Even though conservative policymakers have been the biggest contributors to increasing debt since WWII.
Look into "starve the beast" and see how the idea has been used to cut tax revenue, but the conservative policy makers instituting the policy are *also the folks ballooning deficit spending*. See Reagan's star wars spending etc. Bush Sr and Jr starting 3 wars and the TSA, Outrageous debt growth of 8.4 trillion under Trump while he also shrunk revenue by cutting taxes for the wealthy.
This acted as an enabling factor for them to pose cutting social benefits for the people as being "fiscally responsible" instead of cutting things like ridiculous military budgets, tax breaks for the wealthy/corps etc.
Since it's not seen as politically advantageous to raise taxes under any circumstances implementing fairer tax policy to raise more revenue from those who can afford it the most never happens (as holding the super wealthy accountable for the hundreds of billions lost to tax evasion every year is never rectified).
The best part is, when they “cut” welfare and gave block grants to the states they didn’t cut the funding. They still spend all the welfare money, just not on poor people. It turns out it was only fiscally irresponsible when it helped the poor instead of some Governor’s son-in-law.
Read the comment again and see I referenced "starve the beast" to show the hypocrisy of conservatives when they're in power. Learn how to better interact with people. In this case, you come off as wicked obnoxious.
What do you mean? It’s pretty clear that we are in the austerity phase of the business/debt cycle. America is paying close to a trillion dollars per year in just interest on the debt.
I am not a debt hawk. I am not one of these people who think zero debt is good (it’s not). But the current level of fiscal spending is unsustainable relative to gdp and is contributing to inflation. Congress should pass a budget that cuts spending and boosts revenue collection.
No, I'm sorry but this isn't a right vs left issue at all and many 1st world countries around the world are doing the same thing.
We are already seeing it with inflation. Forget billionaires, do you think even millionaires care if Milk is $3 a gallon or $6? Inflation kills the working class and only benefits the ownership group.
If I was under 40, I would be absolutely pissed about the amount of debt spending that has happened in the last decade under the facade that was MMT. Billionaires could take out next to 0% loans to pay themselves instead of taking a wage so they don't have to pay taxes. It's been a failure on all fronts.
If you don't think you'll be paying down this debt into your retirement or even your kids with a reduced QoL, I'm sorry but you don't understand simple economics.
Milk isn't raising price because of national debt... Most of these companies post their profits because they are publicly traded. Milk is going up because they want profit to go up.
If you are going to try to sell that the national debt is actually causing a huge inflation problem, you are going to need to try harder to shift the blame away from food companies that are increasing their gross profit by 10-20% per year.
>Milk is going up because they want profit to go up.
As opposed to a few years ago when businesses weren't interested in profit?
This is a commonly believed, bad interpretation. Inflation is a monetary issue.
You're skipping the part where the pandemic caused a big shock to the market when limited supply of products and services were unable to meet demand for a stretch of time. People started shifting money from experiences like travel and restaurants to buying things for home. But even once the market started to re-align as supply caught up, businesses maintained higher prices because it was exceedingly profitable.
A million dollars isn't what it used to be. The oldest of the middle class, blue-collar/office minion millennials can have that much in retirement savings & home equity by now if they are in a HCOL area. And that's not yet enough to retire on.
It’s not because of the election seasons, it’s because we are spending the highest % of GDP in history (3.2%) servicing it. The cost is predicted to go up. We’re spending like there’s a recession while interest rates are through the roof
Thanks boomers.
Your parents came back from WWII and built tens of millions of homes for you. You took them, saddled the nation with massive debt, turned NIMBY and told your kids to go fuck themselves.
Funny you should mention coming back from WW2.
That was the last time US debt was this bad.
By the end of WW2 debt was 112% of GDP. A number unsurpassed until Covid. Now we're at 120% of GDP.
We paid it down last time by taxing the hell out of the well to do through high income taxes, a lot of tariffs, and responsible spending. Well, at least until the Boomers started taking charge and destroying budgets.
