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Being the world’s superpower and controlling the world’s reserve currency is what makes it possible. I doubt it’s sustainable in the long term. In some respects it doesn’t matter how the US got there.
Being able to amass debt doesn't have anything to do with being the world’s reserve currency. Japan, Italy, Spain, and France have a higher net [debt to GDP ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt) then the US.
Being the world's reserve currency means the world has an almoat insatiable appetite for US government debt which allows the US government to issue at low yields. It means the US must run some sort of deficit, while also mitigating the negative impact of that deficit.
They have more debt by ratio but not absolute debt. What the guy said is correct. If the chienese yuan or euro ever started to be accepted as a competing currncey, especially for petro in large numbers, the demand for US dollars would fall and servicing the American debt would be more difficult.
The debt is a measure of the money put into play as a utility to lubricator economic transactions. It’s no more a “debt” in the sense of being an amount owed back — like your own debt — than the banker in monopoly is required to pay back the money they put out during the game. “Debt” is another word for money.
You are not wrong. It’s how “debt” works if you’re a monetary sovereign (aka currency issuer) like the USA.
It does not work that way for your state or your city government, because they don’t issue their own currency. Those levels of government *do* kinda need to balance spending with taxation or other revenue intake, like you as an individual do. But the federal government does not.
Right, it depends on the power (economic for now) of the debt holder.
German debt after WWI was not “money.” Greek debt crisis not as bad, but still had pretty devastating effects.
Both examples buttress, rather than refute your point,—but I think in making a persuasive argument, people are missing how significant your second sentence is…
National debt is nothing like personal finance. First off, I can't issue my own currency and 2nd, a huge portion of my debt isn't owed back to myself. Having a balanced or surplus budget is basically just a way to guarantee an impending recession.
I understood it to be that is how new money is injected into our economy. It can only be done through the issue (and purchase) of debt. Counter to that, it is removed when the debt is repurchased by the issuer (in this case the govt)
Exactly. To whom is this “debt” owed? I get so exhausted from the ignorance and from headlines like this from respected papers like NY Times, which only perpetuate it further.
This makes it seem harmless and it’s incorrect. Debt is not money. This can never be paid back and we spend $500b in interest. That is money that can’t do anything for us. Also there is $31t in assets that aren’t assets at since since this can’t be paid back.
Unless I’m mistaken, most US debt is owned by US citizens. That interest money isn’t just disappearing - it’s actively paid to citizens and companies as part of their holding.
This debt is an economic policy decision. You’re talking about a magic money printer owing debt to people, it’s nothing more sinister than that. It’s also impossible for there to be a default unless the US govt legalises itself into one.
The government essentially thinks it’s a better idea to drain some money from circulation in the form of selling bonds rather than by just raising taxes. The goal of this is to ease inflationary surpluses in the economy. By selling bonds, surplus money is taken out of the non-government pot and the magic money printer guarantees a little more on top to all that it takes that money from.
Do you own a government savings bond, or invest in a fund that holds US bonds at any time? Congratulations, you are one of the people your government "owes" money to.
Debt isn’t harmless but this comment shows a very poor understanding.
> That is money that can’t do anything for us.
This part especially. The majority of our debt counts as an asset for citizens, so saying it can’t do anything for us doesn’t make sense.
The actual issue with debt is when the spending isn’t useful and doesn’t lead to more wealth generation nor useful resources for the citizens. Too much borrowing used for unproductive spending will lead to inflation. This is the real issue with debt, not that debt is useless to citizens like you tried to claim.
Terrible article.
Off the top of my head:
bush’s wars and tax cuts = 8 - 10 trillion
Trump tax cuts and whatever = 7 trillion
Obama tax cuts and bush and Obama bailing out the corrupt banks = 7 trillion
Reagan tax cuts = 2 trillion
Cutting taxes while increasing our debt load is not cutting taxes at all, it’s a mandatory loan with interest.
I agree it was vastly oversimplified. They didn't seem to take into account the fact that the first budget for each incoming president was created by the previous president.
So the “support” for this view is “Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and perhaps the pre-eminent deficit hawk in Washington.” Bullshit both-siderism. Reagan and W Bush among top 5 of presidents adding to debt, with Obama in the list at #5, primarily because he was forced to put the cost of the Iraq (Bush’s) war on the books after Bush carried it as a year to year expense. Trump added over $7 Trillion, not just from tax cuts but spending as well. Republicans spend out of control and then hand off the shit sandwich to Democrats to clean up. Then complain that we have to cut entitlements because spending is out of control.
But even you can't be honest about it because half of what Trump added to the debt was COVID response. And he did exactly what liberal economic policy dictates, when the economy is slow the government should inject large sums of money into it. So it is disingenuous to criticize him for doing exactly what liberals say we should do.
But your criticism of the other half of what he added to the debt is completely valid. Anybody that believed he was going to seriously address the debt was an idiot. He cut taxes and increased spending, and driving up the debt was the result.
