I started this blog, It Does Not Add Up, in November 2012, right after the national elections, because I was so concerned about our exploding national debt.  Of course, in the meantime it has been getting worse and worse.
A year ago I decided to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and enter the May 2018 Nebraska Republican Primary for the U.S. Senate seat held by Deb Fischer who had just voted for the 2017 tax bill which will raise our debt by a trillion dollars over a decade, even after allowing for increased economic growth.  Fischer went on to win the Primary and then to win reelection to a second six year term last month.
I was so discouraged by my ineffectiveness on the debt issue that I stopped writing new entries for the blog after the May 2018 Primary.

But now I am back and we’ll see what happens.  My intention is to continue dealing with the debt problem but in a wider context.  I will be discussing other urgent problems as well.  Mostly I will be focused on the following issues:

1. The National Debt now stands at 78% (for the public part on which we pay interest) of GDP and our huge annual deficits are continuously making it worse. As interest rates rise, interest payments on our huge debt will increase precipitously.  This will lead to a new fiscal crisis if stern measures to fix the debt problem are not taken soon.
2. Slow Economic Growth. Faster GDP growth means a lower unemployment rate which, in turn, means more jobs and better paying jobs.  This is exactly what is needed to give a boost to the middle- and lower-income workers who are suffering from economic insecurity.
3. Trade Imbalance with China. China has four times as many people as the U.S. and its economy is growing faster than ours.  Soon the size of the Chinese economy will exceed ours.  We can’t stop Chinese growth but we can insist that China play fair and stop stealing our intellectual property.
4. Global Warming. The evidence for man-made global warming is overwhelming. Carbon emissions in the U.S. are steadily decreasing because natural gas is less expensive and cleaner than coal.  But this is not good enough because carbon emissions are increasing worldwide, especially in China and India.  Working together, the U.S. and China have the clout to implement a plan to drastically reduce carbon emissions worldwide.
5. The Consequences of American Decline.  These are the biggest problems our country faces because together they threaten our prosperity as well as our status as the world’s leading superpower.  A multi-polar world replacing the U.S. dominated uni-polar world is likely to endanger the relative peace and stability we have enjoyed for so long.

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