Unfunded liabilities and my nemesis, Tom Woods

I take time to refute these responses like Tom's because of the apparent lack of thinking skills, even amongst the intelligent and highly educated. My responses in bold.

He writes: "[...government unfunded liabilities are] about $106 trillion. Other sources report this figure at less than half that amount..." And some sources quote a higher number, so I picked one in the middle.

"Of course the amount is huge and of course we don't have that kind of money on hand, but how useful is a statistic like this?" It's useful to the extent of demonstrating that the government has obligations for which it cannot pay. That seems simple.

"Here's an analogy. When we had our two children we incurred a liability of about $450,000: That's the money that we will spend for the first 18 years of their lives. Add in our mortgage over that period of time and our "liability" is more like $750,000. We don't have that kind of money. Should we sell the house and put the kids up for adoption? No. This imposing figure will be paid out over a long period of time with money that we haven't made yet. We’ll be OK."

Yes, you will be ok, because you actually pay towards the service of these obligations. Government does not, and in fact is increasing the obligation every day. And by the way, the mortgage is a secured loan, not an unfunded liability. Unless you are upside down in the loan, it will be paid off by the value of the property should you default.

But let's take the analogy from the realm of fantasyland and apply some real numbers. I'll even use the "half that amount" number, $53 trillion. Let's say the government creates a $53 trillion liability akin to a mortgage, and finances it at 5% over 50 years. The annual payment would be $2.88 trillion, which is more than the current annual budget of the government.

So would it be prudent for a hypothetical lender to make a loan to an organization, with a loan payment amount that exceeds the income of the organization?

"I think we can best address future liabilities by reducing health care costs...It's a great reason to work for meaningful health care reform." How exactly does increasing the government's unfunded liabilities by obligating itself to paying for health care LESSEN future liabilities? This is completely vapid.

Only a "true believer" would think such a thing makes sense.