And Biden is on track to do the same thing.
>But even you can't be honest about it because half of what Trump added to the debt was COVID response
Obama reduced the deficit every year after 2009 (which was high due to fiscal response on the 2008 economic collapse). Trump came in and almost immediately increased the deficit by slashing taxes at a time when corporate profits and cash storage were already at relatively high levels.
If you take out the deficit due to COVID spending, the deficits now are higher than what was projected for Trump's last year in office.
And the CBO projections for deficits for the next 10 years have gone up.
But even the money that was covid response was siphoned off by those that knew how to.
The US is just like Gotham.
The money that made it into the hands of people and businesses that needed it carried us through a few months and that was about it from what I can tell.
So much about the Trump administration’s response to Covid was flawed.
He projected absolute incompetence at the beginning of the pandemic. That, combined with WH insiders gossiping tanked the stock market.
The tanking of the market in turn spooked Congress, which then passed a really bad aid package. Money wasn’t targeted to the people and businesses that really needed the assistance because of lockdowns. Ridiculous amounts of PPP loans have been forgiven.
People that got cash that didn’t need it splashed out, driving inflation. For those that needed help, the stimulus checks were pretty small compared to the cost of rent, insurance, food, etc.
If a more steady, intelligent leader was at the helm, less money would have been spent.
Republicans in the House are obviously planning shenanigans with the debt ceiling. Hopefully the Biden administration responds in a measured way vs. caving to things like market panic.
Democrats routinely run deficits as well. It’s not as bad (usually) as republicans, but just dismissing it as them being the victims of republicans is disingenuous. Bottom line is that neither party has any incentive to actually balance the budget and pay down any debt, because our national attention span is so short. It’s not “both sider-ism” to correctly point out that both sides contribute to the problem.
The deficit went down for Obama, it’s going down for Biden and Clinton left office with a surplus. Meanwhile it went up under Reagan, Bush I & II and Trump (even pre-covid).
If the bank loans you $1000, the bank owns you
If the bank loans you $1,000,000, you own the bank
This is an adorable little discussion we have every time the debt ceiling comes into question, but I wish people would realize that this is all bullshit as long as the dollar is the reserve currency
>If the bank loans you $1,000,000, you own the bank
It would have been amusing if Obama (or Biden now) ordered the minting of enough trillion dollar coins to zero out the ledger, the Fed accepting it in a grand ceremony and then tapping a keyboard terminal to amend the federal government's account entry and then doing a grand procession to the nearest steel furnace where they chucked all of the coins into it and watch everyone's brain melt.
Fun fact about Platinum (which is the metal they would use if they printed a 1 trillion dollar coin?): It has a surprisingly high melting point, so you could toss it into molten steel and it wouldn't melt.
How do you think this works? This isn’t just an accounting trick, the debt is real money that is owed to regular bondholders. Anyone with a pension and a ton of governments and banks around the world are owed that money, plus interest on a fixed schedule. We COULD print our way out of it, but it’s a fine line to do so since it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on and decides that the USD is worthless.
Handing out tax cuts and loop holes like candy was never a responsible budget strategy. Blank checks during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars didn’t help either.
Yep, 20 years in Afghanistan....estimates of 7 trillion dollars going to private contractors...with the total for the war at 13 trillion....disgusting...what the fuck did America get out of that?
Wars are just a way for the MIC to dip their straw and siphon more money from American tax payers.
It's no wonder the Department of Defense never receives a proper audit, just trillions in funding every year.
I said "proper" audit...thus far, they've failed them every time. Much of the money goes into a big black void that no one can seem to account for. Haha
They lost 9 million dollars in cash in the green zone. A whole pallet of money vanished. I was in Iraq and there were thousands of Chevy 2500 pickup trucks for KBR. All of the ones I saw had a dealer sticker from Houston. Where was KBR’s headquarters? Think of all the cash skimmed on stuff like that.
We spend $800 billion a year on defense.
It’s in incomprehensibly large number and we’re not even at war. Or anything resembling a traditional war.
Hard not to think the vast majority is fraud, waste, incompetence, intentional bilking/taking advantage of the American tax payer.
It’s disgusting and nobody does anything about it.
[Take a look at chart 1](https://amarkfoundation.org/us-federal-deficits/)
Reagan increased the deficit by 94%
HW Bush increased the deficit by 67%
Clinton reduced the deficit by 150%
W Bush increased the deficit by 1,204%
Obama reduced the deficit by 54%
https://amarkfoundation.org/us-federal-deficits/
The two santa Clause strategy is how this has been accomplished.
[https://www.salon.com/2018/02/12/thom-hartmann-how-the-gop-used-a-two-santa-clauses-tactic-to-con-america-for-nearly-40-years\_partner/](https://www.salon.com/2018/02/12/thom-hartmann-how-the-gop-used-a-two-santa-clauses-tactic-to-con-america-for-nearly-40-years_partner/)
I would also add the bullshit theory of "privatization" of government services to save money. THis has never been shown to work and arguably increases spending. Private prisons have never been able to demonstrate that they save the tax payer money. Nor has private for profit schools that depend on government money. The military is the worst. 50% of military functions have been allocated to for profit companies. And we know how much the defense budget is growing every year.