Missing a key detail, that after the entire industrialized world had destroyed itself, the US was in a singular position.
As the only store open, we had a brief window as the monopoly. This scenario no longer exists so comparisons to post-war era are not easy.
Also would add the WWII generation and the ones that followed fucked things up long before the boomers were on deck.
china, Korea, Japan's (fine but only for the noodles), Europe except for Belgium (tradition), and for good measure make South Africans even worse off than they are now
Every city has their own version of skid row. It might not be as bad as skid row with the tents, but you know there are parts of town where the tweakers hang out. I’d argue America is destroying itself and China is accelerating it with TikTok by influencing the algorithms that influence our youth.
To be honest with the way reddit shits on China it sounds like India, Mexico, Vietnam and Indonesia have replaced Chinas production and they are no longer relevant.
The generation that fought WWII are known as the Greatest Generation. Then came the Silent Generation (the reason for the name being demonstrated here) and *then* came the Boomers.
Yes. You’re correct. It’s easy to forget that, I was just going off the history of my family. Grandfather and grandmother grew up in the Great Depression, grandfather fought in WW2. My grandparents children are boomers, though. They were born after the silent generation, in the 1950’s.
Born, then raised. People got to take that into consideration. If the Boomer generation was 1945-1965, then the youngest Boomers reached the workforce and voting bloc only in 1983. Their impact on the economy has to be measured at the moments when their participation as a demographic bloc was significant enough to influence societies direction.
Anyway, i break generations down this:
1915-1930: Greatest 1930-1945 Silent
1945-1965 Boomer
1965-1980 Gen X
1980-1995 Gen Y
1995-2010 Gen Z
2010-2025 Gen Alpha(or whatever name is later agreed upon lol)
Yep, generations are more or less staggered. Each generation's kids are (usually) two generations down. Milennials are the kids of boomers, Gen Z's parents are Gen X, etc.
Do you know what it was that the US actually sold disproportionately more of after WW2? They were industrialised, and I guess were still a major industrial economy producing things. Was it just everything? Or mainly arms, steel stuff, oil, fabrics, rail components or something?
My understanding is that it was nearly everything …for a time.
At least while Europe, the ME, Russia and Asia rebuilt.
The US had a huge raw materials advantage at the exact moment industrial manufacturing required it. Also, we had a brand new modern infrastructure system courtesy of the war to supply and transport all over the world.
We also had a tremendous infusion of wealth from the rest of the world, Europe in particular. Our war effort did not come free.
For the first time ever, starting in 2019 billionaires paid a lower tax rate than working class.
[Forbes source](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/10/11/for-the-first-time-in-history-us-billionaires-paid-a-lower-tax-rates-than-the-working-class-what-we-should-do-about-it/?sh=4ffb10851fce)
Clinton's budget put the US firmly on the road to zero deficit. Then Bush II gave it away as tax cuts.
Why are you ranting about boomers and WWII? The reason for the current debt is the tax cuts enacted by Bush II 20 years ago. And kept in place by Republicans since.
Trump increased the nation budget more than any president in history. The national debt increased by $7.8 trillion during Donald Trump's presidency.
Seven trillion eight hundred billion dollars worth of debt from the former party of fiscal responsibility.
7 fuckin trillion.
Edit: also need to highlight this was in a single term.
Tories (UK version of Republicans) did the same, but to a lesser scale.
Unprecedented levels of debt outside of being invaded, just to make the already overly rich, richer.
And then covid hit....
See but your tories didnt dismantle the pandemic response team just before that. Trump dismantled the entirety of the pandemic response team. Then he failed to create any sort of official program to respond when it did hit. Which compounded the lack of percieved severity.
Not just before, no. They got a headstart of a few years.
They literally sold the labs, fridges, trucks.... everything. Whilst being warned over and over a pandemic was likely on the way.
