http://www.smh.com.au/business/us-is-bankrupt-and-we-dont-even-know-it-20100812-12056.html
"Let's get real. The US is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills. What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess.....
The fiscal gap is the value today (the present value) of the difference between projected spending (including servicing official debt) and projected revenue in all future years. Double Our Taxes To put 14 per cent of gross domestic product in perspective, current federal revenue totals 14.9 per cent of GDP. So the IMF is saying that closing the U.S. fiscal gap, from the revenue side, requires, roughly speaking, an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal-income, corporate and federal taxes as well as the payroll levy set down in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act."
