Quote:Overview

Elon Musk recently stated that “rich people” should “be caring more” about federal deficits because “if the ship of America sinks,” “we all sink with it.” This may seem like hyperbole, but a widely overlooked report from the U.S. Treasury shows it is a likely scenario unless major changes are made.
The Treasury report, quietly released in January, shows that if the federal government reported its finances in the same manner that large corporations are required by law to report theirs, the primary measure of federal red ink wouldn’t be $36 trillion in national debt but $143 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations.
This staggering figure equals 85% of all the wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding. It also equates to an average burden of $1.1 million on every household in the nation.
Unlike other measures of federal finances that cover an arbitrary period, extend into the infinite future, or ignore government assets, the figure of $143 trillion applies strictly to Americans who are alive right now and accounts for the value of the government’s commercial assets. Thus, it quantifies the full federal financial burden on today’s Americans.
Complete v. Incomplete Accounting
Federal law requires the U.S. Treasury to publish an annual report that details the government’s “overall financial position.” In addition to the national debt, the “Financial Report of the United States Government” also includes the government’s explicit and implicit financial commitments, such as:

    federal employee pensions and other retirement benefits like healthcare.
    environmental liabilities like contaminated nuclear sites.
    unfunded obligations for social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Such “fiscal exposures,” as explained by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “represent significant commitments that ultimately have to be addressed.” Hence, GAO stresses that ignoring them can “make it difficult for policymakers and the public to adequately understand the government’s overall performance and true financial condition.”
Although the Treasury published the report almost two months ago on January 16, Google indicates that no prominent politician or major media outlet has explicitly mentioned it. Meanwhile, the same people have frequently cited the national debt and federal deficit, which are incomplete measures of the federal government’s red ink.
The national debt and federal deficit are mainly based on cash accounting, which is the simplistic process of counting money as it flows in or out. Thus, liabilities like pension benefits for federal workers aren’t measured until they are actually paid, which is often decades after they are promised.
In contrast, the Treasury report mainly uses accrual accounting, which measures financial commitments as they are made. This is how the federal government requires large corporations to report their finances. In the words of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which is tasked by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to create private-sector accounting rules, accrual accounting is the “most relevant and reliable” way to measure the financial health of pension plans.
The same applies to other retirement benefits like healthcare. The accounting rule that governs such benefits explains that “a failure to accrue” implies “that no obligation exists prior to the payment of benefits.” Since an obligation does exist, failing to account for it “impairs the usefulness and integrity” of financial statements.
The Grand Total
A methodical tally of accrual accounting data in the Treasury report shows that the federal government has amassed $143 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations beyond the value of its commercial assets. This reflects the government’s finances at the close of its 2024 fiscal year on September 30, 2024.
The primary components of this burden, which are unpacked below, include:

    $28.3 trillion in publicly held national debt.
    $17.2 trillion in liabilities that are not accounted for in the publicly held debt.
    $105.8 trillion in unfunded social insurance obligations.

These figures tally to $151.3 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations. Offsetting this is $7.9 trillion in commercial assets owned by the federal government, leaving a grand total shortfall of $143 trillion.
Numbers in the trillions are hard to conceive, so it’s revealing to place them in context. The figure of $143 trillion amounts to 85% of the net wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding, estimated by the Federal Reserve to be $169 trillion. This includes all of their assets in savings, real estate, corporate stocks, private businesses, and even consumer durable goods like automobiles and furniture.
The government’s $143 trillion shortfall also amounts to:

    $421,108 for every person living in the U.S.
    $1,085,022 for every household in the U.S.
    4.9 times annual U.S. economic output (GDP).
    28 times annual federal revenues.

Publicly Held Debt
The simplest major item quantified by the Treasury report is the publicly held debt, which is $28.3 trillion. This is the money the federal government owes to non-federal entities like individuals, corporations, state governments, and foreign governments.
Publicly held debt is a partial measure of the national debt that excludes $7.1 trillion the federal government owes to federal programs like Social Security and Medicare. The Treasury report also details these intergovernmental debts and consolidates them with the items below.
Liabilities
Pension and other retirement benefits are a large part of compensation packages for government employees. With these generous benefits included, civilian non-postal federal employees receive an average of 17% more total compensation than private-sector workers with comparable education and work experience. Postal workers receive even greater premiums ranging from 25% to 43%.
In 2023, federal, state, and local governments spent $2.4 trillion on employee compensation, costing each household in the nation an average of $18,328.
The Treasury report shows that the federal government currently owes $15.0 trillion in pensions and other benefits to federal employees and veterans that are not accounted for in the publicly held national debt. To pay the present value of these benefits will require an average of $113,451 from every household in the United States.
The Treasury reports other liabilities of the federal government, such as:

    $134 billion in accounts payable.
    $666 billion in environmental and disposal liabilities.
    $106 billion in insurance and guarantee program liabilities.

