I keep reading that the US government is broke. This is nonsense. Imagine a wealthy heiress with an income of $2 million, who constantly spends $3 million. She has borrowed $14 million to keep up her lifestyle. Is she broke? Not really, but at some point she will have to cut spending. She may have to sell her New York apartment, and be limited to her L.A. Mansion. She may have to give up the cocaine, and only use pot. Instead of $20,000 dresses, she might have to get by with $1,000 dresses. But she could balance her budget.
While my analogy is flawed to a degree, as all analogies are, we will have to learn to live with less, like our heiress. This applies to me; this applies to you—the government too.
The problem is that Republicans continue to advocate absurd levels of defense spending where a plane costs $35 million, but we have no enemies to use it against. Russia cannot even control the Ukraine! What is the Republican solution? More wars.
The problem is that the Democrats have devised these giant unsustainable "entitlements" that are really Ponzi schemes. If current trends continue, and they won't because they can't, the unfunded Medicare liabilities are somewhere between $50 and $100 trillion. What is the Democrat solution? Expand Medicare.
This is why I oppose an increase in the debt ceiling. It is better to make the hard choices now rather than have the choices made by bondholders later. The government need not default. This is a myth.