OT:US don't qualify for EU membership, don't spank children, WW2 history.

[Will]

Originally posted by Ruatha:
I was just wondering, how big is the current defecit in the US budget right now.
I now that it's big but so is the entire US budget, so in percantage it mightn't be that big.
3% is allowed in the EMU.

Well, IIRC...
... about 20% of the budget each year goes to paying interest on the national debt.
... annual US Federal budget is about 2.25 trillion dollars.
... current estimated US Federal budget deficit is about 450 billion dollars.

And that puts the deficit as about 20% of the budget. Which is quite a bit more than 3%...

And I don't like that at all... I think the current government of the US is completely incompetent. I would rather have seen no tax cuts, no expansions to medicare, etc., and devote the next several years to making the debt not so big. I don't want to be paying outrageous taxes a few decades from now because some selfish boomers want the Government to pay all their bills for them. I'm not happy about going into the workforce and paying a bunch of money to social security when I know it won't be there when I hit 70. And I don't like all the privitization crap they've thrown around with SS either. If I want to make myself a retirement account, I can make my own damned account, I don't need a bunch of pencil-pushing buerecrats making one for me. And if the "dot com" bust taught us anything, it's the fact that the average person has no ****ing clue on how to invest money wisely, so institutionalizing it in government is definitely a Bad Thing. Of course, eventually all of this will be passed in some sort of legislation, because the baby boomers want it, and they vote.

I guess that was a bit of a rant... I guess I don't like the feeling of virtual indentured servitude at the hands of the US Government if I choose to stay here.