Altogether, the Treasury records $17.2 trillion in liabilities that are not accounted for in the publicly held debt.
Social Security & Medicare
A similar but far more expensive situation exists with social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. This is because—contrary to popular belief—these programs don’t save workers’ taxes for their retirements. Instead, they immediately spend the vast majority of those taxes to pay benefits to current recipients. Thus, they are called “pay-as-you-go” programs.
In stark contrast, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis explains, “Federal law requires that private pension plans operate as funded plans, not as pay-as-you-go plans.” The reasons for this, as explained by the American Academy of Actuaries, are to increase “benefit security” and ensure “intergenerational equity.”
Social Security and Medicare, on the other hand, have levied multiplicatively higher tax burdens on succeeding generations of Americans, thus creating severe generational inequity. And unless retirement ages are raised or benefits are reduced in some other way, taxes will need to be increased again to keep the programs solvent.
Musk recently referred to this situation when he called Social Security the “biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and said, “When you look at the future obligations of Social Security, the actual national debt is like double what people think it is because of the future obligations.”
Federal actuaries measure the unfunded obligations of Social Security and Medicare in several different ways, but only one of them approximates accrual accounting. This is called the “closed-group” unfunded obligation, which is the money needed to cover the shortfalls for all current taxpayers and beneficiaries in these programs.
In the words of Harvard Law School professor and federal budget specialist Howell E. Jackson, the closed-group measure “reflects the financial burden or liability being passed on to future generations.” These burdens are $49.8 trillion for Social Security and $53.9 trillion for Medicare. Placing these figures in context:

    Social Security’s unfunded obligations amount to an additional $272,237 from every person who currently pays Social Security payroll taxes.
    Medicare’s unfunded obligations amount to an additional $201,932 from every U.S. resident aged 16 or older.

Those shortfalls are what remain after the federal government has paid back with interest all of the money it has borrowed from Social Security and Medicare.
Social Security and Medicare differ from true pensions because taxpayers don’t have a contractual right to receive these benefits. Nevertheless, paying these benefits is an implied commitment of the federal government, and federal law requires that these programs be included in the Treasury report.
The Treasury report estimates that the combined closed group unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare, and some smaller social insurance programs are $105.8 trillion. This figure doesn’t include intergovernmental debt, which is consolidated with other data in the report.
Federal Assets
The Treasury also records the federal government’s commercial assets, such as:

    $1.2 trillion in cash and other monetary assets.
    $1.3 trillion in property, plants, and equipment.
    $1.8 trillion in receivable loans, mainly comprised of student loans.

In total, the government estimated that it owned $5.7 trillion in commercial assets at the close of its 2024 fiscal year. This figure is likely lower than reality because the Treasury report measures the value of the federal government’s:

    gold and silver according to laws that require it to assess gold at $42.22/ounce and silver at $1.29/ounce, which are small fractions of the market prices.
    property, plant, and equipment at the cost of purchasing these items and then depreciates them, which fails to account for inflation and the appreciation of assets like land.

Using data on the market value of gold and silver and an extremely rough, non-generalizable estimate of the difference between the historical cost and fair market value of a government entity, Just Facts estimates that the federal government has about $2.2 trillion more in assets than the Treasury reported. Including this, the federal government has about $7.9 trillion in commercial assets.
The Treasury report doesn’t account for federal stewardship land and heritage assets, such as national parks and the original copy of the Declaration of Independence. While these items have tangible value, the report explains that they “are intended to be preserved as national treasures,” not sold to the highest bidder to cover debts.
Adding up the federal government’s debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations and then subtracting the value of its commercial assets yields a fiscal shortfall of $143 trillion.
Root Causes
As with other policy issues, the media and politicians have repeatedly misinformed the public about the root causes of the federal government’s fiscal deterioration.
For example, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D–TX) claims there’s “not” a “lot” of “waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.” In reality, the Government Accountability Office estimates that the federal government loses $233–$521 billion per year to “fraud alone.” This costs every household in the nation an average of $137,000–$305,000 over a lifetime, not counting waste or abuse.
Those numbers show that if the bulk of fraud were eliminated, it could put a significant dent in the problem, but it would not be nearly enough to fix it.
Another recent example of misinformation comes from PolitiFact, which claims that “tax cuts were the biggest of four types of legislation that have added to the federal debt since 2001.” PolitiFact bases this assertion on a study that puts all tax cuts into one bucket while splitting added spending into three buckets. Placing the added spending into one bucket, the study shows that it accounts for 61% of the added debt.
Furthermore, the study states that those figures fail to account for the “effects of the built-in spending growth in certain parts of the budget, while it takes for granted the built-in growth in revenue.” Because such revenue increases are baked into federal law, most “tax cuts” are actually “tax evens” that correct for bracket creep, which consumes an ever-growing share of people’s incomes over time. That’s why despite the passage of numerous “tax cuts,” the portion of the U.S. economy consumed by federal taxes has been roughly level for eight decades:

Meanwhile, federal spending has soared from 3% of the U.S. economy in 1930 to 23% in 2023. Yet, a scientific survey commissioned in 2020 by Just Facts found that 25% of voters believe tax cuts were the main driver of debt. This accords with numerous news stories that blame the debt on tax cuts.

