Letter to the Editor: Clarification about debt offered in response to recent letter

A recent letter contained pieces of misleading information (“America, do not spend money we don’t have,” Oct. 21). Connecting those pieces exclusively to Democrats and liberals may be comforting to some Republicans and some conservatives, but it presents an incomplete picture of reality, which can lead to bad decisions and is otherwise unhelpful.

The author seems unaware that American debt and the expansion of that debt has three major components, which include private sector (corporations, big business) and personal sector (homeowners and car owners in debt to financiers, mortgages, banks, etc., and credit card debt holders), in addition to government debt. The size of all three of these debts is about equal, and can be found on the internet at budget, finance and institution websites (but likely not political, partisan or biased economist websites). Also, all these debts are increasing at similar rates.

The same letter asked, “How did America become the greatest and most powerful nation in the world?” It answered: not by liberals and not by government control, and then listed Cuba,Venezuela, etc., for comparative proof. Later in that same letter, Beijing, Moscow and Tehran were paraded by the author as “dancing in the streets” because of Joe Biden. Two facts: First, China is still communist-totalitarian (therefore, it is all government), but second, it reformed about 45% of its economy into capitalism (i.e., including expandable debt and private ownership). It turns out that while the growing Chinese economy may become larger than ours in about a decade, their government debt, free business debt and consumer debt actually all add up now to something larger than total American debts. I came across this information from several recent articles in The Wall Street Journal.

The same letter contains several other problems and misunderstandings that would need too much space to explain.

Arthur E. Sowers

Harbeson