Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Reasons for National Debt

The United States spends a lot of money on maintaining its position as a world power. However, since we do not make more money than we spend, we end up borrowing most of the money we use from other national powers(France, England, etc) and other rich countries(the Middle East). As a result, our nation debt is extremely high(over 9.5 trillion).

There are many factors contributing to our need to borrow money from other rich and influential countries. A major factor is that we import more goods(ranging from unimportant items, that we don't even need!, like toys to important commodities, that we can't bear to live without, like oil) than we export. The problem is that most of these imports are in high demand so we import them regardless of the cost.

Another of the major factors is that we spend an excessive amount of money during wars, whether they are necessary and official or not. Pointless wars waste time, money, and man power when they could be used elsewhere effectively. The problem is that we NEED to participate in these, wars in order to save face, prove supiriority, and help countries that DO NOT want our help to hopfully recieve their help when we need it, or to allign themselves with us so they don't oppose us in the future.

Another, and possibly the most important, factor and major reason why the national debt is so high are the pork barrel projects that senators bring home in order to ensure their re-election. These pork barrel projects are extremely costly and they only help the state in which the senator works lives in as an individual, rather than the nation as a whole. The problem with this is that, even knowing that pork barrel projects are costly(and sometimes seemingly useless), no senator will willingly cut, trim, shelve, or stop their project for fear of losing their position in government.

2 comments:

Government Portal said...
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Government Portal said...

National Debt
I was really surprised when a read this article written by Chris about our National Debt, which is extremely high, we own over 9.5 billion!!! At the time that we’re living I don’t think we can do that much to decrease our debt. Americans like to have a good way of life (economically); most of the time we can’t afford all the commodities that we want even just the basic stuffs as a house and a car, also some of us spend more than what we make so we have to use loans and credit cards. Chris mentions other main factors that are increasing our national debt as well. I don’t think our government can do that much to improve this situation; but that least that they can do is stop wasting so much money in stupid wars that lead no were.