Fighting for her daughter’s future
Veronisque De Rugy, senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and my newest hero, warns in her latest article, “Starting in 2012, the cost of the debt as a percentage of GDP will explode from a mere 1.8 percent of GDP to more than 30 percent of GDP in 2082.”
She goes on to explain what this means for her daughter Juliette:
To give you an idea of what this means, if I get to retire at 65, in 2035, the cost of debt will have more than tripled from 1.8 to 7.5 percent of GDP. And by the time my daughter Juliette retires, in 2070 (assuming that she is still allowed to retire at 65) the cost of the debt will have reached 23.8 percent.
What does that mean in dollars?
To put these numbers in perspective, Edmund Andrews writes in the New York Times that this means an additional $500 billion a year in interest payments in less than 10 years, which is ‘more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.’
If you are worried about your child’s future, please get MAD and join Mothers Against Debt. Be on the lookout for announcement from MAD.
Check out the Big Red Calculator, the only calculator that accommodates trillions and the official calculator of MAD.
December 18th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Where in the hell were you when bush started this down hill slide when he turned a surplus from Clinton into a debt?
December 21st, 2009 at 6:04 pm
John –
No question that republicans are equally to blame. I’ve said that repeatedly but just because republicans over spent earlier in the decade doesn’t mean that congress should now be allowed to put my kids further into debt. Do you think this current spending spree is acceptable because republicans over spent earlier in the decade? That’s silly.