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The U.S. national debt reached $20 trillion for the first time ever last Friday after President Trump signed a bipartisan bill temporarily raising the nation's debt limit for three months.
While at Camp David, Mr. Trump, with the stroke of his presidential pen, increased the statutory debt last Friday by approximately $318 billion, according to the Treasury Department. Before the bill's completion, the U.S. debt was sitting around $19.84 trillion.
The legislation allowed the Treasury Department to start borrowing again immediately after several months of using "extraordinary measures" to avoid a financial default. The bill passed last Thursday 80-17 in the Senate and in the House 316-90 on Friday. Around $15 billion in emergency funding for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts was attached to the borrowing measure.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-debt-hits-historic-20-trillion-mark/
[That works out to just shy of $62,000 per American. --Ed.]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Friday September 15 2017, @01:20PM (6 children)
Reminds me of a thing that always has amazed me with USA.
In most other parts of the rich world a catastrophe usually means a somewhat quick rebuild with buildings built to meet the strictest codes and highest standard they can build to - and taking advantage of the scale of the rebuild to lower cost and faster.
Most rebuilds I've read about/seen pictures of in the US are basically the same things rebuilt to lowest possoble standards that can be fudged past inspection.
So, have I just had bad luck in which reports I've come across or is there a reason for this oddity?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Friday September 15 2017, @02:05PM
The only think I can guess is that people that live in hurricane alley simply don't care. The likelyhood that the storm will wipe out their home instead of one a few cities away is pretty low, so they just live with the risk.
It is the same with infrastructure. After the bridge in Minneapolis collapsed there was this huge stink raised over crumbling infrastructure. Did anything come of it? I remember a huge statewide push to inspect bridges where I live. A few even got some repairs. But once the media eye passed on to the next disaster, this was all quietly forgotten about.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday September 15 2017, @02:21PM (3 children)
Last time I visited Canada, I was struck by the wealth disparity between even Canada and the US. Canada is a rich western nation, yet they make do with traffic lights at intersections that would be interchanges in the US. The cars were on average older and more worn. There were a lot of little things too, like greater use of price stickers on merchandise. Seemed to be about 10 years behind on tech.
At the opposite extreme, Dallas and Fort Worth Texas have gone on a bridge building bender of stunning scope. I hear the interchanges are among the highest if not the highest in the nation. Rather than cloverleaf style interchange, they start the overpassing freeway up a long ramp a mile or more back, making vertical room for exit ramps. It all started with the "High Five Interchange" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Five_Interchange [wikipedia.org] .
They didn't quit with the interchanges. Now they're hard at work building a parallel toll road to I35, the major N/S freeway through the area, and I635, the loop interstate around Dallas, so far only on the north side. Several other roads are getting this treatment. As there is no room for these additional lanes on the ground, they elevated the whole dang road. You can stay on the ground and not pay a toll, and have a fine view of the underside of this new elevated highway, or you can take any number of ramps that climb up to it, for a small price.
Yeah, the US is still plenty wealthy, even with the current erosion of the middle class.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Friday September 15 2017, @03:02PM
Canada is a big country and wealth disparity exists within.
Some places are richer and you see lots of luxury cars and few shitboxes, while other places the reverse is true. I'm sure the USofA is the same.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @06:26PM
Canada doesn't have interchanges everywhere because they are a hideous blight on the landscape and a waste of good land.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Friday September 15 2017, @07:14PM
"10 years behind on tech" seems a little excessive, and we're more advanced in some ways. For example we had chip+PIN and then NFC-capable terminals in Canada for years before US merchants finally upgraded (and only by force, as card fraud costs shifted from card issuers to the merchant, giving a huge incentive to ditch stripe terminals).
Otherwise, we have access to most of the same toys at the same time the US gets them (phones, cars, TVs, home electronics, etc), I imagine there's fewer per capita because of the higher prices due to exchange rates and higher average taxation.
As for lack of massive interchanges... most of our major cities, you just can't justify the cost of building and maintaining them. They are massively more expensive than traffic light intersections and most major cities aren't hubs where traffic comes and goes N/E/S/W, they're dots on a line and traffic flows in and out along only two major directions (Vancouver: S+E. Calgary: N+W. Edmonton: S+W. Ottawa: W+E). Montreal's the only one that's really hit on all sides, and has the interchanges to reflect that, as does Toronto with N+W+E arterials.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 15 2017, @06:39PM
The two are not necessarily conflicting.
Also we're more honest about it. Some of the stuff in China is pure WTF, but put on a nice smile so as not to lose face. The Russians invented the Potemkin Village, the Chinese perfected it and produce it on an industrial scale.
A third answer is most of the time we aren't going to build good stuff in stupid areas. You want to live in a shack, find a house in a flood plain that gets washed away every couple years. Eventually people will get sick of it and move, until then they get shacks.
A forth answer is most of our rebuilt stuff is really good, but the minority of junk is very loud when you have a country this big, therefore we hear endlessly about rebuilt junk.