Debt, Investment & America's Future

Debt, as a percentage of GDP, hasn't been this high since the Great Depression.

And?

Television personalities, pundits, supposed-experts, and other talking-heads are going on and on about how U.S. debt is dooming America.

Over the period following the Great Depression we heavily indebted ourselves to expand infrastructure, educate citizens, and to invest in our future...ending the Depression and moving America forward. From this period, with those large investments, the U.S. saw it's greatest period of prosperity and growth in our history. And, let me add, an income convergence. The middle class was created. The economy as a whole buzzed along, but rather than a select few taking most of the gains (like today), we enjoyed a shared prosperity where one breadwinner could support a family with a decent middle-class lifestyle (the American Dream); the boss made more, but not exponentially so, and the U.S. lifestyle and society were the envy of the world.

Schools, roadways, subdivisions, waterways, electrical grids, sewer systems, bridges ... almost every infrastructure, structural, and institutional entity embodying our national fabric - a majority of the things we now consider "the U.S." - were a direct result of those investments that were made to get out of the Depression.

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Interest rates are at historic lows. There is no better time to make infrastructure investments to propel us into another half-century of prosperity.