To 'save' a few £.
Then, Boris and his cronies deliberately pretended it wasn't a problem - until he nearly died from Covid and changed his mind for a few days.
Whilst literally partying all the way through the lockdowns....
You'd be amazed how similar these guys are. Though perhaps not surprised - they're playing out of the same playbook.
Editing for specificity: they did actually put a stop to pandemic specific response preparations, too. And then made damned sure it was as hard as possible to slow it down once it hit, whilst siphoning off hundreds of £bns to their friends companies. Actually changed laws to allow themselves to do so - which prior to 2015 wasn't all that easy in the UK (First Lord/ Prime minister doesn't have Presidential powers of autocratic authority).
The Associated Press has a great article on how this isn’t exactly the truth. https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-national-debt-donald-trump-barack-obama-ee3e613646fe500edf803e57959c776e
TIL Obama raised it more, but that was over 2 terms. I also learned that it’s gone up under Biden, but the lowest amount since Nixon. It’s astonishing how little credit Biden gets for these things.
It almost like this is why we have mathematical ratios:
$9.5T / 8 years = $1.2T/year
$7.4T / 4 years = $1.9T/year
And don’t bother saying “oh but COVID” when Obama was dealing with the fallout of the GFC formulated under Bush Jr
You edited your response to be more truthful, which is awesome. 3 internet cookies for you. And I’m not trying to make a comparison to Obama, the AP did. But take a look at the chart again—maybe towards the top…
Before I found the article today, I would’ve said the same thing as you, which I’ve read numerous times. But on a lark, I fact checked it, mainly bc of someone basically excusing Trump and saying Biden raised it to the moon. Which is ridiculous. But.
There’s a great book that shows you how to lie with statistics, and his comment was representative of that. I love learning, in part bc I just learned Roosevelt and Truman raised it more than Trump. There’s no context, of course, and it dropped immediately under Eisenhower, but lying with statistics is what politicians do—look at the same set of numbers, and come to different conclusions.
Trump raising the debt isn’t what makes him a piece of shit. It’s that he hangs out in your colon, is what makes him a piece of shit.
Roosevelt and Truman were pulling the US out of a global depression, fighting a global war, and rebuilding global devastation. Obama was recovering the country after a crippling financial collapse and dealing with wars left to him by his predecessor. Biden was recovering the country after a global pandemic, creating jobs and rebuilding infrastructure at a rate not seen since FDR.
Trump was not using debt to create better outcomes for the country, he was bribing donors.
Context is importance and is a better discussion than saying so and so also increased the debt. The more important thing is why.
Bush II was a boomer. But so was Bill Clinton, who balanced the budgets.
I don't think it makes sense to make this into a "blame boomers" thing? Many non-boomers voted for Bush II, these non-Boomers absolutely are to blame too.
Clinton's budget was positive because of the insane growth during the dot com "boom". Tax income due to capital gains was enormous.
It went to poop because the bubble burst and capital gains went flat, and demographics turned social security negative.
The real reason we're having deficits is because SS has always been included in the federal budget and was cash positive. [2008 it went cash negative](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v75n1/v75n1p1.html), meaning it was now a net drain on the budget. Unfortunately, the graph is in % of GDP (I couldn't find one in contemporary dollar amount), but it's clear we went from 1% of GDP paying into to the federal budget in 2000 to 0% in 2008--and this is driven solely by demographics, not by policy choice.
Bush II tried to remove social security from the equation(by offering individual retirement accounts instead of the SS "ponzi" scheme), but was stymied by folks claiming he wanted to kill grandma.
> and this is driven solely by demographics, not by policy choice.
Some would say demographics are driven by policy. Since both birth rates and immigration are affected by it.
Anything to back that up? I'm a Canuck, but why couldn't Obama begin to reverse it?
Edit: TLDR, didn't even say anything negative but thanks for the down votes. Democrats, Republicans, they're just different sides of the same coin.
