Our $48 trillion debtSeattle PIDavid Horsey May 19, 2008 You are invited inside Horsey's inner sanctum to discover what's on the mind of the editorial cartoonist. Big thoughts about the world that didn't make it into a cartoon? Burning questions for readers to debate? The inside scoop on how a cartooning commentator gets the job done? It's all of the above, plus the occasional unpublished sketch and off-the-wall observation. ![]() Our $48 trillion debt What inspired me to draw the cartoon with the family camped out in their van in a post-financial-collapse nation, America, 2018? In part, it was an intriguing commentary by Kevin Phillips in the Washington Post. Phillips asks if the USA is nearing the sort of economic freefall that knocked past dominant societies off the top of the international heap. The $48 trillion debt referenced in the cartoon is the total debt, public and private, for all Americans, not just the government debt. That debt is just one of many factors that could be driving us toward decline. Phillips puts today's situation in historical perspective:
How bad might things get? Well, we may not end up living out of our cars, but we could learn the hard way what happens when a country can't stop itself from buying far more than it produces. |
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