I watched/cringed the various live broadcasts today from the Senate and the White House, and something caught my attention that I’ve been meaning to mention: the difference between the “Deficit” and the “Debt.”
Now since most Slopers are pretty much in the 97th percentile of U.S. intellect, I suspect you 
already know the difference stone cold, but to the rest of the unwitting public, it bothers me that this little verbal sleight-of-hand is foisted upon everyone else with the intent to make them think things are getting better.
The president’s press secretary was bragging (again) about how “the deficit has been cut in half over the past four years”, and he heralded that as a big achievement on the nation’s path to fiscal responsibility.
This is just silly. Let’s say you had a neighbor who had $100,000 in credit card debt. He earned $50,000 a year at his job, but he was spending $70,000 a year on his mortgage, food, and so forth. So he was borrowing $20,000 a year to make ends meet.
By curbing his expenses, he is able to trim his borrowing needs to $10,000 per year, and he proudly announces to his neighbors that he has “cut his money problem in half.” This is sorta-kinda true, since the rate at which he’s piling on to his already sizable debt has been cut by 50%, but he’s still got a very serious problem with no way out.
So when Carney announces that ‘the deficit has been cut in half”, most Americans think that the amount the nation owes has been cut in half, when in fact it is many, many trillions of dollars higher than when Obama took office. But the reason D.C. is able to get away with what it gets away with is because the complexity of the world long surpassed the attention span and intellect of the average citizen. It’s kind of a shame.
