$40 trillion: an M&A banker prices the national debt as a lien on the unborn
The US national debt is approaching $40 trillion, and one mergers-and-acquisitions banker has set a valuation on that figure: a claim on people who cannot yet vote, which he describes as taxation without representation.…
Key takeaways
- The US national debt is approaching $40 trillion, which an M&A banker frames as a lien on future generations who cannot yet vote, calling it taxation without representation.
- The author argues the skills needed to win an election differ from those needed to govern, and that ordinary citizens have little incentive to engage with legislative substance, with the two problems compounding each other.
- In 2001 a Democratic president and Republican Congress ran a budget surplus while expanding trade, yet within about 25 years the country reached $40 trillion in debt and a global trade war.
- The author uses Christopher Nolan's film 'The Odyssey'—specifically the suitors consuming Odysseus's estate while Telemachus watches powerless—as a frame for the next generation inheriting a depleted estate.
- The author's prescription is to use technology to give citizens a real incentive to learn specific legislative issues so Congress becomes answerable to constituents rather than lobbyists.
The US national debt is approaching $40 trillion, and one mergers-and-acquisitions banker has set a valuation on that figure: a claim on people who cannot yet vote, which he describes as taxation without representation. Senator Rand Paul has a stated plan to force Congress to stop overspending. The author, writing as a new grandfather, frames both as part of the same structural problem.
An M&A practitioner valuing the national debt as a lien on future cash flows arrives at a different frame than a budget analyst. The argument in focus: the skill required to win an election is not the skill required to govern, ordinary citizens have almost no real incentive to engage with the substance of legislation, and those two facts compound each other.
Three reference points
The author anchors the fiscal trajectory in three time horizons. The Founders built faction warnings into the founding documents themselves and placed Congress in Article I, not merely one branch among three. In 2001, a Democratic president and a Republican Congress ran a budget surplus while expanding trade. Within two and a half decades, the country arrived at $40 trillion in debt and a global trade war. The author's point: tell those Americans in 2001 that outcome was coming and they simply would not have believed it.
Christopher Nolan's film "The Odyssey" supplies the frame. The uncomfortable scenes, per the author, are not the Cyclops or the shipwreck. They are the hall in Odysseus's palace: suitors who slaughter his herds, drain his wine, and consume an estate none of them built, while Telemachus watches from the hall, a boy with no standing and no army. In Nolan's version, Odysseus returns, clears the hall, and abdicates, putting the crown on Telemachus and sailing west. The author reads that ending as the current fiscal arrangement: the next generation inherits an estate with a great deal eaten out of it.
What to watch
Rand Paul's plan is named but not described in the piece. The author's own prescription focuses on citizen incentives: use technology to give ordinary people a real reason to learn specific legislative issues, issue by issue, so a Congress receiving that kind of informed feedback becomes answerable to constituents rather than lobbyists. No legislative vehicle or vote date is identified. The $40 trillion threshold is the level already in focus.
Related reading
Filed via foxnews.com