The same survey found that another 25% of voters believe the main driver of rising national debt is military spending. This conforms to the reporting of media outlets that frequently blame the debt on military spending. In reality, military spending has plummeted from 53% of all federal expenses in 1960 to 17% in 2023:

As shown in the charts above, the primary driver of the national debt is increased spending, particularly on social programs. These programs—which provide healthcare, income security, education, nutrition, housing, and cultural services—have grown from 21% of all federal spending in 1960 to 61% in 2023. Yet, only 39% of voters correctly identify social spending as the primary cause of rising debt.
In total, social programs and interest on the national debt—which mainly stems from social programs—account for 75% of all federal spending. Also, the vast bulk of the government’s unfunded obligations are due to Social Security and Medicare.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the main drivers of future debt will be Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Obamacare, and interest on the national debt. Under the weight of these, the publicly held debt is due to skyrocket to unprecedented levels over coming decades.
Harmful Effects
The national debt doesn’t always manifest in the obvious fallouts of increased taxes or reduced government benefits. A broad range of academic publications document that the consequences of excessive government debt also include intensified inflation, lower wages, weak economic growth, and combinations of such results.
The linkage between those economic scourges and government debt are not always obvious to voters, and politicians who run up debt often blame “greed” for the harms that their deficit spending has caused. The media also promotes this false storyline. Hence, the harmful effects of government debt continue.
Contrary to those who allege that the U.S. government can spend and borrow with abandon because it can print money, the Government Accountability Office warns that “the costs of federal borrowing will be borne by tomorrow’s workers and taxpayers,” which “may reduce or slow the growth of the living standards of future generations.”
Such effects may have already begun. Although association does not prove causation, the national debt has risen steeply over recent decades, and with this, the U.S. has experienced episodes of rapid inflation and historically poor growth in gross domestic product, productivity, and household income.

(08-05-2025, 11:48 AM)Michigan Swamp Buck Wrote: What a complete mess. Any business would have tanked long ago with figures like this at any size or scale.

The great reset is sounding better now, considering bitcoin isn't going to come to the rescue or help increase wealth. I imagine that any reset will require all PMS and other stores of personal wealth to be confiscated from the public, and then our asses will be owned.

A reset could happen naturally with a crash, or it could be started by the government; either way, it is going to be rough, and few will adjust to it. If you think people are basically treated like cattle now, wait for the reset. The reset, however it occurs, will cause unrest like nobody has ever seen before in the US. Scenarios like Mad Max, The Book of Eli, and even The Road will be preferred to what will happen when it falls, because at this rate, it is when, not if.

(Yesterday, 08:41 AM)FCD Wrote: I'll say this here, to this group, but I would never share this message on a public platform...
(you'll see why in a moment)

This is not an excuse, and it's not kicking the can down the road either, so I need to say that right up front.  There are a couple important things to understand about the theme of the OP.  Those 'debts' are all real, in varying degrees, but it's important to also understand, those debts don't all get 'called' the same way.  Meaning, they don't all come due at once, nor at the same time.  And...many of them are radically different from each other in terms of who holds those debts, and on what sort of 'paper' they are.  In other words, it matters 'what' the various 'instruments' are which create those debts, and how they are serviced and/or paid down.

Now, in the same breath I have to say, this is NOT the same thing as saying..."Don't worry!"...which is exactly the message that politicians frequently and notoriously message out to their constituents.  We definitely DO need to be concerned with all these obligations, but some of them warrant more immediate concern than others.  Again, I need to stress here, this does NOT translate into..."It's not our problem and it's not a real problem"...and/or..."Oh, that's just fear mongering; go on with your lives!"  These obligation are very real, and we as a society absolutely DO have to worry about them.  So, let me be clear about that.

Now, I suspect you can see why my words are something just shared with this small group, and not the wider general public.  In the event it's still not clear 'why?', then just let me drive the final nail into the coffin here.  If the "Don't worry" message is allowed to percolate through the general populace, they will do EXACTLY that (i.e. not worry), and they will do this because it is "easier".  The populace as a whole is lazy like slugs, and most won't get their fat asses up off the couch to do anything, about anything really, until it's their house, and their living room, which is on fire.  Instead, they'll just go back to watching "The View", or CNN.  Fat, dumb and happy...and ultra-lazy!

Another great OP, Kenzo!

