The U.S. gets money from three places... the taxpayers, borrowing it from the federal reserve (internal debt) and borrowing it from foreign entities (external debt). I wouldn't exactly call that limitless...
To much taken from the taxpayers and you have a real damn bad situation on your hands on many fronts. The private investment sector, retail spending, declining asset value for everyone... the list goes on and on but it's pretty clear to me that excess taxation of the U.S. taxpayer will lead to disaster on every front.
Borrow to much from the federal reserve and you will have a worthless dollar on your hands real quick. Having the federal reserve print up craploads of new money (without an increase in the value of the US) is akin to a public company handing out billions of newly authorized shares and I think we all know what that does to the value of said company's stock. the same thing will happen to the US dollar which leads to disaster on every front.
Borrow to much from foreign entities and they will soon deem us to be risky and require a better return on their money in order to keep loaning money to us. So we then have to juice up our interest payments so the return to those foreign entities is worth the increased risk. This shell game can be played for a while but unless we take substantial steps backward in the amount of external debt we have, we will get cutoff from foreign investment.
I guess I failed to mention another source of income for the US government.... they can borrow from future funds that have already been figured into our debt load. Social security funds as an example. I guess I failed to mention this because I think the US government has robbed from Peter to pay Paul as much as they possibly can already. There are no other future areas of already allocated spending to borrow from so while that may have been a legitimate source of money for the US government in the past, it is not a viable source of borrowing for the future. In fact, we really have twice the debt we think we have in many areas because of this past borrowing... they just haven't admitted to it yet!
I guess my final two cents would be this... We need to keep taxes where they are at. People already pay enough taxes. Many independent studies have already shown that roughly %50 of what a person makes is paid out in some form of tax. We can't print anymore money, our dollar has already been devalued enough and too much more printing will lead us very quickly to hyperinflation... I don't know about you but I would really not like to see a loaf of bread cost 27$. So I guess that leaves external debt! We've got to pay it down and/or increase our revenues and/or assets.
It seems part of Obama's plan would increase our assets so that part I am in favor of. I mean if we produce 100 billion dollars worth of electricity then our worth as a country will also increase. To bad we really aren't looking at creating that 100 billion dollars worth of electricity in the most cost effective way but hey... it's a start! I remain puzzled as to how spending 30 million studying the salt marsh mouse will help this country in any way but what do I know.... I'm just a dumb sales guy!
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