The great increase in longevity has produced a surge in the desire to accumulate assets for retirement. It has outpaced the ability of the private sector to produce assets, so we need a larger government debt.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
And it's also producing a growth in debt to the United States that will weight very heavily in a country that has to address issues like having more old people to be covered by Social Security or by pension in the future.
The problem is that the U.S. government is the biggest debtor in the world, and those depending on it to take care of them will only become poorer.
It took the first 204 years of our Nation's history to accumulate $1 trillion in debt. And now we are doing that every 2 or 3 years.
We have been maintaining a standard of living by putting things on the debt of the next generation.
To finance longer life spans, we must convince individuals to start investing now for the long term. But longevity should be an asset that can be levered, not a curse. They must understand that there's a cost to sitting in cash. No one talks about that cost.
We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view we have nothing to show for it. We haven't invested in our roads, our bridges, our waste-water systems, our sewer systems. We haven't even maintained the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us.
We still have a major problem in debt with America that we have to find efficiencies in government to get us back to a balanced budget.
I don't mind the government accruing debts as long as every dollar is spent effectively with a high return. That works out fine. If you accumulate debts and waste your money, that's, of course, a disaster.
Good debt growth is when you borrow money, and it goes into the real economy. You do capital spending. You build businesses.
I can tell you if you look at the polls, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, they do not think we should increase the debt limit.