The U.S. govt brings in about $5 trillion per year in revenue from taxes, fees and tariffs.
How TF do you spend > $4T in one year? We need receipts. Stat. The US govt is on pace to spend about $1.4 trillion for interest payments on the $36 trillion in debt during 2025.
That will be about 28% of all govt revenue going to interest payments.With consumers in debt for another $17 Trillion that’s a nuclear submarine load of money (not a boat load anymore 
)
The answer is that the debtor (who purchases tangible goods/real estate with debt) is rewarded while the savers are punished due to holding dollars that diminish in value over time. This doesn’t end well!
… “… Free falling” – Tom Petty. – Search
“Free Fallin” is one of those elegiac tracks that Petty would occasionally drop amidst all the peppy rockers to prove just how versatile his songwriting gifts could be. Only this one somehow cut a little deeper, the fact that the singer was now more of a gritty veteran than a fierce upstart adding the weight of painful experience to the lyrics. The narrator surveys the sights of Southern California while painting a quick portrait of an American girl not unlike ones Petty had detailed in many other classics. But this is not a devotional love song, as the punchline to the second verse reveals: “I’m a bad boy ‘cause I don’t even miss her/ I’m a bad boy for breaking her heart.”
Lynne’s backing vocals provide a dreamy touch to the proceedings, while Jones occasionally snaps us out of the reverie with his snare. That’s how you take a three-chord song and turn it into something dynamic and affecting. And the title is a double-edged sword. There is a sense of freedom in it, but there’s also the notion that the narrator has reached a point in his life where there’s nowhere to go but down.
I remember back in the ’70s the John Birch Societyhad a billboard along a local highway asking for, “No Trillion Dollar National Debt.” It seems quaint now.
What happened between 1970 and 1980…Anyone???
And went up about 350% during the Reagan years
USA national debt: 1930: $16 billion 1940: $43 billion 1950: $257 billion 1960: $286 billion 1970: $371 billion 1980: $908 billion 1990: $3.2 trillion 2000: $5.6 trillion 2010: $13.5 trillion 2020: $27.7 trillion 2023: $31.8 trillion 2024: $36 trillion
That is insane. No country should be able to get that far in debt
Rand Paul stating Debt Crisis like non other in the History of the United States – Search
Put this chart alongside population growth Historical Population Change Data (1910-2020) in the same period. —– the only reason governments are used by powerful people is to make them rich!!! That’s why a constitutionalist demands we follow that document to the letter and NO more!!
US Debt in 2028: 51.1 Trillion
Total US Debt is going to be 120.1 Trillion
Therefore Bankruptcy is already here.
How sustainable is this tho? Like yeah you have USD which allows you to make more debt than any other countries. But when is it too much? When it reaches 100% of GDP or twice or more? It doesn’t seem good. The Government should take care of it before it gets bad for everyone.
The first question is whether the bank owners’ share capital is invested in long-term loans so that the banks become a form of mortgage company? If the answer is yes, it means that growth is limited, innovations are limited, companies’ expansion is limited and work is limited, which among other things results in lower taxes.
Question two then becomes how do you change growth, jobs and welfare – most likely the answer will be that a change in the nation depends on the banks’ shareholders and possible expansion.
Question three becomes – what has been the benefit of over 30 years of speculative economy, for the nation and for the individual citizen?
Not only can you see the increase in debt, but the increase in extra-governmental power, mainly military contractors.
US Total Assets is way more than the debt, so why worry?
We can sell some of our assets. Also ask billionaires to chip in as they sent all the jobs out and hollowed out the tax base. Ask them to bring jobs back or chip in to pay off the debt. I remember My Greatest teacher My father always told me this type of living ….. Combine that with a Cultural Shift he witnessed in his lifetime. The Interstate Highway System is one advancement he marveled at mostly with the extra expense of buying at convenience stores would be the ruination of God’s Green Creation until his death April 3, 2006.
Cultural shifts occurring nationwide
Also bolstered the move toward 24-hour retailing in a way that the activity on the coasts could not sustain on its own. President Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act in 1956, authorizing the interstate highway system and 41,000 miles of new roads, all of which required round-the-clock fuel for both cars and their drivers. The Tonight Show with Steve Allen premiered in 1954, encouraging viewers to stay up past midnight.
Americans were working later hours, too; Lenard says that early 24-hour stores tended to open by places like factories and hospitals, where shift work was becoming more common. And the same Time magazine article noted: “Speeding the trend is the fact that the defense program, drawing more & more wives into the labor force, makes it harder for women to shop during the day.”
There was no reversing this tide.
A 1972 article in the Milwaukee Sentinel took note of the uptick, both in cities and suburbs. Nationwide, 4 percent of supermarkets with more than $500,000 in yearly business had switched to 24-hour schedules. “What kind of people shop at 3 a.m.?” the article asks.
Store owners said they get a cross section—people while avoiding the late-afternoon jam in the store and on the highways, families with a car available only for shopping at night; women whose husbands are home from work taking care of their children; someone who needs milk or aspirin in an emergency; partygoers buying snacks sometimes several times during the night; men coming off late work shifts; families that want their whole day free for recreation; and even some insomniacs. Barring, obviously, the dated gender dynamics, that list would look pretty much the same in 2016.
