DOUGLAS CARSWELL: Those Dark Clouds Are The Debt

The future for our state looks bright. In just the past five years, Mississippi has seen more economic growth than in the entire 15 years before that combined.

We’re on track to phase out the state income tax entirely, allowing families to keep more of what they earn. Mississippi has attracted a surge of new investment, and for the first time in years, our workforce participation rate is finally heading in the right direction.

Zoom out, and the picture gets even better. Contrary to the endless gloom from the pundits, the American economy has consistently outperformed expectations for decades. Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has delivered strong, steady growth that few forecasters saw coming.

But there is one dark cloud on all our horizons that we cannot forever ignore: U.S. national debt.

As of today, U.S. national debt stands at $38 trillion (with a capital T).

To grasp how enormous a single trillion really is, try this:

• One million seconds ago was just last week, right before Halloween.

• One billion seconds ago was early 1994, when Clinton was president and the internet was dial-up.

• One trillion seconds ago was roughly 30,000 BC, deep in the Stone Age, when humans were still chasing mammoths.

Now here’s the gut-punch: that $38 trillion mountain of debt has roughly doubled in just the past 10 years.

Costly foreign wars, mega bailouts, COVID giveaways and all those federal entitlement programs LBJ said would “end poverty,” eventually add up. Incidentally, living standards for America’s poorest citizens are light-years higher than when those programs launched in the 1960s — indoor plumbing, air conditioning, smartphones, modern medicine — but the number of people dependent on government assistance is larger than ever.