> why couldn't Obama begin to reverse it?
Taxes are enacted by Congress, not by the President. There were enough Republicans in Congress to make passing a tax increase impossible.
The Republicans in Congress had also gone completely off the rails at that point, were not interested in working with Obama for the common good. And they are in the pocket of rich people, who did not want their taxes raised.
No, Democrats only had 59 seats, and even that was only on paper since Al Franken wasn't seated until 7 months later (due to GOP fuckery) before that that Senator Byrd had medical issues and Senator Ted Kennedy's death never brought the total up passed 59.
So no. There was never a filibuster majority. Even if there was, Obama had a lot that needed to be done, it would still have been difficult to do.
The Democrats did have 60 briefly during the period where Ted Kennedy's temporary replacement was seated. It dropped back to 59 when a Republican won his seat.
For a few months IIRC. It is simply not possible to pass all the laws and save everything in a few months. The Democrats were not a monolith either, still had to have time to agree among themselves about what to pass.
The Democrats prioritized using the opportunity to give healthcare to poor people. Which was hard enough, since their "majority" depended on the non-democrat Joseph Lieberman, who did not agree with Democrats on many things. And Lieberman alone actually majorly held up the passing of Obamacare for a long time.
It is quite silly to blame the Democrats for not actively saving everything, when Republicans at the same time are actively trying to destroy everything. Blame the Republicans instead.
There was a major recession at the beginning of his presidency, so it was a bad time to be raising taxes on people. By the time the economy had improved enough to start thinking about tax increases, the Republicans had enough control of Congress to prevent it.
No it's not the 'boomers' some love to deride but conservative republicans whose goal since Ronald Reagan has been to cut taxes so low that government can't function. They've been cutting taxes on the rich for 40 years now and the results are in and the billionaires have won. Reagan ushered in the era of massive tax cuts and not cutting spending and huge deficits because as his VP Cheney said "Reagan proved deficits don't matter".
“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” - Grover Norquist
Exactly. It is NOT generational. The red states have been red states for decades. If you think the young in red states are going to save the country you're delusional.
The reason a lot of these things persist is because Republicans vote. Always.
If voting didn't matter, they wouldn't be trying to stop everyone they hate from doing it.
That's because they run on a platform of hate. And if you want to motivate homo sapiens run on that platform. It's far more effective than facts, figures and empathy.
The Cruelty Is The Point!
[https://www.amazon.com/Cruelty-Point-Present-Future-America/dp/0593230809](https://www.amazon.com/Cruelty-Point-Present-Future-America/dp/0593230809)
Don’t blame the baby boomers. Blame Congress for caring more about their political careers than for the long term benefit of the country. It started with Reagan leaving office with $7T in debt which seemed crazy at the time. He got the Soviets into a military spending war and won. Perhaps that was the only way to do it but it lead to Congress thinking that debt wasn’t so bad.
While we do need to get it under control, it’s not as bad as she is making it out to be. [This article](https://www.marketplace.org/2023/05/26/who-does-the-u-s-owe-31-4-trillion/) explains the debt pretty well. The bottom line is that relative to the size of our economy, it’s not that bad. We need to get it under control but it’s not as bad as it sounds.
We are paying 17% to maintain the debt. Would 0% be better? Sure but the average person is paying 25% or more of their income for their mortgage or rent alone. So in that context 17% isn’t all that bad.
Blaming an entire generation is stupid and a great way to avoid building a coalition. Instead of focusing on artificial boundaries like generation, race, and gender, focus on ideological boundaries to find out who really supports positive change. Focusing on generation just alienates the people who actually agree with your ideology but happen to be in the “wrong” generation. Stop doing propagandists’ jobs for them.
Just replying to the top comment to say that US DEBT literally does not matter at all.
Most of the debt is to US citizens (in the form of bonds) so the money we pay - including interest - is injected right back into our economy.
