In case you’re confused about the “debt ceiling” – the $14.3 trillion limit of federal government obligations which was reached today by the United States – the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, is on hand to explain what this all means:
Edifying, isn’t it?
Considering that Nobel prize-winning economists can’t seem to agree on the fundamentals of what actually constitutes the national debt, what the ramifications of not raising the upper limit of borrowing would be, what level of debt to GDP is considered dangerous to economic stability, or indeed how much of it is actually “real” in the sense of the proportion of intragovernmental obligations involved, it’s hard to see how a cheesy video aimed at 12-year olds could conceivably be imagined to shed much light on the issue…
There are however some amusing take-aways from the bit.
For starters, it’s funny that the metaphor for the USA in this Heritage Foundation view of things is a gated community inhabited solely by white people. The narrative that government {“Steve” in this tale, who is “not the brightest guy, but is likeable and has big ideas”) once empowered with a credit card gets sucked into purchasing a bunch of useless “luxuries” (read: social welfare and other “liberal” bullshit programs) such as the pool table, composting system, solar street lamps and a pointless gatehouse staffed by some needy security guard. Poor “Steve” just couldn’t say “no” to all of these purchases… Well, you’ve watched the rest of the story and know how he spirals into a moral nightmare of political corruption, plunging the happy folk of the “United Estates” into a massive debt crisis.
