Serious question: what happens when/if the deficit is payed off?

[nxylas]

Maybe I've been looking in the wrong places, but nobody seems to be asking this question except for the corporate media, which naturally peddles the fantasy that ordinary Americans will once again start enjoying a share of the wealth that the predator class have been hoovering up at an increasingly rapid rate for the last 30 years. Well, if you believe that, then I have a mountaintop retreat in West Virginia that I'd like to sell you, but what will happen? Will the predators simply find a new pretext for sucking the lifeblood from the rest of us? Or will the deficit never be paid off, and continued to be dangled in front of us like a carrot, the way the GOP dangles the prospect of repealing Roe vs. Wade and creating a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in front of the religious right, knowing full well that if these things ever came to pass, there would no longer be any reason for non-billionaires to vote for them?

[dipsydoodle]

1. Do you mean your balance of trade deficit ?

I doubt that will ever become a positive figure - just get worse and worse.

[nxylas]

2. Didn't know there was more than one deficit

I'm not an economist, in fact the business pages might as well be written in Chinese as far as I'm concerned, I just keep hearing on the McNews that the current period of austerity is only temporary until "the deficit" is paid off and thinking "pffft, yeah right".

[dipsydoodle]

4. By 2019 the total U.S. national debt is projected to be $18.4 trillion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

[DailyGrind51]

3. Then you wake up and realize you have been dreaming!

[girl gone mad]

5. If the deficit were to be paid off now, we would have a severe economic contraction.

The deficit represents private sector savings.

For the private sector to run a surplus of money, the government must run a deficit. Paying down the deficit would mean removing wealth from the private sector.

[pampango]

6. The part of the budget that goes towards paying interest on the debt can be used for different

things or taxes could be lower to reflect lower expenditures with no debt repayment in the budget.

[stray cat]

7. Like during clintons presidency?