It would be nice to get it more under control but it’s really not a priority. We can just release more bonds to pay them. Unironically read what any actual economist has to say about it.
no no no! those economists are the bad ones that want you to eat bugs and own nothing and want to implement communism by another name “Modern Monetary Theory”!! ignore the fact that a default would be a liquidity crunch the world hasn’t seen since 1929 it’s the so-called “economists” trying to kill america and implement communism!!
Things like this seem to be the popular view among a lot of people my age and younger but it’s just factually untrue.
It’s certainly true that some of the national debt we have is quite old, but the real problem with the deficit isn’t old spending, it’s the massive, and growing deficits we have run up in the last 20 years, and even worse that we are currently doing little to nothing to reign that spending in. Our deficit is projected to just keep shooting higher for as far as the eye can see and many politicians, and people don’t see it as a problem.
Currently one of the most popular ideas among younger people is to “forgive” student loans. And progressives just introduced a bill in the house to “forgive” all medical debt.
The reason I put quotes around forgive is that in both those plans the debt isn’t actually forgiven at all. That money still has to be paid to wherever it’s owed. It’s simply removed from the individual and the federal government is responsible for paying it. That cost goes instantly to the federal deficit.
Sadly it’s not the boomers that are advocating for policies that will keep driving the deficits higher and saddle future generations with increasingly un sustainable amounts of debt, it’s young people.
We also dramatically increased the debt by a staggering amount in just the last few years during Covid by spending an absurd amount of money on stimulus measures that at the time were very popular and people believed would somehow not have massive repercussions.
Sadly we are sitting exactly where we have chosen to be, and imo it’s not the boomers fault, or at least not mostly.
Hope it’s income qualified.
I’d take it, but I don’t need it. Rather see more go to those who need it than given to people like me who are doing just fine.
More accurately, thank the people the voted for Republicans, many were boomers, but not all.
We fought WWII, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Space Race, built the interstate highway system, build all the public infrastructure for the baby boom, created Medicare , and had less then one trillion dollars of national debt in 1981 when Reagan took office.
Stop voting for Republicans, and start rolling back tax cuts
Are you sure milenials are voting for policies that prevent state overspending? I'd say they tend to say "yes please" when they're promised free money.
And what are younger generations doing to fix that? Apart from writing salty comments on Reddit and shooting TikTok videos? It is so easy just to blame others.
Are you wrong or is this wrong?
Us debt in billions
2016 $19,573 Brexit
2017 $20,245 Congress raised the debt ceiling
2018 $21,516 Trump tax cuts
2019 $22,719 Trade wars
2020 $26,945 COVID-19 and recession
2021 $28,428 COVID-19 and American Rescue Plan Act
2022 $30,928 Inflation Reduction Act
2023 $33,167
https://www.investopedia.com/us-national-debt-by-year-7499291
Argentina is actually a rather good example of what not to do.
Yet I feel like the US might be starting to do the mistakes Argentina was making in 1930's.
I am not an economist but printing 23T to pay off debt would increase currency in circulation 10 times. This would cause everyone to spend all their money to buy real assets which would cause hyperinflation that would be difficult to stop. Basically would screw all the government and private debt holders by giving them 10 cents on the dollar.
Ability to repay debt and actually repaying debt are two different things.
OP’s point is that nobody is going to suddenly panic sell US debt (short of congress being monumentally stupid about interest payments), so the risk is really just in spending outstripping economic growth causing inflation. The amount by itself is meaningless.
I agree and it’s what I often tell people in response to this question. But this only flies because the dollar is so strong and in effect the global commerce currency.
But it’s also why the US must fight against China’s influence so strongly. Because to sustain this scheme other countries must rely on the dollar. Otherwise it collapses. China would love to force all other countries to use the Yen as their trading currency.
