Our apologies

To our friends in the future

To our friends in, say, 2074. Or heck, not even that long in (our) future. Maybe we should address this to our friends in 2054. Or even 2044.

Yes, let’s go with 2044.

After all, 20 years in the future isn’t that far off. And since the United States, at least in 2024, is adding another trillion dollars to the national debt every 100 days, the debt in 2044 should be . . . .

Uh, 20 times 365 . . . . divided by 100 . . . carry the two . . . .

The debt by 2044, if we haven’t made real changes in our time, should be getting close to $100 trillion.

And that’s if Americans at the time this is written haven’t increased the rate of spending your money. Twenty years ago from our time, in 2004, with the Second Iraq War raging and Katrina washing ashore, the national debt hadn’t reached $8 trillion yet. Now we’re officially at $34.59 trillion. As of April 28, 2024, A.D.

So to our friends in the future, we say: Our apologies.

The debt you are paying off in our names, or the lower standard of living you have in your time, or the lack of growth and jobs for future Americans, is not the fault of any one political party. Oh, no. This is a bipartisan American decision to spend so much of your money. The national debt rose under presidents and congresses of both major political parties. In fact, the last time the federal budget was balanced, it was under a Democratic president of some note (from Arkansas, no less!) but only for one year. Then the tide came in.

Some of us are still wary of a national Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and we hope in your time Americans aren’t handcuffed by such a thing. When wars come, and they do, and when pandemics come, and they do, the national government has to deficit spend to keep the economy going. The problem is that we Americans of 2024 don’t know how to go back to regular spending after the emergency passes.

Politicians aren’t much help. They know they’re not going to be in office in 2044. So they don’t have to deal with any consequences of overspending future dollars. In fact, they make a game of it. And if one proposed budget from a responsible actor suggests going back to fiscal sanity after a blowout year, he’s said to be proposing “cuts” of the draconian kind—always the draconian kind—by opponents in the other party.

The fact is, and we know this from experience, if some senator or House member in Washington were to propose going back to 2021’s federal spending, other members of the Congress (and administration flacks) would come out in their ashes and sack cloth the next day, moaning about the member’s blatant effort to throw grandmas into the streets or cast our military into the fire.

And so it goes.

We can’t imagine what interest alone will cost when the debt goes over $100 trillion. We literally can’t imagine because no human can fathom what 100 trillion is. We also can’t imagine because we have no idea what interest rates will be in 2044. Are they still in the single digits? Or are they approaching the 1979-1980 range of nearly 20 percent? The difference is a matter of only about $10 trillion per year for you guys.

And it’s not as if Americans aren’t doing their share in 2024. We are paying our taxes. In fact, last year—2023— the government broke all kinds of records in its collections. The federal government’s revenues were $4.4 trillion in 2023, up $1.2 trillion since Barack Obama’s last year in office.

Still, our debt increases by a trillion dollars every 100 days. So far.

This is a spending problem. This is an American problem. This is a major problem. And now it’s your problem.

Somebody once said if a country can continue to spend like this with no negative consequences, it will mark the first time in world history.

Speaking of history, we are it. You folks reading this (archives? microfiche? browning slips of paper?) in the future know what we’ve done to you.

Unfortunately, we don’t. And so hand off our spending for you to cover.

Our apologies. If that helps.