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A comment on Infographic - US National Debt. Parent comment

Re:Infographic - US National Debt by dredmorbius on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @03:33AM (#2811178)
There's a ton of verbiage about X dollars of this and Y program of that which have contributed to the debt and deficit. Most of it doesn't serve to enlighten, I'm convinced that it's largely meant to confuse.

The Obama administration have just presented a very clear picture of what the components of the debt are.

Obama policies have been directed at contingencies and emergencies, not wars of choice and vast pay-offs to political benefactors. I'll grant Bush TARP.

On a per-year basis (giving Obama 1.5 years and Bush 8), the per year deficit is worse under Obama's policies, but the discretionary element is less. Bush got us into this mess, Obama's trying like hell to get us out (and last time I checked, the other team wasn't exactly cooperating enthusiastically).

We've also got the structural and internal (SSI) components of debt clearly spelled out.

Again: this is far better than I've seen from many other sources.

There's no time axis as this isn't particularly a time-based graph, it's a statement of current accounts, and an accounting of where those components came from.

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Re:Infographic - US National Debt by karmalizer on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @03:41AM (#2811204)
There's no time axis as this isn't particularly a time-based graph

The graph pretends to be a time-based graph, though, by highlighting the differences between the Bush and Obama administrations. It's not like it would take any more work or space to lay the information out horizontally. I'm sure I've seen it done before, but this is the closest I can find: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Federal_Debt_as_Percent...

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Re:Infographic - US National Debt by dredmorbius on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @04:13AM (#2811270)
You can also get it at Wolfram|Alpha: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+national+deficit (scale for last 10 years).

I note that the deficit peaked in 2010, so it's starting to come down.

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Re:Infographic - US National Debt by anonymoushn on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @07:44AM (#2811708)
It was my impression that the person called Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces had the power to give orders to the United States Armed Forces. Unless I am mistaken, any US war that is not occurring within the borders of the US is a war of choice on the part of that person.
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