"If a $14.3 trillion national debt sounds like a staggering sum, economist Lawrence Kotlikoff's estimate of the nation's real long-term indebtedness might bowl you over. Kotlikoff, who was a senior economist on President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, calculates the debt at $211 trillion.
"We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt," Kotlikoff, a professor at Boston University, said on the weekend edition of National Public Radio's All Things Considered. "If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures," Kotlikoff said, "and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That's the fiscal gap. That's our true indebtedness."
The main drivers of the real national debt are Social Security and Medicare, funded by the Federal Insurance Contributions ACT (FICA) payments that both employee and employer pay with every paycheck. As the average life span has increased and the elderly portion of the population has grown since the program was adopted in the 1930s, the "contributions" have fallen increasingly short of the "transfer payments" to recipients. Social Security alone will run into the trillions annually in another 10 to 15 years, when an average of $40,000 a year will be due to 78 million baby boomers, Kotlikoff said. "Multiply 78 million by $40,000 — you're talking about more than $3 trillion a year just to give to a portion of the population. That's an enormous bill that's overhanging our heads, and Congress isn't focused on it."
The "official" national debt of $14.3 trillion amounts to $47,667 for every man, woman and child in America, based on the current population of 300 million. If Kotlikoff's $211 trillion is accurate, the per capita long-term debt obligation comes to more than $700,000"...............READ MORE
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