Experts Tier round 2: Is there any hope that the US can eliminate its national debt in our lifetimes

In order for the US to eliminate its national debt within our lifetimes, it has to produce enough of a surplus to significantly eat into the national debt enough to eliminate it within our own lifetimes. The life expectancy was agreed on to be at around 90 since technology will likely advance enough by then for us to live that long, meaning the time period the US has to allegedly eliminate its national debt is 70 years. Our national debt is $17,000,000,000,000. That divided by 70 gives us $243,857,142,857That means the US would have to average a budget surplus of about $244 BILLION every year, non stop, for 70 years in order to pay off its national debt..... "Currently, the military budget is $832 billion for this year [3]. It is already down from its high of $879.4 billion in 2011"A reduction of about 5%. "There is easily enough room to slash $500 billion from the military budget"Just because there is room it doesnt mean it could actually happen and that the US will actually slash $500 billion from its military budget.... Hell the GOP doesnt even like to cut military spending at ALL, let alone by hundreds of billions of dollars:http://www.huffingtonpost.com...http://www.politico.com...http://thinkprogress.org...http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com...The GOP flat out hates reducing military spending, it cant be expected that they would allow for military spending to be lowered by $500 billion when they dont even want to approve a reduction of $5 billion..... "Raising the social security and medicare/aid to 69 and then indexes it for life expectancy increases (meaning it always adjusts as life expectancy does) would save 44% of the deficit, or $300 billion"That number isnt going to stay there forever though, assuming we even get there in the first place. As long as the life expectancy age creeps up faster then the age to start qualifying for social security benefits does, then the deficit that the social security program generates will only grow larger, not shrink. You also have to take into account the baby boomers reaching old age, which will be a tremendous burden on the system since that will cause there to be a crapload of people qualifying for social security, without there being a large base of younger people being able to fund these new entrants. Population shifts occur over long periods of time, but several sizable ones will happen to the US over the course of 70 years that would cause social security to not be a reliable source of income for the US to use to pay off the national debt. "Now, I will agree that it is not likely that politicians would do such measures..... However, it is clearly possible that it can be done within 23 years and so there is clearly hope that it can be done within 70 years."I tremendously disagree. There is not a chance in hell that the GOP would agree to cutting $500 billion out of a military budget that as of right now stands at just over $800 billion.... Its one thing to argue that there is support for military spending to be reduced, its an ENTIRELY different thing to argue though that there is support for reducing military spending by well over 50%, which is what you are proposing and accepting as probable and possible.... ==================================================================================There are tons of other reasons why the US would not be able to balance its budget to the point that it can pay off the entire national debt within our lifetime1) Political Dichotomy in CongressCongress is at its most divided point in history, to the point where they can barely agree on anything anymore. It is very likely that this political divide will continue into the immediate future, and also likely that both sides will still look at each other with great animosity for decades to come. This divide between both parties will guarantee that no major changes that cuts at spending gets approved, and will also mitigate any changes that do get approved to very minor levels to the point that it does not significantly effect the overall budget. 2) EventsThe years in which the US did have a balanced budget were 1998-2001, 1969, 1960, and a couple times in the 1950'shttp://www.davemanuel.com...Each time there was a year with a budget surplus, it would always be in a year right before some notable event or war broke out, on top of a massive recession as well.... The budget balances in the late 90's to 2000 was thrown out after 9/11 and the new war on terror plus the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the surplus in 1969 was generated from a scale-down of the Vietnam war that was later wiped out by a recession in the mid 70's.... 1961 was right before the Vietnam war escalated, and the surpluses in the 50's were wiped out once the Korean war broke out. My point is, even when the budget IS balanced in a given year, its always a matter of time before a recession or a war, or both, come along and cause the budget to become so unbalanced that it offsets the gains made from the year of the surplus...... Its a guarantee that the US will endure MULTIPLE wars and recessions over the next 70 years, which would wipe out any gains that were just made by a surplus and only exacerbate the national debt even further..... 3) Not enough timeEvery year that the US doesnt balance the budget, the national debt grows that much larger and the amount of time to pay if off shrinks. The national debt is more massive than ever in history, which means it will take several years to return back to the budget breaking even, let alone the $244 Billion surplus a year needed to pay off the national debt. This means that every year the US fails to reach the $244 Billion surplus, the average surplus it needs to achieve and maintain grows steadily larger with less time to pay it off. Its gonna take several years for a balanced budget to even become reachable, which means that that much more will be added to the debt with that much less time to be able to pay it off. My point: The national deficit is so bad right now that it will take years for us to return to a state where a balanced budget is within reach, let alone accomplishable.... This just stacks the odds further against the US being able to pay off its national debt in our lifetimes that much more, since this is literally the worst time period for the US to try to maintain a budget with a massive surplus for half a century. 4) The US owes more money than what actually exists. This is just to put into perspective how big the national debt is since people cant readily wrap their head around how big of a number 17 Trillion is. The US owes more money than what literally exists, which means that if the US took every last penny from every last business, taxpayer, and bank, we would still wind up short. This means that in addition to the US already generating a massive deficit year by year, the US is also starting off at a tremendously large disadvantage regarding how much money it ALREADY owes. This has led many to believe that it is statistically impossible for the US to pay off its national debt EVER, let alone within our lifetimeshttp://theeconomiccollapseblog.com...