‘A Wonderful Life’               is a wonderful play

Tonight as I left the Lee Street Theatre with my wife there were tears in my eyes after seeing “It’s A wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play.”  Plays were meant to be acted and not read (or watched like a movie). Gary Thornburg and an excellent cast of actors and actresses really bring this play to life right before your eyes. All the cast bring the audience into the story. It is offered one more weekend. Count yourself lucky if you can get a ticket.

  — Bill Ragsdale

Salisbury

 

Danger zone for debt

We are quickly reaching critical mass when it comes to the national debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio. As I write this the national debt is 103.2 percent of GDP and expanding.

Our national debt is the excess of spending over revenues each year that must be borrowed. The excess of spending over revenues is better known as the annual budget deficit. Today’s national debt is the accumulation of the annual borrowings to pay for the annual budget deficit.

What is considered a safe level of national debt to GDP? The safe level is considered to be 60 percent. The problematic level of debt to GDP is considered to be when the debt reaches 100 percent of GDP. We are currently in the beginning of the problematic stage for national debt.

If a country’s national debt and GDP are both growing at the same rate then the debt ratio is being stabilized. If a country’s debt increase is more than the growth in GDP then the debt to GDP ratio increase,s making the debt more problematic. When a country’s percentage of debt growth is less than the percentage of GDP growth the debt becomes less problematic.

During the George W. Bush years it was projected that the  national debt to GDP ratio would reach 185 percent by 2035. At the end of 2008, the ratio was 70.56 percent. Today we are at 103.2 percent of national debt to GDP ratio, a growth rate that has far exceeded what was projected for 2015 just seven years ago. At our current growth rate in national debt to GDP we will reach that 185 percent long before 2035!

We must change our spending habits at the national level. Or we must have substantial increases in our GDP growth rate.

The national debt is quickly reaching the point that borrowing will become difficult. Financing the national debt with creation of money presents a whole set of problems other than the inflation or hyper-inflation that it will create.

— Ray Shamlin

Rocky Mount