Quote:The latest estimate is that it could be just under $500 billion dollars.

Give me an honest answer here.  Considering your own household budget, which would you rather have:  A deficit equal to 5% of your annual budget, or one equal to 3% of that budget?

Now, another question.  Which deficit would you rather have:  A $3000 annual deficit or one equal to $5000?  You're going to take the $3000 deficit, right?  So far, so good.

Now ... the third question.  Just a little more complicated.  Which would you rather have:  A $3,000 deficit with an annual operating budget of $10,000; or a $5,000 deficit with an annual operating budget of $50,000.  Whoops!  Now you're going to take the larger dollar amount, right?  If you chose the smaller deficit amount they there is a strong probability that you were educated in government schools.  The $3,000 deficit in our example represents a 30% budget deficit, while the $5,000 deficit equals a 10% deficit.  It would be a lot easier to increase your productivity by 10% to cover that $5,000 deficit than it would be to boost your personal economy by 30% to take care of that smaller $3,000 total.

Now, what did we learn here.  We earned that the important figure regarding budget relates to it's percentage of the total budget rather than its dollar amount. 

Don't you wish your kid had someone like me teaching them basic economics?