What's wrong with the Government's Math?

The party's over, and the road is long.

We have been living in luxury all these years because of borrowed money. Now we have to come back to reality. The fiscal cliff will hurt but the alternative of a failed economy is unspeakable. There will be no cure without pain and the government is not capable of doing what it takes. I think the fiscal cliff is probably a good thing in the long run.

The liberals always seem to create this self fulfilling prophecy. They never learn this one lesson...that you cannot cheat mother nature forever. There is always a bubble or a move back to equilibrium. There really is no free lunch and you cannot have it all by disregarding true principles. They do things that appear to make people happy today but end up stabbing the poor in the back. They cause millions to become dependent on the government and as a result, we get runaway inflation which hurts the poor the most. To them, the big question is, who will pay for Sandra Flukes birth control after the economy collapses?

the math at this point is to satisfy the Fiscal Cliff law, which is geared to deficit reduction not debt elimination. the FY2013 deficit is proposed at $900B which is the lowest it has been in years and would get lower in a few more years. the problem is the economy while recovering is not robust enough to support full austerity. So the immediate goal is deficit reduction to a point where the growth of the national debt is slower than the growth of the GDP. That does represent progress that can be achieved without starting another recession like the fiscal cliff would cause.

There's nothing wrong with the government's math, but there's a lot wrong with your assessment of the problem. To begin, you apparently don't even understand what Ben Bernake meant when he coined the term "fiscal cliff."

As you rightly point out, the term refers to a simultaneous increase in taxes and a cut in spending. Thus, "solving the debt problem" is irrelevant to the fiscal cliff. In fact, trying to "break even" or to pay down the debt is exactly what the cliff is about, and your suggestions are the absolute worst thing we can do.

Here is a example of what is wrong. They recently had an government report on manufacturing of pennies. The report said that making 60 million pennies cost around (2 cents each) $120 million to make. It stated that if they ceased making pennies it would save them $60 million dollars. Where did the other $60 milion dollars go? In the pocket of some political crook.?

First of all there is not enough money available to pay our national debt ..if you took all warren buffet has it would only run our government for three days and that is over fifty billion .. This country is going over a cliff allrighty but it isn't fiscal andis going to be one hell of a fall from our world social status .. welcome to the Obama and Harry Reid dream a third world America

Perhaps if you guys had started thinking about that a few years ago you wouldn't be heading for a huge depression that could most likely ruin your country, if not many others. And you want to go into it willingly? No wonder yer all so messed up.

relax study the Great depression in the 1930s

we are nothing like that now

that why we living under borrowing and printing money, not for long though.