If the cold weather has not grabbed our attention, then after you read this, our federal tax situation certainly should.

When our government speaks of us having a twelve trillion dollar debt, that is about the same as a chemist telling us the chemicals, compounds, ratios and etc. to compose fuel to send a rocket to the moon.

We really have no concept.

But, when you break this debt down to how much of that we personally owe, then it gets into another perspective.

Every man, woman, boy, girl, newborn and elderly, would each have to pay $346,345 to retire that debt.

Take a look at your family, multiply $346,345 by the number of members and estimate how long it would take you to pay back your part.

Most economists say we can never pay it back, but we (our government) continue to increase the national debt.

The really frightening part of all of this, is that we are depending on China and other countries to finance our country’s debt. If, for whatever the reason, these countries decided to raise our interest rates, we could readily find ourselves in a situation of all our tax revenue going to interest only and our debt still rising.

Yet, our government insists on increasing this, increasing that, giving more and more to each and every out-stretched hand.

A real contributing factor is the simple fact we have become a consumption society. In other words, we are consuming more, wanting more, yet we are not able to produce these items as cost effective as other countries. And this is increasing each and every day as we continue to move our industries to other countries while increasing our imports.

We can’t compete with these countries that have no regulations, no unions, no EPA, yet we continue to support them by buying their products and using their cheap labor.

 As this increases, and it will as the world continues to get smaller and smaller, we will become a country that is consumption  oriented and with that comes fewer jobs here at home and with that comes less tax revenue to pay our debt.

What happens then?

We will probably start giving away the bricks in the White house.