{"id":25691,"date":"2017-09-15T10:53:58","date_gmt":"2017-09-15T15:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25691"},"modified":"2017-09-15T10:53:58","modified_gmt":"2017-09-15T15:53:58","slug":"to-hell-in-a-bucket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25691","title":{"rendered":"To Hell In A Bucket"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/economicprism.com\/to-hell-in-a-bucket\/\">To Hell In A Bucket<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/economicprism.com\/to-hell-in-a-bucket\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3645 size-full\" title=\"To Hell In A Bucket\" src=\"https:\/\/economicprism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Fire.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/economicprism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Fire.jpg 150w, https:\/\/economicprism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Fire-144x144.jpg 144w\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>\u201cNo one really cares about the U.S. federal debt,\u201d remarked a colleague and Economic Prism reader earlier in the week.\u00a0 \u201cYou keep writing about it as if anyone gives a lick.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We could tell he was just warming up.\u00a0 So, we settled back into our chair and made ourselves comfortable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe voters certainly don\u2019t care about the federal debt,\u201d he continued.\u00a0 \u201cThey keep electing the same spendthrifts to office.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd the politicians know the voters don\u2019t care.\u00a0 They also know that making more and more promises is the formula for getting reelected.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDeep down, the aging masses know they need massive amounts of government debt to pay their social security, medicare, and disability checks.\u00a0 On top of that, many of the so-called gainfully employed are really on corporate welfare; they hang their hats on government contracts to fund their paychecks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know as well I do how this crazy debt based fiat money system works.\u00a0 The debt must perpetually increase or the whole financial system breaks down.\u00a0 <span id=\"more-5728\"><\/span>The best we can hope for is that the ongoing currency debasement merely leads to a subtle erosion of living standards.\u00a0 That\u2019s the best-case scenario.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut, again, no one except maybe a handful of your readers\u2019 gives a rip about the federal debt.\u00a0 Plus, if you\u2019re gonna keep writing about it you need to use better terminology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe federal debt has grown at such a rapid rate that standard dollar units no longer capture what\u2019s going on.\u00a0 The debt numbers are so large it is difficult to distinguish between hundreds of billions and tens of trillions of dollars.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Going Broke at Mach 30<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor better perspective, you need to describe the debt growth in astronomical terms.\u00a0 You see, astronomers use light years to adjust for large distances.\u00a0 A light year, as its name suggests, is the distance light travels in one year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To Hell In A Bucket \u201cNo one really cares about the U.S. federal debt,\u201d remarked a colleague and Economic Prism reader earlier in the week.\u00a0 \u201cYou keep writing about it as if anyone gives a lick.\u201d We could tell he was just warming up.\u00a0 So, we settled back into our chair and made ourselves comfortable. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[195,12043,11763,827],"class_list":["post-25691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-economic-prism","tag-mn-gordon","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25692,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25691\/revisions\/25692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}