(Yesterday, 07:29 PM)FCD Wrote: If we could ever get serious for a minute about paying some of this stuff down (like..."we're gonna' wire the money today"...kind of serious), we could probably take nearly 100% write downs/discounts on all those billions in interest.  Even the mere thought of interest on some of this stuff pisses me off!  Reason being, "interest" in this context is so frigging nebulous.  It's interest on loans taken out on taxpayer's behalf, which is largely payable to these same taxpayers!  It's ridiculous.  Now, I'm sure the greedy-ass banks will try to jump in and get a piece of that pie, which they'll claim are "administrative fees", but even then it's only a small percentage of the total tax obligation.  The whole notion of this thought just makes me want to scream!  Only problem is, there's not really only one person to scream at.  The whole thing is the biggest circle jerk in American history!  And, nobody ever questions anything (which is what I was referring to above with society just being terminally lazy).  To question it means getting your shit together, getting your facts straight, and all your paperwork in order.  Without that, these thieving idiots in DC will steal all our money and we'll never see it again...and they WILL too!  Won't even bat an eye doing it either.  And do you know why?
Because they know the vast majority of American taxpayers are too stupid to even try to understand the problem, let alone try to fix it.  And the reason for that is...because they'd have to get their fat, lazy, asses up off the f'ing couch and turn of the MF'ing "View"!  OMG, it just makes me crazy even thinking about it!!!  (or, should I say crazy-er).  

The other thing is, even beyond the lazy part, don't let yourself get too distracted with all this "noize" (and, that's just what it is too) with the subject people just LOVE to use in order to make the whole problem seem unsolvable, and that is this whole disparity thing, and/or wealth distribution (i.e. super rich vs. common person).  People have to understand and accept that there are select individuals who have insulated and isolated themselves sixteen ways from Sunday on ever being connected to the solution.  Seriously, people just need to get over this!  They will NEVER be part of the solution, they just won't.  So, as long as we allow people to keep spewing this bullshit nonsense and using it as an excuse for doing nothing, then things will never change.  Trump has 'some' of the solution right, but he doesn't have it all, and he can't do it all himself, and he certainly can't/won't finish the job in 3.5 years.  But at least he's trying, and that's a start.  But "We the People" have a role in all of this too.

I don't think Trump is a God, far from it.  He's just a person.  He's got flaws; we all do.  He'll make mistakes, some of them colossal blunders even, but he does get back up again after getting knocked down.  The problems weren't caused only by Trump, and he won't fix them single-handedly.  America has to be prepared to carry this torch forward as long as it takes also.  

In order to save a person's life, you have to perform the ABC's (Airway, Breathing, and Cardiac).  America's 'airway' is obviously clear, else all these knuckleheads wouldn't have the time or energy to bitch about every single damn thing under the Sun.  America is breathing just fine too, and America has a pulse.  So the ABC's are covered (for the moment).  In critical Trauma care, the next thing you look for is major blood-loss.  Well, America is not as fortunate in that department.  No, America is mortally wounded and the bleeding out badly.  The first thing which has to be done is stop the blood loss, and this is where Trump is at least trying.  We have to cut the reckless spending.  We don't have to cut the spending completely, but we have end the reckless, insane, spending on everything imaginable.  Just stop it!  And, not next next month or next week either, no, RIGHT F'ing NOW!  TODAY!  The next step is to start locating all the bullet holes and stab wounds.  This is where the American people come into play.  We do this through learning and understanding the problem(s), and not burying our head's in the sand or hiding under our beds.  We get up, get out, and face the damn problems.  First we identify, then we categorize into the first two main buckets.  When an issue gets brought up it either goes in the "Bullshit Excuses" bucket, OR it goes into the "Needs a Realistic Solution" bucket.  In other words, we remove the "noize", and strip the problem down naked.  Now we've got something we can work with.  Then it's time to roll up our sleeves, dump the 'Needs Solution' bucket out onto the table and start going about sorting through it, splitting it up, assigning responsibilities, and kickin' some ass.  

Is it easy?  Not even.  Will it happen overnight?  Nope!  But we have to stick with it, keep pushing, and just grind it out.  It's the ONLY way, there is no 'easy way' (and only during the commercial breaks on The View (Gawd, I just loathe that program to the very bottom of my very soul and with a purple passion!)).  When we let people point fingers, they're just making excuses and not trying hard enough.  They're telling you, right to your face, they have no intention of trying to solve the problem.

And at the end of the day, you ask America if they know what all that's called(?)  It's called..."The American Way", and we take the good with the bad (always have)...because...America!

People, if allowed to their lazy devices, will come up with every excuse imaginable to make the problem look impossible to solve, and portray themselves as an insignificant drop of water in a vast ocean (as an excuse).  Then they'll gladly go sit their fat asses back down on the couch and grab the remote.  It's all complete and utter bullshit, it really is!