The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget put together this web game where your goal, as the player, is to get the US budget deficit down to sustainable levels.
It’s no secret that America’s finances are a mess. So, what can be done about it? The problem has been mounting for a long time and it cannot be fixed overnight, but we need to start addressing it now.
The debt of the United States is rising to unprecedented – and unsustainable – levels. According to the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform, under reasonable assumptions, the public debt of the U.S. is projected to grow to 85% of GDP by 2018, 100% by 2022, and 200% in 2038. No country can support debt at these levels without huge costs to its standard of living at a minimum and most likely a severe crisis.
I expected this to be much more difficult than it was, although anyone suggesting the policies I selected probably couldn’t get elected in the US, so of course the reality is much harder than the game.
Some hints: wars are expensive, and raising the retirement ages for Social Security and Medicare helps a lot.
