Quote from HelloDollar:
Illogical argument. You're saying, "entitlements over the past 8 years only caused a 10% increase in debt, so to say that future exposure from entitlements will be greater than the past decade is false."
Entitlements such as SS, Medicare and public pensions have a risk profile akin to a short options position. Like a call option that's moving from far OTM to far ITM, the cost of entitlements increases each day.
What you and many other fools don't understand is that a pretty big portion of those "Reagan deficits"-ignoring that Congress back then was as Demo as it is today-was on INTEREST expenses. What were Treasuries yielding during Reagan's first term? One would shudder at how big these Obama deficits would be if the Treasury rate component was 12% across the curve.