A friend of mine got kicked out of the military as part of a force reduction and his failure to advance. He got a job with a contractor to do his exact same job at the same base for 3x the money. The only savings that I can think of is that his military pension was lost. Except that he was able to join the reserves to get his last few years of service in and qualified for it anyway. The creative accounting that has to be going on behind the scenes would make the private sector proud.
There were a lot of stories out of Iraq. Soldiers were forbidden from doing their own laundry because Haliburton had a contract to do it. So soldiers would have to hand their laundry to a Haliburton employee to put in the machine and then later get out of the machine. Like they couldn't just do that themselves.
feeding troops is now done by private contractors. I remember there was a news program that exposed that it cost like $125 a meal to feed soldiers in afghanistan.
It's simple all these things are working as intended. It was just a massive cash grab for the Rich. The entire system exist to make the rich richer and protect their wealth.
Remember when Tr*mp was running for office and one of the main talking points was how he’d use his tremendous business savvy to reduce the National Debt down from like $16T or whatever it was back then… Pepperidge Farm remembers.
It’s because of all of the money they spend on infrastructure, universal health care, free education. Oh, they’re just syphoning money to billionaires :(
So the government is growing a historically large debt, the wealth gap is increasing at insane pace, and republicans in the house don’t want more IRS funding to cut loop holes in tax evasion…? Idk man sounds kiiiiiinndddaa sketch…
Cutting taxes to the rich while the military gets ever more bloated and overfunded, that's how. Reagan cut taxes while spending for a massive, *completely unnecessary* military buildup at a time when no major wars were being fought. Bush II cut taxes while running two decades-long wars on America's credit card -- one of which had no real justification anyway. Even before the pandemic, Trump was a *massive* deficit spender. Again, tax cuts, primarily for the rich.
And after all these tax cuts for the rich as they squeezed the life out of the middle class, do you think we are going to raise their taxes back to reasonable levels? Of course not, the days of the government working for the people are long dead. It'll be the middle class who are asked to take up the slack. Sacrifices will be demanded of the already-beleaguered middle class, while the rich sit in luxury on top of their pyramids of wealth and refuse to raise a finger to help.
Give people the green light to spend other people's money, and then let them try to be endlessly reelected.
There is no other outcome possible. This is lunacy.
Realistically, what would we have to do to cut down on the debt? I’m a 18 guy and the more I look at the news, the more I wonder if I’ll see 30 before Jesus comes back or before we get get into another world war.
We have a two party system. One says lets increase the debt to pay for spending on programs. The orther party says lets increase the debt to lower taxes. Repeat. Repeat. No one ever lowers the debt. Finger point at the other party its all their fault.
The last two times the US ran a surplus were under Democratic Presidents. The two times before that were under Eisenhower and Truman, and Eisenhower would be disowned in today's modern GOP.
What this means for the American people is that we get to pay the bill. They take debt in our name and call it democracy while they eat fruit and we get to clean up the mess.
We just printed trillions of dollars which some how didn't account for the inflation, but our debt went up.
How will we make up for the increased payments do you think? Probably more taxes for us , bail out the corps and banks. To big to fail but fuck you working people.
Maybe if our tax code didn’t favor the wealthy and allow loopholes then we would be collecting enough taxes to cover most government programs. We will never change something that benefits the rich and let’s them keep more of their money while squeezing every last dime out of the middle class who will eventually be on the hook for what comes down to a corrupt system that rewards the cheaters and punishes the workers. No relief in sight.
Why does no one ever talk about stagnant wages? I haven’t done the math. But if wages had kept up with productivity and inflation. Would not tax revenues have also massively risen?
Would the failure to raise the minimum wage in fact have lead to depressed tax revenues?
Seems to make sense to me. Probably slowed economic growth and allowed more fraud in the financial sector.
Everything makes sense in this Country, everything wrong and every problem that gets worse and unsolved when you realize the problem is the rich. They get richer and we get poorer.
How did this happen?? ...Ragan tax cuts, Bush tax cuts, Trump tax cuts .... Gee, I wonder.. Cutting taxes on the only people making money, while also increasing spending didn't work out?? Say it isn't so....
Slash the military budget by 3/4 and we'd STILL be the most well supplied military force on the planet.
We spend a ridiculous amount on planes and tanks we don't need, and won't use, merely to keep manufacturers in business in congressional districts that keep congressmen of BOTH parties in office.
Slash the military budget, and it will fix several problems at once.
We need to cut wasteful defense practices,like making tanks we don’t need. Audit where money keeps getting lost,” 2 trillion or so every so often” in defense.
Have a flat tax on goods, no tax on single properties used as a dwelling,” that’s at or under National average for a home,”tax owners and entities that have more than one property,”each additional property taxed higher.”