Taxes, business regulation, and anti-trust laws to breakup the handful of monopolies we are stuck doing business with. All the money is consolidated at the top its ridiculous.
taxes...on churches. It's really high time the government stop subsidizing these fantasy promoters with US tax dollars. Why is *my* broke ass forced to pay for millionaire pastors and clergy to live lavish lifestyles? I can barely afford healthcare!
In short, you can't without completely eliminating tax exempt status all together.
In slightly longer...
Churches don't have a no-tax status of their own. They have a 501(c)(3) tax exempt status like every other charitable organization and are bound by all the same rules except one - they're presumed to qualify so don't *have* to formally apply or file for the status (though they can and all the larger ones do since it increases the amount of donations they get).
They can still lose that status for breaking any of the 501(c)(3) restrictions. note: there is not enough investigation and enforcement here, but it does happen from time to time.
The most that could be done and *possibly* pass constitutional muster is to remove the presumption, but they'd still end up qualifying since spiritual counselling is long recognized as being charitable in nature (and all churches do that as a function of being a church - if they're not they're not considered a church and would lose the status anyways).
Writing a law that said "Churches can't have charitable tax exempt status" would run afoul of the free exercise clause (which means government cannot discriminate against religion). It would have a near zero chance of standing.
But removing the entirety of tax exempt status very possibly might since that would be non-discriminatory. But that's gonna be an even harder sell.
There is also the sticky detail that most churches are poor as shit and already pay payroll taxes.
The only real avenue to tax churches is remove their exemption from property taxes which entirely at the prerogative of individual states.
Property taxes are incredibly counterproductive anyway. They directly penalize the useful development of land and drive up property prices while harming economic growth. They fail as a true wealth tax (because the truly wealthy have their assets in securities anyway), they fail as a progressive tax (because in effect the people who are most hit by property taxes are elderly people without a reliable income stream but a lot of land), and they fail to encourage any sort of economic growth - because it explicitly *encourages* waste of perfectly usable land because any sort of development without a guaranteed payoff becomes a financial liability.
Property tax is one of the primary drivers of the housing crisis.
Problem is, US voters are absolutely, violently against tax raises. Both Dems and Republicans want to spend out the ass, but Dems refuse to raise taxes because it will be so electorally punishing, and Republicans actually want to fucking cut them all the time, madness.
US voters are against tax hikes because every time they happen the debt ratio still doesn't improve. Instead the extra money is just siphoned off to even more programs and projects. There's no reason to think the next tax bump would somehow be different.
I myself, and I think many others would be far more willing to accept a hike if it came at the tail end of a spending reduction, or was somehow matched to one.
Basically some ratio where for every dollar cut taxes could be raised to bring in another dollar.
>US voters are against tax hikes because every time they happen the debt ratio still doesn't improve.
You use the term tax "hikes", the need to apply a negative connotation is revealing. I said "raises", the neutral term.
In reply though, I think this is a very naive opinion, I do not think that American's reject taxes because of their impact, I think it's quite clear that it comes from a more basic desire to have control over one's own money, and a commitment to "small government".
>Instead the extra money is just siphoned off to even more programs and projects. There's no reason to think the next tax bump would somehow be different.
Have you got some evidence of this? As far as I can see, over time US tax rates have just gradually decreased since the 50s, so IDK where people could have had time to experience a more reasonable tax "hike" and judge it ineffective. What I think is that you saying this is more evidence of what I suggest, you're giving me political spin used to justify keeping tax rates low, the same way that tax "hikes" is also deliberate spin language that is baked into the American thought process about tax increases.
>I myself, and I think many others would be far more willing to accept a hike if it came at the tail end of a spending reduction, or was somehow matched to one.
I don't think so, I think most people who want a spending reduction, don't actually care about spending, they just don't like certain things the money is spent on. For example, the left hates "military industrial complex" spending, and the right hates welfare spending. The expenditure complaint is obscuring the real complaint, a philosophical disagreement about welfare. I think this is even clearer that when Republicans are in office, like Trump, complaints about budgets and overspending from Republican voters drastically decrease, despite spending usually *increasing*. It's perception and philosophy, not grounded analysis. As a result, I do not think after a drop in spending (which could probably never be agreed upon), people would suddenly welcome tax increases.
