Warren Buffet suggests an answer to fiscal discipline: if American debt reaches 3% of GDP under a particular Congress, all members are barred from standing as Candidates at the next election. Now, while it’s a bit of a lark at the moment, a judge has weighed in suggesting that Americans could by-pass Congress having to pass this law by making this Constitutional! While it might seem like a good idea to a generation of Americans sick of their government getting further and further in debt, what could backfire here? What about times of war and national emergency? Don’t governments just need the ability to run up debts of 5 or 10% in emergencies?
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I was under the impression that the US to GDP ratio was more like 300+%……
Hi Mike,
“In 2011 United States public debt-to-GDP ratio was about 100%. [1] The level of public debt in Japan in 2011 was 204% of GDP.[2] ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-to-GDP_ratio
As we both know, if they got off imported oil they’d save themselves $600 billion a year or $6 trillion a decade! As you reiterated on your blog somewhere (about becoming immune to financial crisis), “The problem is the solution”. They have a problem with peak oil coming, and global warming possibly wiping out much of their agriculture. The solution is to move to burn all that nuclear waste they have in GenIV nukes and convert their transport systems to electricity. And maybe even consider converting some of their many dead shopping malls into New Urban centres to avoid some of that driving in the first place!