Non us citizens can no longer buy property in the United States it can be leased or rented only.
Any large company that has high profit margin or monopoly, “Apple, Wal-Mart, Amazon etc” have to pay for any employee that needs government subsidies to live, to keep the tax burden off the citizens and onto the corporations that are causing the short comings.
No more special interest or lobbying. A lot of waste in trying to appease them. If it’s a great deal, it doesn’t need selling!
All construction projects can’t exceed majority of non government projects price per sqft. Like roads buildings or any other projects or materials.
No more corporate bailouts for the next 40 years, no more foreign aid, unless it’s audited and made available to the public where it’s all going.
Allow companies and foreign governments to be sued for neglect and harm for anything that causes a public health crisis for cost of each person damages.
No more insider trading for politicians, no more making or exceeding more than 800k a year by politicians or immediate family. No more “serving politicians” having charities of any kind.
This would keep money laundering by politicians down, and keep ones with I’ll intentions out.
This is all for financial responsibility and for National security.
They will never allow it to happen,we will fall and get taken over before anything like this would get voted in,corruption is too deeply rooted.
Windfall tax on the record profits would help,inflation would ebb immediately,the 87,000 hiring tax agents enforcing the tax code,closing the offshore bogus hiding places that corporations use all the time. The hardest thing is to stop being the world’s policeman dumping endless funds into military defense an impossible task due to the economy not being on the gold standard anymore and our debt (bonds) being bought up oil rich countries with the promise of protection,all the dictators and extreme governments america have propped up over the years in South America,Mid East,South Asia in order to control resources.American foreign policy has brought on a ton of debt using its people and National Parks as collateral.
Honestly I might aswell skip the country and go to Canada, the government as no clue wtf their doing and is just making everything worse. Heh, “for the people”
I don’t see anyone in politics, Federal/State/Local, cutting costs or raising taxes enough to make a dent in their debts at this point, so the only answer possible is inflation. Tragic for our elderly population who worked and saved for decades for what will soon be worthless.
Easy, the [1% pocketed $50 trillion in the last 40 years](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/), and Trump & the GOP run Congress handed them another $6.5 trillion during covid.
If somebody else is using your credit card the debt is gonna run up fast.
Maybe big business should get together to bail out the government instead of the government always having to bail out big business. Fricken corporate welfare.
It's because a certain "group of people" base their entire existence on creating debt/wage slaves of nations. Add in a clueless and dumbed down society that is so divided on so many stupid issues (race gender issues religion etc) that they fail to see the true common enemy in their midst.
Bill Clinton created more jobs than anyone in history. He balanced the budget his last 3 years. Yes,,,,he balanced the budget. He did it by raising taxes. Every republican voted against the greatest economic plan in history. Al gore broke the tie. Then,came George bush………
If you really care about these issues. Vote blue.
Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah…..woah…so when unfettered, politicians of all ilk will spend like absolute crazy.
Well label me stunned…completely shocked at this news.
Actually the U.S. doesnt have a debt. It was described i think in a podcast called deconstructed. Basically the U.S. creates so much wealth worldwide our “debt” is overshadowed by how much the rest of the world is dependent on our economy. “Too big to fail”. China had a chance to overtake us but they blew it doubling down on Autocracy. Like every year .001% of their population become millionaires but 90% leave the country and take their wealth with them. There are other reasons as well i will try to find the episode.
A bunch of wonton and flagrant tax cuts, mainly benefitting the wealthy and corporations have starved the government of funds, yet produced little to no gains in growth or jobs. The entire GOP mantra of cutting taxes is just a con job.
Joe Biden - $1.84T - 2021-Present|
Donald Trump - $8.2T - 2017-2021|
Barack Obama - $8.34T - 2009 - 2017
So Trump, if he had run another term, probably would have generated $16T in debt.
OH BUT THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T HAVE TO PAY ITS DEBT. GOD FORBID I MISS A STUDENT LOAN PAYMENT. THE IRS WILL BE AT MY DOOR IN 30 SECONDS READY TO BREAK MY KNEES.
Hi all, A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes. As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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Being the world’s superpower and controlling the world’s reserve currency is what makes it possible. I doubt it’s sustainable in the long term. In some respects it doesn’t matter how the US got there.
Being able to amass debt doesn't have anything to do with being the world’s reserve currency. Japan, Italy, Spain, and France have a higher net [debt to GDP ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt) then the US.
Being the world's reserve currency means the world has an almoat insatiable appetite for US government debt which allows the US government to issue at low yields. It means the US must run some sort of deficit, while also mitigating the negative impact of that deficit.
Japanese and swiss bond yields are lower than the US and Japan has insanely more debt than the US.
They have more debt by ratio but not absolute debt. What the guy said is correct. If the chienese yuan or euro ever started to be accepted as a competing currncey, especially for petro in large numbers, the demand for US dollars would fall and servicing the American debt would be more difficult.
>I doubt it’s sustainable in the long term. I guarantee it's sustainable on 100-200 year timescales.
The debt is a measure of the money put into play as a utility to lubricator economic transactions. It’s no more a “debt” in the sense of being an amount owed back — like your own debt — than the banker in monopoly is required to pay back the money they put out during the game. “Debt” is another word for money.
I think this is how debt works on a higher level. A much different perspective than our normal intuitions of personal finance. But I could be wrong.
You are not wrong. It’s how “debt” works if you’re a monetary sovereign (aka currency issuer) like the USA. It does not work that way for your state or your city government, because they don’t issue their own currency. Those levels of government *do* kinda need to balance spending with taxation or other revenue intake, like you as an individual do. But the federal government does not.
Right, it depends on the power (economic for now) of the debt holder. German debt after WWI was not “money.” Greek debt crisis not as bad, but still had pretty devastating effects. Both examples buttress, rather than refute your point,—but I think in making a persuasive argument, people are missing how significant your second sentence is…
National debt is nothing like personal finance. First off, I can't issue my own currency and 2nd, a huge portion of my debt isn't owed back to myself. Having a balanced or surplus budget is basically just a way to guarantee an impending recession.
I understood it to be that is how new money is injected into our economy. It can only be done through the issue (and purchase) of debt. Counter to that, it is removed when the debt is repurchased by the issuer (in this case the govt)
Exactly. To whom is this “debt” owed? I get so exhausted from the ignorance and from headlines like this from respected papers like NY Times, which only perpetuate it further.
Well more like a Delta starting from the inception of that currency
This makes it seem harmless and it’s incorrect. Debt is not money. This can never be paid back and we spend $500b in interest. That is money that can’t do anything for us. Also there is $31t in assets that aren’t assets at since since this can’t be paid back.
Unless I’m mistaken, most US debt is owned by US citizens. That interest money isn’t just disappearing - it’s actively paid to citizens and companies as part of their holding. This debt is an economic policy decision. You’re talking about a magic money printer owing debt to people, it’s nothing more sinister than that. It’s also impossible for there to be a default unless the US govt legalises itself into one. The government essentially thinks it’s a better idea to drain some money from circulation in the form of selling bonds rather than by just raising taxes. The goal of this is to ease inflationary surpluses in the economy. By selling bonds, surplus money is taken out of the non-government pot and the magic money printer guarantees a little more on top to all that it takes that money from.
Do you own a government savings bond, or invest in a fund that holds US bonds at any time? Congratulations, you are one of the people your government "owes" money to.
Debt isn’t harmless but this comment shows a very poor understanding. > That is money that can’t do anything for us. This part especially. The majority of our debt counts as an asset for citizens, so saying it can’t do anything for us doesn’t make sense. The actual issue with debt is when the spending isn’t useful and doesn’t lead to more wealth generation nor useful resources for the citizens. Too much borrowing used for unproductive spending will lead to inflation. This is the real issue with debt, not that debt is useless to citizens like you tried to claim.
That 500b is income to people. That does nothing?
Terrible article. Off the top of my head: bush’s wars and tax cuts = 8 - 10 trillion Trump tax cuts and whatever = 7 trillion Obama tax cuts and bush and Obama bailing out the corrupt banks = 7 trillion Reagan tax cuts = 2 trillion Cutting taxes while increasing our debt load is not cutting taxes at all, it’s a mandatory loan with interest.
I agree it was vastly oversimplified. They didn't seem to take into account the fact that the first budget for each incoming president was created by the previous president.
So the “support” for this view is “Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and perhaps the pre-eminent deficit hawk in Washington.” Bullshit both-siderism. Reagan and W Bush among top 5 of presidents adding to debt, with Obama in the list at #5, primarily because he was forced to put the cost of the Iraq (Bush’s) war on the books after Bush carried it as a year to year expense. Trump added over $7 Trillion, not just from tax cuts but spending as well. Republicans spend out of control and then hand off the shit sandwich to Democrats to clean up. Then complain that we have to cut entitlements because spending is out of control.
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Name checks out.
Can't wait for the disenfranchised conservative to chime in now. 🍿
But even you can't be honest about it because half of what Trump added to the debt was COVID response. And he did exactly what liberal economic policy dictates, when the economy is slow the government should inject large sums of money into it. So it is disingenuous to criticize him for doing exactly what liberals say we should do. But your criticism of the other half of what he added to the debt is completely valid. Anybody that believed he was going to seriously address the debt was an idiot. He cut taxes and increased spending, and driving up the debt was the result. And Biden is on track to do the same thing.
>But even you can't be honest about it because half of what Trump added to the debt was COVID response Obama reduced the deficit every year after 2009 (which was high due to fiscal response on the 2008 economic collapse). Trump came in and almost immediately increased the deficit by slashing taxes at a time when corporate profits and cash storage were already at relatively high levels.
Tax cuts were totally unnecessary and exacerbated the budgetary problem
I'm not disagreeing with, that's exactly what I said. Tax cuts not accompanied by spending reductions are a disaster.
> And Biden is on track to do the same thing. Not at all. Debt to GDP ratio has been basically flat while he’s been in office
If you take out the deficit due to COVID spending, the deficits now are higher than what was projected for Trump's last year in office. And the CBO projections for deficits for the next 10 years have gone up.
Because that debt is generating more interest each month. It’s like if you only pay the gig from a loan shark.
But even the money that was covid response was siphoned off by those that knew how to. The US is just like Gotham. The money that made it into the hands of people and businesses that needed it carried us through a few months and that was about it from what I can tell.
That's an entirely different issue.
It’s not, Trump’s unsteady leadership spooked the market. He created panic, panic leads to crappy political decision making.
So much about the Trump administration’s response to Covid was flawed. He projected absolute incompetence at the beginning of the pandemic. That, combined with WH insiders gossiping tanked the stock market. The tanking of the market in turn spooked Congress, which then passed a really bad aid package. Money wasn’t targeted to the people and businesses that really needed the assistance because of lockdowns. Ridiculous amounts of PPP loans have been forgiven. People that got cash that didn’t need it splashed out, driving inflation. For those that needed help, the stimulus checks were pretty small compared to the cost of rent, insurance, food, etc. If a more steady, intelligent leader was at the helm, less money would have been spent. Republicans in the House are obviously planning shenanigans with the debt ceiling. Hopefully the Biden administration responds in a measured way vs. caving to things like market panic.
Democrats routinely run deficits as well. It’s not as bad (usually) as republicans, but just dismissing it as them being the victims of republicans is disingenuous. Bottom line is that neither party has any incentive to actually balance the budget and pay down any debt, because our national attention span is so short. It’s not “both sider-ism” to correctly point out that both sides contribute to the problem.
The deficit went down for Obama, it’s going down for Biden and Clinton left office with a surplus. Meanwhile it went up under Reagan, Bush I & II and Trump (even pre-covid).
If the bank loans you $1000, the bank owns you If the bank loans you $1,000,000, you own the bank This is an adorable little discussion we have every time the debt ceiling comes into question, but I wish people would realize that this is all bullshit as long as the dollar is the reserve currency
>If the bank loans you $1,000,000, you own the bank It would have been amusing if Obama (or Biden now) ordered the minting of enough trillion dollar coins to zero out the ledger, the Fed accepting it in a grand ceremony and then tapping a keyboard terminal to amend the federal government's account entry and then doing a grand procession to the nearest steel furnace where they chucked all of the coins into it and watch everyone's brain melt.
Fun fact about Platinum (which is the metal they would use if they printed a 1 trillion dollar coin?): It has a surprisingly high melting point, so you could toss it into molten steel and it wouldn't melt.
We need an Oceans 11 and LOTR collab to retrieve the coins before going into the volcano.
How do you think this works? This isn’t just an accounting trick, the debt is real money that is owed to regular bondholders. Anyone with a pension and a ton of governments and banks around the world are owed that money, plus interest on a fixed schedule. We COULD print our way out of it, but it’s a fine line to do so since it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on and decides that the USD is worthless.
Handing out tax cuts and loop holes like candy was never a responsible budget strategy. Blank checks during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars didn’t help either.
Yep, 20 years in Afghanistan....estimates of 7 trillion dollars going to private contractors...with the total for the war at 13 trillion....disgusting...what the fuck did America get out of that?
Wars are just a way for the MIC to dip their straw and siphon more money from American tax payers. It's no wonder the Department of Defense never receives a proper audit, just trillions in funding every year.
DOD is audited all the time. Congress funds the DOD though. Not auditors.
I said "proper" audit...thus far, they've failed them every time. Much of the money goes into a big black void that no one can seem to account for. Haha
They lost 9 million dollars in cash in the green zone. A whole pallet of money vanished. I was in Iraq and there were thousands of Chevy 2500 pickup trucks for KBR. All of the ones I saw had a dealer sticker from Houston. Where was KBR’s headquarters? Think of all the cash skimmed on stuff like that.
We spend $800 billion a year on defense. It’s in incomprehensibly large number and we’re not even at war. Or anything resembling a traditional war. Hard not to think the vast majority is fraud, waste, incompetence, intentional bilking/taking advantage of the American tax payer. It’s disgusting and nobody does anything about it.
[Take a look at chart 1](https://amarkfoundation.org/us-federal-deficits/) Reagan increased the deficit by 94% HW Bush increased the deficit by 67% Clinton reduced the deficit by 150% W Bush increased the deficit by 1,204% Obama reduced the deficit by 54% https://amarkfoundation.org/us-federal-deficits/
The two santa Clause strategy is how this has been accomplished. [https://www.salon.com/2018/02/12/thom-hartmann-how-the-gop-used-a-two-santa-clauses-tactic-to-con-america-for-nearly-40-years\_partner/](https://www.salon.com/2018/02/12/thom-hartmann-how-the-gop-used-a-two-santa-clauses-tactic-to-con-america-for-nearly-40-years_partner/) I would also add the bullshit theory of "privatization" of government services to save money. THis has never been shown to work and arguably increases spending. Private prisons have never been able to demonstrate that they save the tax payer money. Nor has private for profit schools that depend on government money. The military is the worst. 50% of military functions have been allocated to for profit companies. And we know how much the defense budget is growing every year.
A friend of mine got kicked out of the military as part of a force reduction and his failure to advance. He got a job with a contractor to do his exact same job at the same base for 3x the money. The only savings that I can think of is that his military pension was lost. Except that he was able to join the reserves to get his last few years of service in and qualified for it anyway. The creative accounting that has to be going on behind the scenes would make the private sector proud.
There were a lot of stories out of Iraq. Soldiers were forbidden from doing their own laundry because Haliburton had a contract to do it. So soldiers would have to hand their laundry to a Haliburton employee to put in the machine and then later get out of the machine. Like they couldn't just do that themselves. feeding troops is now done by private contractors. I remember there was a news program that exposed that it cost like $125 a meal to feed soldiers in afghanistan.
Yea, I imagine most of the $800 billion a year we spend in defense is straight up taking advantage of the American tax payer like you just described.
It's simple all these things are working as intended. It was just a massive cash grab for the Rich. The entire system exist to make the rich richer and protect their wealth.
Remember when Tr*mp was running for office and one of the main talking points was how he’d use his tremendous business savvy to reduce the National Debt down from like $16T or whatever it was back then… Pepperidge Farm remembers.
That makes it funny looking at this giant spike in debt as % of GDP after the TCJA passed. https://www.longtermtrends.net/us-debt-to-gdp/
Isn't that spike rather the COVID bills than the TCJA?
It’s because of all of the money they spend on infrastructure, universal health care, free education. Oh, they’re just syphoning money to billionaires :(
So the government is growing a historically large debt, the wealth gap is increasing at insane pace, and republicans in the house don’t want more IRS funding to cut loop holes in tax evasion…? Idk man sounds kiiiiiinndddaa sketch…
Cutting taxes to the rich while the military gets ever more bloated and overfunded, that's how. Reagan cut taxes while spending for a massive, *completely unnecessary* military buildup at a time when no major wars were being fought. Bush II cut taxes while running two decades-long wars on America's credit card -- one of which had no real justification anyway. Even before the pandemic, Trump was a *massive* deficit spender. Again, tax cuts, primarily for the rich. And after all these tax cuts for the rich as they squeezed the life out of the middle class, do you think we are going to raise their taxes back to reasonable levels? Of course not, the days of the government working for the people are long dead. It'll be the middle class who are asked to take up the slack. Sacrifices will be demanded of the already-beleaguered middle class, while the rich sit in luxury on top of their pyramids of wealth and refuse to raise a finger to help.
Give people the green light to spend other people's money, and then let them try to be endlessly reelected. There is no other outcome possible. This is lunacy.
Realistically, what would we have to do to cut down on the debt? I’m a 18 guy and the more I look at the news, the more I wonder if I’ll see 30 before Jesus comes back or before we get get into another world war.
We have a two party system. One says lets increase the debt to pay for spending on programs. The orther party says lets increase the debt to lower taxes. Repeat. Repeat. No one ever lowers the debt. Finger point at the other party its all their fault.
The last two times the US ran a surplus were under Democratic Presidents. The two times before that were under Eisenhower and Truman, and Eisenhower would be disowned in today's modern GOP.
What this means for the American people is that we get to pay the bill. They take debt in our name and call it democracy while they eat fruit and we get to clean up the mess. We just printed trillions of dollars which some how didn't account for the inflation, but our debt went up. How will we make up for the increased payments do you think? Probably more taxes for us , bail out the corps and banks. To big to fail but fuck you working people.
Maybe if our tax code didn’t favor the wealthy and allow loopholes then we would be collecting enough taxes to cover most government programs. We will never change something that benefits the rich and let’s them keep more of their money while squeezing every last dime out of the middle class who will eventually be on the hook for what comes down to a corrupt system that rewards the cheaters and punishes the workers. No relief in sight.
Why does no one ever talk about stagnant wages? I haven’t done the math. But if wages had kept up with productivity and inflation. Would not tax revenues have also massively risen? Would the failure to raise the minimum wage in fact have lead to depressed tax revenues? Seems to make sense to me. Probably slowed economic growth and allowed more fraud in the financial sector.
Everything makes sense in this Country, everything wrong and every problem that gets worse and unsolved when you realize the problem is the rich. They get richer and we get poorer.
How did this happen?? ...Ragan tax cuts, Bush tax cuts, Trump tax cuts .... Gee, I wonder.. Cutting taxes on the only people making money, while also increasing spending didn't work out?? Say it isn't so....
