The federal government has a debt nearing $14.3 trillion. It is running a deficit of over $1.3 trillion per year. Its cash flow situation is terrible. It is only a few years given current projections when interest on the debt alone will consume most of current revenues. When a business faces an analogous situation, it will liquidate assets to pay the debt, cut spending so as to at least be break-even, and then perhaps will default if these moves don't stem the tide. The U.S. government should do the same. Would this solve the problem? You can see in the figure nearby that the U.S. government a great deal of land, 30 percent of the land in the United States. Even at very conservative estimates, a sale of land could pay the debt. Suppose the average price of the land is $1000 per acre; there are 650 million acres owned by the government. This means that selling all land at $1,000 an acre would bring in $650 billion. That is only 1/20 of the debt. How can the debt be paid without either defaulting or defaulting via inflation?
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