsustainable $36 Trillion debt obligation that, for example, if expressed in one dollar bills and laid end to end, could circle the earth about 140,332 times! A most alarming and shameful legacy that also continues to be kicked down the road of responsibility to the ultimate backs of our country’s now youth and the not yet born — with yet-to-be-determined consequences.

A potentially liberty-threatening legacy no doubt resulting in no small measure from years of ignorance, apathy, complacency, denial, greed, and irrational fear of we so-called adults in the room, past and present. As countless citizens continue to vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury, and many political candidates continue to personally benefit from promising more and more of the same. All in irresponsible disregard of the inescapable reality that there is no such thing as “free stuff” — for ultimately someone, somewhere, at some point in time must pay the bills or otherwise endure the consequences.

And, as in years past, the future will no doubt hold many old and new demands and promises regarding tackling our National Debt through reduced and/or otherwise more responsible government spending (use of tax dollars/debt), etc. Undoubtedly entailing both well-intentioned and ill-intentioned matters to which there will likely at times be found considerable support — that is, “until” it is revealed just specifically who may be called upon to do the actual sacrificing.

As the following cautionary words often attributed to our 3rd U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), seem ever so more prophetic: “I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared…To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt…We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude...”

                                                              —William James Moore

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Please Note: The "above" article was also published as a Public Mind article on page 3 of the 12/24/2024 Edition of local newspaper, the Parsons Sun. [To enlarge/access, "Click" on the "below" image]: