Our country's Gross Domestic Product, or GDP is the sum total of all currency exchanged for goods and services in a given year. Currently, the Federal Government is consuming 45% of every dollar produced.

The "fiscal gap" is the amount of spending reduction or tax increases that would be needed to keep debt, as a share of GDP, at or below today's ratio.

Closing the fiscal gap will require spending cuts and/or tax increases equal to 8.1 percent of the entire economy over the next 75 years, or about $63 trillion in today's dollars.

To put this in perspective, closing the gap solely through tax revenue increases would require an increase in today's federal income tax revenues by 44%.

"Among the major decisions affecting economic outcomes are decisions about what kinds of enduring institutions a society has for making those decisions - what kind of economic system, operating in what kind of legal system, and controlled by what kind of political system".   Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics