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posted by martyb on Friday September 15 2017, @12:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the mucha-moolah dept.

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.]


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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday September 15 2017, @02:21PM (3 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday September 15 2017, @02:21PM (#568451) Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Friday September 15 2017, @03:02PM

    by Snow (1601) on Friday September 15 2017, @03:02PM (#568473) Journal

    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

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @06:26PM (#568607)

    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

    by quacking duck (1395) on Friday September 15 2017, @07:14PM (#568636)

    "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.