The Evolution of Convenience Stores:
From Mom-and-pop Shops to Modern Chains. When you’re walking down the aisle of your local convenience store, you may not think twice about its surprisingly rich history. Packed with decades of quick and iconic snacks, drinks, and other essentials, C-stores are the epitome of American culture.
But convenience stores have come a long way from their humble beginnings as 20th-century mom-and-pop shops. Instead of going to a butcher for your meat, a greengrocer for fruits and vegetables, a fishmonger for fish, or a dry goods store for clothing and toiletries, we have the luxury of getting it all in one place.
Today, modern chains and family-owned convenience stores are scattered across the world, offering a wider variety of goods and services we have never seen before. Let’s go back to where it all started.
The Mom-and-Pop Era
The dawn of supermarkets began in 1915, when Vincent Astor, a descendant of the wealthy Astor family, invested $750,000 into creating the open-air Astor Market on 95th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Selling just meats, flowers, and produce, it wasn’t well-received by the public and eventually closed down in 1917.
Though unsuccessful, other states were experimenting with longer store hours and expanding their inventory in 1915-1920. Instead of just selling one niche category of items, the typical milkman or butcher would extend to other products beyond their territory and enter into competition with each other.
One said instance is the famous Piggly Wiggly, which originated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1916. It introduced many modern features we take for granted, like self-checkout, aisles, shopping carts, and service lanes. The founder, Clarence Sanders, received a patent and expanded to 1,267 Piggly Wiggly stores by 1923.
7-Eleven Emerges
Though early mom-and-pop shops were somewhat a semblance of modern supermarkets, they were not truly convenience stores yet. They were small and cramped but affordable. In 1927, Tote’m Stores, otherwise modernly known as 7-Eleven, was founded in Dallas, Texas. Thanks to the establishment’s popularity, it rapidly grew in the 1950s, when convenience stores really started to shine—as well as Slurpees and Big Gulps. By the 1970s, there were over 5,00 7-Eleven stores across the United States.
The name change to 7-Eleven in 1946 is due to their newfound extended hours of operation: 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., seven days a week. In 1963, some even stayed open 24 hours a day. They’ve been growing their Big Gulp sizes ever since.
Product Lines Turn Conventional
In the 1970s and 1980s, store owners hatched the genius idea of selling more than groceries. We saw the first coupons appearing in newspapers and the first Spectra-Physics model A barcode scanner was invented in a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, in 1974. Using a Universal Product Code (UPC), the scanners read each product’s unique information and instantly add it to the customer’s bill. A quick and simple staple of the customer experience, the first item ever scanned was a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum.
With quicker checkouts and more products like cigarettes, lottery tickets, snacks, sodas, and other high-demand convenience items, convenience stores ultimately became more popular and practical. And in 1986, the first touchscreen POS system and its software were presented at that year’s Las Vegas computer show by Comdex. With efficiency even more streamlined, they have become the one-stop-shop for everything from coffee to snacks to drinks to everything in between in the 1990s.
Chains Become Status-Quo
The 1990s were a time of big corporations arising and humble stores turning into conglomerate chains to compete. During the prime time of capitalism, companies like Circle K, Sheetz, and Wawa kicked production into high gear and quickly opened shops at rest stops, residential areas, and busy main roads. Stores became bigger, products better, and prices at an all-time low.
This was, by no surprise, extremely attractive to the public. Economically, the 1990s were in a recession, and people cared more about saving money than spending high prices on everyday items. The chains took advantage of that, running small stores out of business and capitalizing on the current market. That’s why in 2009, four chains were selling 50% of all groceries: Costco, Walmart, Kroger, and SuperValu. These supermarket whales innovated customer incentives to keep their profit always in the green, like loyalty cards and discounts.
The Digital Age
And that brings us to today, the Digital Age. This is the era of instant gratification through our smartphones. Many stores now sport mobile apps which allow customers to order and pay for items online and in advance and participate in rewards programs. Some stores even offer delivery services like Amazon Fresh, which delivers your groceries and convenience store goods right to your front door.
Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic
Shaped digitalization further, spouting a 220% increase in Amazon sales and similar success on other e-commerce platforms. Now, everyone wants to make purchasing quick and easy, and in advance, whether or not they are physically in the store. It’s not unconventional to see a C-store giving you the option to order your coffee, bakery items, or other products on your phone before picking them up in the store. Beyond that, wholesale convenience store suppliers always keep C-stores inventory-stocked, and many partner with delivery services like Uber Eats to allow for seamless delivery.
The Future of Convenience Stores
So, what’s next for convenience stores? One possibility is that they will continue to expand their product lines to a healthier selection involving fresh produce and organic foods. Another scenario would be that they become hyper-focused on digital technology as we move towards an AI-generated world. No matter what the future holds, convenience store owners must be ready to adapt.
Save time: “convenience store near me” – Search