US Longterm Economic Options: a) Default b) ???

Apologies in advance for some very round numbers

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Depending on whom you ask and how you count, the United States owes more money to various creditors than there is money in the world. Alternatively , we have unfunded liabilities of something like four times our Gross Domestic Product. Almost everyone will at agree that we have in the neighborhood of a $14T National debt, with annual deficits running well into the $Trillions. That is something like $45k/person including every man, woman, and child in the country. Put another way, with our current $14T GDP we owe a full year's worth of (everyone in the country's) income. This is the same as a guy making $50k/year owing $50k on his credit card which he continues to charge up.

So let's go on with a nice round number of $50T worth of unfunded liability, because if nothing changes before we write those checks, that's where we're headed. Divide by 300M people, and we see that you, personally, are on the hook for basically an entire house note, and make that a NICE house in Southern California.

Maybe I'm missing something, but how the [deleted] are we going to get out from under this pile of debt without defaulting on it?

it's not debt VFD it's mandates. You're counting wrong!

Okay so for the sake of argument, assume we're going to abolish the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid systems next week. We ONLY are on the hook for $14,000,000,000,000. My family is STILL on the hook for $270,000 between the six of us. My mortgage note was less than half that when it was written, and that puts me on the hook for THIRTY years. That's 1/3 of my take-home pay, missing, for a third of a century.

Raise your hand if you think the spineless politicians in Washington D.C. that YOU elected are going to put 1/3 of our GDP towards debt service for 30 years. What is the alternative to paying off what we owe? Extend and Pretend, or default. Am I missing something? We will NEVER pay off our national debt! If the alternatives are a hard recession along with Greece-style riots in a few years after we can't Extend and Pretend anymore, or default with a hard recession now, why are we still paying?

Oh, that's right: there are still votes to be bought! This November, be sure to vote for the politician who can get the most tax dollars sent to your own district!

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President Obama's teleprompter says we need to not dig our hole deeper by extending tax cuts. The rest of the country says not to dig the hole deeper by ending tax cuts. I shake my head and pray for our national economy.
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The NBER says the Great Recession ended in June of 2009. Break out your party hats!