We hear at the Fourth Corner have been playing a lot of SimCity lately, and if there is one thing that will knock your city off the top perch, it's spending too much money. Yes, putting in the Mayor's house and putting in those dozen sport stadiums sounded like a good idea at the time, but now Godzilla is stomping through your commercial district and your police department is on strike and won't even bother to stop him.
That's why it's a little unnerving that the Senate--both Republicans and Democrats (despite what each says)--want to increase the American debt ceiling to $14 trillion dollars. They're worried, and rightfully so, that if they don't bump up the debt ceiling that Uncle Sam will default on his loans by October, meaning they want to be able to take out more loans to pay for the debt we've already created.
$14 trillion alone is a hard pill to swallow. If every American opened up their wallets to pay that debt off, we'd each be out $47,000.00, including children. Considering the average American makes $45,000.00 dollars a year, our spending is outpacing our earnings. On a national scale, our GDP was $14.27 trillion dollars. In fiscal terms, that means we're more than broke, unless we can all live on $2,000.00 a year (about $5.00 a day).
The good news (we guess) is that most of that debt is foreign owned. And if push came to shove and Godzilla--I mean China--started storming around demanding we cash out, then we could just not pay him. Sure, sure, it's not the best fiscal policy around, but China doesn't play nice either, which is why their currency is artificially overinflated by 60% despite global protests.
The other good news is that a $5.00 a day budget is still pretty decent. Half the world lives on just $2.50.
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