"John R. Carroll" wrote:

Ed Huntress wrote:
"jim" wrote in message
...
Scout wrote:



Seems more like
You are the one that is palming stuff off on the future.

Your generation didn't pay the govt debts of the last generation
and the next generation won't pay the govt debts of today

Not by my choice, but those that simply keep pushing the problem
down the line.....watching it grow larger and larger and larger.


The problem is not the federal debt.
The private sector amassed $24 trillion in debt from 1998-2008

How much of that is mortgages?

http://www.federalreserve.gov/econre...nd20091231.htm

Select the range of your choice.
What matters isn't the debt "amassed".
It's the value and ability to repay.

As long as you don't run up against the fallacy-of-composition

Anybody in a crowded theater can easily walk out the exit, but
that doesn't mean you are safe in concluding that
everybody in the crowded theater can exit at the same time

An individual's ability to repay can be thwarted if
everybody decides to repay at the same time

If everybody decides to pinch pennies and pay down debt and
save for a rainy day you end up with a recession where it becomes
difficult for anybody to pay off their mortgage and housing
values fall as more try to sell than are willing to buy

And nobody wants to create new mortgages based on housing stock
that may lose value at a faster rate than interest rates
They may as well rent and put the money in savings account where
it won't lose value

Car sales, appliance sales and other retails sales of goods and
services fell off a cliff in 2008 and that happened not because the
government imposed some draconian tax or regulation.
There was no Tsunami or earthquake or hurricane
There was no mass epidemic of disease

The reason sales fell sharply and so many jobs that
depended on those sales were lost was simply because
a huge percentage of the population at once said to themselves:

"Oh ****, I better stop buying things and start paying down debt"

-jim





--
John R. Carroll