Is the US in denial over its $14tn debt?

It's that bad, Dan. That's why a lot of us libertarians and conservatives have been bitching about it. This debt problem has got to be fixed NOW.

No, it's not that bad, and to the extent that there is a pressing problem, it is the deficit, not the debt.

A "big number" like $14 trillion needs to be seen in context.

Interesting. What are we face palming here?

That it's not that bad? Fair enough. But we'd have to surely agree that the bigger issue is the deficit? And we'd have to agree that things are best seen in context. Right?

It's bad, but that's not the worse thing - it's pretty much guaranteed to get worse:

From OP:
The current $14tn debt is bad enough, she argues, but the future commitments to the baby boomers, commitments for health care and for pensions, suggest that the debt burden is part of the fabric of society:

"You have promises implicit in the structure of welfare states and aging populations that mean there is an unacknowledged debt that will have to be paid for by future taxpayers, and that could double the published figures."

We're definitely in denial as to how we got here and that makes it difficult to propose real solutions.

Roughly half the country is in denial that Obama is making it worse and worse.

How did we get here in your opinion?

I don't pay close enough attention to politics to assess all the things that may have contributed, but I'm pretty sure almost ten continuous years of warfare in two separate places has been a major factor.

The debt and the deficit are hot-button issues these days. The US is in denial about what it has to do about the problem: cut entitlements, the military, and raise taxes on the wealthy especially.

I am not at all convinced it can be "fixed." I think anything beyond half-measures that only means it gets worse more slowly is going to make matters much worse, and any real "fixes" will bring everything crashing down.

Look at those projections in the graph in Dan's post:

1) They continue to project huge (multi-trillion-dollar) deficits in the future, for years and years to come.

2) They project a huge and almost immediate increase in revenue, with more modest but sustained increases for at least the next ten years. From where? Unicorn farts?

If you raise taxes enough to bring about that kind of increase in revenue, you'll make the entire economy much worse. But the economy is not improving enough that revenu is going to go up that much all by itself.

And if that increase doesn't happen, then the deficit doubles or more in the coming years.

As sad as it is to say, even if Ron Paul was elected President and both houses of Congress were of a mind to follow his policies, I don't think they could fix the problem. I am convinced that the problem is beyond fixing. The best possible outcome is to hope that the coming crash won't be too bad or last too long. But I am not optimistic on that, either.

Why? What did "the wealthy" do wrong to deserve higher taxation than the rest of us?

Raising taxes on the wealthy is not going fix the deficit or bring this nation out of debt.

Ultimately what will destroy our economy is the welfare state and social security. Add into that all the "benefits" this President as well as prior Presidents have signed into law.

As well as out of control way too many social programs, pork, earmarks, stupid gov't waste etc.

Our founding fathers understood this all too well. We are only in this boat because we have abandoned the Constitutional mandated limited gov't. Going back to that is the only way out of this mess.

I've yet to hear an argument as to why this level of debt is unsustainable.

Doesn't seem too big when you don't owe it back, does it?

This is true, and englobes both the out-of-control military spending and the out-of-control social welfare programs.

This is partly true. It is true that we need to do that in order to survive, but it will not stave off the crash, IMO. Too many people have become dependent on the bloated government, from those who are living on handouts instead of working (no, I did not say that was all the poor) to those corporations that are getting rich on and encouraging government spending -- but who also employ a huge amount of people (and no, I did not say that was all corporations, either).

Going back to a limited government means a lot of suffering all around. It's like when you're stuck in a trap, all by yourself, and your only solution is to amputate your own leg, without anesthetic, using your pocket knife. Even though all of us can figure out, rationally, what to do in such a situation, the fact is that most people would die rather than doing it, hoping that despite everything someone will come along and deliver them without the pain.

The best we can do is keep on doing our best to hold the situation together, meaning that our children or (if we're really luck, or really old) grandchildren will be the ones to deal with the devastating but inevitable crash, so that we don't have to. After all, that's what our parents did to us.

And I maintain my insistance that all of this started with Lincoln's centralization of government and power that was the true cause of the Civil War.

That's right: Lincoln was our Emperor Palpatine.

You may all facepalm now.

*Sigh*

Sovereign debt is not paid back. It is serviced and refinanced when needed. The cost of servicing debt for the US is lower than it is for any other country.

And I maintain that you are blinded by your hate for Lincoln to the impact of the Hamilton doctrine, which preceeded him by two generations, and which made what he did possible. Contrary to your beliefs, the US was not a paradise where everything ran right until that mean old Lincoln changed it all around. He merely continued a course of action, which had started long before him and continued to get much worse after him.

Going back to where you were before the economic crisis is a hell of a lot easier than improving on top of that.

I think this is overly simplified. If raising taxes unconditionally killed economic growth, then how would you explain that Germany has a larger industrial base (proportionally) than the US or any other European country, yet the relatively high taxation hasn't stopped the German economy from recovering faster than almost all other industrialized nations in the world?

And the other half thinks we are on our way to another depression. the thing that got us out of the last one was WWII. With whats going on in the ME, we could very well see a third one.
That will lead to the end of everything.
And world leaders who hide in a hole in the ground and think they can wait it out will inherit a dead world that's uninhabitable.

What law couldn't be circumvented, subverted, purposely misinterpreted or otherwise misused for political gain?