The bill from China has arrived, how much do you owe?

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
10/23/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

In the past four years you borrowed $20k from China.

The Communist government of China is now entitled to anywhere between one to two years of your full household income - and they aim to collect. According to statistics released by the US Treasury Department and the Census Bureau, the US now owes foreign governments about $47,495 per household.

It's time to start paying, China wants its money.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - In all fairness, it isn't just China we owe, America owes money all across the world, however, the notion that the world's largest economy is in hock to foreign nations is somewhat irksome and appreciating just how much debt we owe to foreign states is galling.

China is the largest foreign holder of US debt.

Imagine hearing that you must work for the Chinese government for the next year or more, simply to pay your portion of the national debt.

Worst of all, some of this money is owed to nations whose relationship with the US is decidedly lukewarm.

For some shocking figures, one merely has to compare 2009 to present. In the four years Obama has been in office, household indebtedness to foreign states increased from $27,000 per household to $47,000.

That means your family just borrowed $20,000 from other countries without you realizing it. The signature on the loan is Obama's but the bill is yours.

Of course, purveyors of debt suggest that not all debt is bad and that it's okay because our children will pay this easily, thanks to their rising productivity level, but this apologetic is fatally flawed. US productivity is by no means increasing enough to keep pace with our growing, already debilitating debt.

What did we get for this money? Improved infrastructure? Better education? A squadron of new stealth bombers? No, not even that. In fact, any government official would be hard pressed to point out just exactly what we did with all that money.

Still, it has to be paid back, these are loans, not gifts. The popular solution is to merely pass the bill to the next generation, but sticking our children with the bill merely worsens what is already an unbearable situation.

Of course, the bad news doesn't end with this, there's one more thing to consider. About half of all US households do not pay income taxes. They may pay lesser sales taxes and so on, but no payroll or income taxes whatsoever. And while some of these households no longer pay because of retirement or military service, or other very legitimate reasons, the fact remains that only about half of all Americans are paying the bill.

So while you're paying installments in the interest to China, be advised - your share of the bill just doubled because your neighbor's not paying a dime.

The good news: Foxconn is hiring.

� 2012, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

- - -

Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: China, debt, foreign, owe, deficit, loans

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1 - 5 of 5 Comments

Kyle Hoeye
3 months ago
I think the important thing your forgetting is that this is not how debt works china or Japan can not simply cash in there chips and demand a trillion dollars. It's no different then your house mortgage. Most people don't have the hundreds of thousands of dollars required to buy a house out right. So we take a mortgage and pay it off over around a 30 year period. Countries are similar they require trillions but its ridiculous to expect them to have that money on hand so we borrow and pay it off. And the majority of our debt is actually money we owe to ourselves believe it or not. We won't be "working" for china anytime soon. The real concern now should be job creation the debt will become a serious issue when the interest rate on money borrowed hits about 5-7%. Right now it's a little over 1% which is close to free money
Mark Lawson
5 months ago
Oh nice, now the church is in onto fear mongering and pitting us against our neighbor who make so little money they fall below the threshold of taxpayer, just like you. You also don't pay income tax on the first small % of income. You too, take standard deductions and only pay on a level above poverty!!! Wanna take a pay cut to that level? Think it's fun at that level? Shame, shame on the readers you convince to hate their neighbor with your deceit. We are in this together and the leadership of our institutions that allow these injustices are complicit because of greed. IMHO.
DarthJ
6 months ago
The Chinese government is Communist- and persecutes Catholics loyal to the Church.
Roseann Graham
6 months ago
In wondering what the money was used for, I understand that the food stamp program is now largely funded by borrowed money. So now, people in the USA are being fed by the People's Republic of China.
SV
6 months ago
Usually it is considered a good thing if someone lends you money at a very low interest rate. The question that was not asked is how that money was spent...wars based on faulty intelligence and the U.S. banking mortgage lending disaster which made hundreds of billions for a few, but cost many more literally their houses.

Your article also omits an important current fact, here is an excerpt from today:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- China's massive stake in U.S. Treasuries gets a lot of attention. But it's Japan, and not China, that has been busy gobbling up U.S. debt over the past year.

In fact, Japan could soon pass China as the largest foreign holder of Treasuries. China held about $1.15 trillion in U.S. bonds through August, the most recent reading available from the Treasury Department. That's little changed from the start of the year and down from 12 months ago.

The article goes on to say, "Worst of all, some of this money is owed to nations whose relationship with the US is decidedly lukewarm." The fact is that the majority of Chinese have an affinity with America, but are slowly waking up to the reality that many Americans have nothing but contempt about them.

Unfortunately that contempt is mostly driven by a vocal segment of the population who are not always keen on the facts. The concluding sentence is a good case in point, "The good news: Foxconn is hiring." Aside from the pettiness of the statement, Foxconn is a TAIWAN owned company.

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