Thank you, thank you! It’s almost as though the GOP is intentionally trying to make people dumber every time they open their mouth about national debt.

Well, as your source points out, in 2009, the deficit swelled due to massive stimulus, so while it is true that it has shrunk since, that statistic is very misleading. The benchmark date is set poorly. And in discussing the 8 trillion dollars of added debt, he is (rather ineffectively) pointing out a continued spiral of spending money that we don’t have.

And our debt to GDP ratio has been going up.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GFDEGDQ188S

@Professor_Parabola What exactly do you mean by “spending money that we don’t have”? Why can’t we just create more?

@yakubsllc I’m honestly not sure I understand your question.

If you mean why don’t we print more, then I would say that would increase inflation. Money without value backing it, just demeans the currency, it would be more worthless, our creditors wouldn’t want it. We were the reserve currency of the world after Bretton Woods, meaning every other currency’s value was pegged to ours, and we took advantage of that to print dollars to pay off our debt. After all, with the way the rules were set up, our money retained an artificial value, so we could just hose our creditors. Eventually, they refused to play along, and eliminated that rule. So now, if we tried to print money to pay and play, we’ll get penalized by inflation.

I believe you mean, why can’t our economy produce more value and pay off that debt? Well, after a certain point, just paying off the interest on that debt will be beyond our ability to tax, even if our GDP continues to grow.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2015/08/07/how-much-do-we-owe-72-trillion-and-counting/

Those are stats on how high are debt, with our many unfunded mandates, is expected to go. I sincerely hope that we’ll never get into those dire straits, and that our economy will be strong enough to push back on the debt, but we’re already at 100% Debt to GDP ratio. We’re a stronger economy than Greece ever was, so the comparison isn’t completely apt, but this was around the point things started heading south for them. We have time, although they did not.

@Professor_Parabola Just in response to the first half (which was relevant to my question)…I think your fears about inflation are a little overwrought? To reduce inflation, you raise interest rates…

Ooh actually that’s not too bad!

I won’t speak necessarily to the past six years, but the most recent budget proposal put forth by the administration has some criticism. Granted, these are not taxes that have yet been put in place, but the economic impacts are detailed below, though you must of course come to your own conclusions.

http://taxfoundation.org/blog/proposed-tax-changes-president-obama-s-fiscal-year-2016-budget

And additionally, under obamacare, many taxes will at least indirectly affect middle class families, though in all fairness, most direct taxations apply to very wealthy Americans.

http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-taxes/

If you look at the list of taxes above, you’ll note a $63 premium increase for every plan, to cover the increase in risk generated by the new marketplace proposals. Essentially, lower risk plans subsidize the higher risk ones, since the government is requiring them both to be in the same pool.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottgottlieb/2013/11/20/do-you-win-or-lose-under-obamacare-for-the-privately-insured-what-youll-need-to-know-to-see-if-obamacare-will-leave-you-better-off/2/

Now, those costs are supposed to be mitigated by a series of tax credits:

http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-subsidies/

When you break down the numbers, a family of four with income between 33,000 and 96,000 (roughly), will receive some form of credit. To put that in perspective, the middle quintile for income in our country is about 66,000.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/49440

That source is from 2011, but I couldn’t find any more up to date info from the CBO, so let’s assume it’s around there. But at the higher end of the scale, the amount of tax credit changes, and it might not be enough to offset costs.

Indeed: http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/analysis-of-2016-premium-changes-and-insurer-participation-in-the-affordable-care-acts-health-insurance-marketplaces/

The silver plans, under which tax credits are based, are still going to generate a higher cost for citizens on average. The results are somewhat mixed, but by and large, we’re seeing an increase.

Most of this isn’t through tax, but costs are rising as a result of existing policy.