A reckoning of the books

Paine ended his pamphlet by counting ships and pricing timber, on the theory that a proposal without arithmetic is a wish. Here is the arithmetic, as plainly as I can set it down, with sources in the notes and the assumptions labeled.

What the country owes. Federal debt held by the public: about 101 percent of a year’s total national output in 2026, projected to reach 120 percent within ten years. The previous record was 106 percent, set in 1946, immediately after a world war.¹¹

What the debt costs. Roughly $1 trillion a year in interest, rising toward $2.1 trillion by 2036.

Where the deficit comes from. Total deficit this year: 5.8 percent of the economy. Deficit excluding interest: 2.6 percent, and projected to stay below that for a decade. Which means interest exceeds everything else in the deficit put together.

When retirement runs short. The Social Security retirement trust fund is depleted in 2032. At that point income covers 78 percent of promised retirement benefits. The combined funds, including disability, last until 2034 at 83 percent; the two figures must not be mixed.¹²

Who lives longer. Between the 1930 and 1960 birth cohorts, men in the top income groups gained years of life expectancy at fifty. Men at the bottom gained little or none. That is why this proposal does not raise the retirement age.²⁶

What the accounts cost. Roughly 3.6 million births a year at $10,000 each: about $36 billion annually, rounded to about $40 billion with administration. $10,000 compounding at an assumed 7 percent real return for 65 years: roughly $800,000. An illustration, not a guarantee.²⁴

What the floor costs. A comparable minimum-benefit provision has been scored at 0.10 to 0.17 percent of taxable payroll in recent years: roughly $11 to $19 billion a year on the 2026 base, called $20 billion here at the high end. A benchmark for a comparable provision, not an actuarial score of this design.²⁵

What the transition costs. Catch-up accounts for workers under 45: illustrated at roughly $140 billion a year for ten years, by explicit appropriation. As the old rolls decline, the retirement payroll tax falls from 10.6 cents of every covered dollar toward roughly 2 cents, and the transition obligation is illustrated as closing around 2110. Every figure in this paragraph is an author illustration awaiting actuarial scoring, and the proposal publishes its numbers rather than promising them.²⁸

What the public thinks about congressional stock trading. 86 percent support a ban: 87 percent of Republicans, 88 percent of Democrats, 81 percent of independents.⁵

What Congress produced. A bill permitting members to sell existing holdings, tied to an unrelated voter-identification measure, passed 232 to 198 on July 22, 2026.⁶

What we misjudge. Partisans estimate that 55 percent of the other side holds extreme views. The measured figure is about 30.⁹

I set these down together because the argument of this pamphlet is not really in any single one of them. It is in the fact that all of these are known, none are secret, most are decades old, and nothing follows.