As of last Thursday, the U.S. public debt was 74.22 percent of the gross domestic product, which is a measure of federal debt in terms of the size of the U.S. economy. The United States could now be less than six percentage points away from crisis.

The Republican Party has made deficit spending and the national debt its primary issues. Republicans, like U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), are concerned with the long-term. The first line of Ryan’s latest budget reads, “This budget offers a blueprint for safeguarding America from the perils of debt, doubt and decline.”

Ryan’s budget includes a chart that shows federal debt projections until 2080, emphasizing the long-term problem Republicans wish to address. The GOP is the party of the young, whose livelihoods span far into the future.

Americans must stop asking their lawmakers to spend money to “solve problems,” in part, because government risks approaching the limits of safe borrowing, according to four economists’ February 2013 paper.

Specifically, the paper “Crunch Time: Fiscal Crisis and the Role of Monetary Policy,” by David Greenlaw, James D. Hamilton, Peter Hooper and Frederic S. Mishkin, warns that “countries with high debt loads are vulnerable to an adverse feedback loop in which doubts by lenders lead to higher sovereign interest rates, which, in turn, make the debt problems more severe.”

They conclude that “countries with debt above 80 percent of GDP and persistent current-account deficits are vulnerable to a rapid fiscal deterioration as a result of these tipping-point dynamics.”

Because American voters ages 18-26 have the most to lose (their futures) if the U.S. fiscal position deteriorates and would be stuck paying off a great deal of debt even if it does not, the Republican Party is the party most acting in their favor by trying to balance the budget.

Government cannot insure individual prosperit; hence, we must attempt prosperity another way.

For instance, in 2009, President Barack Obama urged Congress to pass Obamacare, saying we need it to help members of the middle class who “can’t get insurance on the job” and the “self-employed” who “can’t afford it.”

However, Obamacare will drive up health care premium costs specifically on self-employed people who buy their own health care coverage, which is one of the groups Obama claimed Obamacare would help.

Specifically, health insurance companies are “predicting huge premium increases next year for small employers and people who buy coverage on their own, citing rising health care costs and new mandates from President Barack Obama’s health care reform law,” according to a March 22 Huffington Post article.

The nonpartisan Society of Actuaries agrees that costs on insurers will increase; they project non-group costs per member per month will increase 32 percent, compared to pre-Obamacare projections. Insurers could pass these increased costs onto their customers in the form of increased premiums.

Even Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admits people with individual plans “will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, and so there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

For sure, Obamacare proponents argue that subsidies included in Obamacare will help defray these rising premium costs. But, based on the U.S. fiscal position, government should not be spending money defraying costs that it helped create.

Proponents also argue that rising premiums are acceptable because the insured are guaranteed certain insurance benefits and protections by Obamacare. Nevertheless, it would be better to leave money in peoples’ pockets because this preserves peoples’ choice to spend extra on an individual basis.

The key to prosperity is not having a single entity — government — manipulate markets and compel people into action. The key is having thousands of entities — businesses — all racing in different ways to meet the wants and needs of millions of people acting freely in a market.

Individual prosperity comes from individual freedom; central planning will only slow it down. Young Americans who hope for a growing economy must opt for Republicans who will move government out of their way.

Michael Stikkel is a junior computer engineering major and MBA candidate in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mcstikke@syr.edu

Published on April 29, 2013 at 8:15 am