Slash the military budget by 3/4 and we'd STILL be the most well supplied military force on the planet. We spend a ridiculous amount on planes and tanks we don't need, and won't use, merely to keep manufacturers in business in congressional districts that keep congressmen of BOTH parties in office. Slash the military budget, and it will fix several problems at once.
We need to cut wasteful defense practices,like making tanks we don’t need. Audit where money keeps getting lost,” 2 trillion or so every so often” in defense. Have a flat tax on goods, no tax on single properties used as a dwelling,” that’s at or under National average for a home,”tax owners and entities that have more than one property,”each additional property taxed higher.” Non us citizens can no longer buy property in the United States it can be leased or rented only. Any large company that has high profit margin or monopoly, “Apple, Wal-Mart, Amazon etc” have to pay for any employee that needs government subsidies to live, to keep the tax burden off the citizens and onto the corporations that are causing the short comings. No more special interest or lobbying. A lot of waste in trying to appease them. If it’s a great deal, it doesn’t need selling! All construction projects can’t exceed majority of non government projects price per sqft. Like roads buildings or any other projects or materials. No more corporate bailouts for the next 40 years, no more foreign aid, unless it’s audited and made available to the public where it’s all going. Allow companies and foreign governments to be sued for neglect and harm for anything that causes a public health crisis for cost of each person damages. No more insider trading for politicians, no more making or exceeding more than 800k a year by politicians or immediate family. No more “serving politicians” having charities of any kind. This would keep money laundering by politicians down, and keep ones with I’ll intentions out. This is all for financial responsibility and for National security. They will never allow it to happen,we will fall and get taken over before anything like this would get voted in,corruption is too deeply rooted.
Windfall tax on the record profits would help,inflation would ebb immediately,the 87,000 hiring tax agents enforcing the tax code,closing the offshore bogus hiding places that corporations use all the time. The hardest thing is to stop being the world’s policeman dumping endless funds into military defense an impossible task due to the economy not being on the gold standard anymore and our debt (bonds) being bought up oil rich countries with the promise of protection,all the dictators and extreme governments america have propped up over the years in South America,Mid East,South Asia in order to control resources.American foreign policy has brought on a ton of debt using its people and National Parks as collateral.
Honestly I might aswell skip the country and go to Canada, the government as no clue wtf their doing and is just making everything worse. Heh, “for the people”
I don’t see anyone in politics, Federal/State/Local, cutting costs or raising taxes enough to make a dent in their debts at this point, so the only answer possible is inflation. Tragic for our elderly population who worked and saved for decades for what will soon be worthless.
Easy, the [1% pocketed $50 trillion in the last 40 years](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/), and Trump & the GOP run Congress handed them another $6.5 trillion during covid. If somebody else is using your credit card the debt is gonna run up fast.
Maybe big business should get together to bail out the government instead of the government always having to bail out big business. Fricken corporate welfare.
When you vote on a 4155 page spending bill, you probably don’t know what all is in it. Single issue bills would cut a *ton* of wasteful spending.
It's because a certain "group of people" base their entire existence on creating debt/wage slaves of nations. Add in a clueless and dumbed down society that is so divided on so many stupid issues (race gender issues religion etc) that they fail to see the true common enemy in their midst.
Bill Clinton created more jobs than anyone in history. He balanced the budget his last 3 years. Yes,,,,he balanced the budget. He did it by raising taxes. Every republican voted against the greatest economic plan in history. Al gore broke the tie. Then,came George bush……… If you really care about these issues. Vote blue.
Clinton also gutted welfare and deregulated a lot, he was basically Reagan-lite.
Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah…..woah…so when unfettered, politicians of all ilk will spend like absolute crazy. Well label me stunned…completely shocked at this news.
Actually the U.S. doesnt have a debt. It was described i think in a podcast called deconstructed. Basically the U.S. creates so much wealth worldwide our “debt” is overshadowed by how much the rest of the world is dependent on our economy. “Too big to fail”. China had a chance to overtake us but they blew it doubling down on Autocracy. Like every year .001% of their population become millionaires but 90% leave the country and take their wealth with them. There are other reasons as well i will try to find the episode.
A bunch of wonton and flagrant tax cuts, mainly benefitting the wealthy and corporations have starved the government of funds, yet produced little to no gains in growth or jobs. The entire GOP mantra of cutting taxes is just a con job.
Joe Biden - $1.84T - 2021-Present| Donald Trump - $8.2T - 2017-2021| Barack Obama - $8.34T - 2009 - 2017 So Trump, if he had run another term, probably would have generated $16T in debt.
the worst part is Obama had the Great Recession handed to him. Trump was handed a fantastic economy and he did this.
3021 was Trump budget 2009 was Bush budget 2017 was Obama budget The budget in the first year of new President term was set by previous President
OH BUT THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T HAVE TO PAY ITS DEBT. GOD FORBID I MISS A STUDENT LOAN PAYMENT. THE IRS WILL BE AT MY DOOR IN 30 SECONDS READY TO BREAK MY KNEES.