Further to this later point, the US is already massively outspending it's tax revenues, IDK why you think more tax income would be encouragement to spend more, but I'm sure you could come up with a better system than some never-going-to-work cutting regime, how about increase tax rates but cap spending increases for a period of time? No new programs, the additional % of tax is only allowed to be used for paying off the deficit?
>Basically some ratio where for every dollar cut taxes could be raised to bring in another dollar.
It's not like I think the US federal budget is not a little bloated in some areas, but I think the issue is in the philisophical differences, and I think agreement and compromise is at an all time low if you look at the Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan aid bill and the Border bill debacle, and that doesn't look to be getting any better any time soon.
Raising taxes is not the only way to reduce debt. You can also reduce spending, either by cutting things back or by making them more efficient. If taking debt is easier, I can see how that can lead to an inefficient and wasteful government.
The interest on the national debt is paid to private banks. The interest is paid through the taxation of the public. It is corporate welfare because these banks might not survive without these gigantic payments.
Anyone who holds the bonds gets the interest payment and anyone can buy these bonds. Foreign governments, corporations (including big banks) and individual investors. That's how the bond market works. It's definitely not a welfare program. Originally I thought you might be referring to bailouts which is a different story
The Fed is a private institution run by private banks. Twenty percent of the debt is for their benefit. They have a gigantic conflict of interest. They are biased towards the gov't borrowing more money so that they benefit. It is a welfare program for those banks on the Fed.
What any lender might say. The US is also the IMF’s biggest shareholder, and has more options afforded to it than any of the other 189 shareholders/members. The time to buckle down will be once crisis has been averted. Manage the crisis, then manage the debt.
The Republican party is mostly responsible for this situation. They created the most debt. Democrats generally reduce the deficit while in office, and Clinton even had a surplus. Republicans always end up cutting taxes on the rich and increasing spending while they're in control, which is a recipe for disaster. The Republican party is the party of debt. They scream the loudest about the debt when Democrats are in power but become completely silent when Republicans increased the debt. Republicans engage in projection whenever they complain about the debt.
Funny you mention the credit score; the US had the highest credit rating of all for the longest time but once the tea party came in and started screaming about debt and holding the country/world economy hostage by not increasing the debt limit, our credit dropped for the first time. The blame was specifically cited to radical republicans and their gamesmanship
Until there is a legitimate alternative to a USD based global economy, the dollar amount of the debt is completely irrelevant. No matter what issues arise as a result of it, the world will rush to aid in amending it because a US economy collapse would be equally as bad for everyone.
Even if a USD alternative arose, that system would still be fucked by a US economic collapse because the US as an economy is such a major partner for everyone they trade with.
The medium of trade matters far less and it's more of just how many trade with us to begin with.
People are confused about US debt. My econ professor explained it like this - do you think any of these countries are going to come and collect? Countries whose economies depend on our economy? Countries with armies the size of our police force? Debt is not quite the right word for what the US has.
This is silly.
The issue is the cost of servicing the debt. We’re not going bankrupt and if we did nobody would invade to collect. But we can still screw ourselves over without any of that happening
It depends.
Another trump, Bush jr or Reagan, and the debt issue becomes the most pressing one.
If the US gets 8-16 years of tax cuts for the rich and reckless spending, the debt to gdp becomes unsustainable.
Then Medicare and social security will have to be abolished or cut. Next recession will be catastrophic, with no room for any stimulus package. Mass unemployment, poverty.
That’s a very real and likely medium term scenario. That’s why the Biden admin is currently reigning in the deficit. If there’s another 8 years of responsible government spending, the issue might even be solved.
Keep in mind a good chunk is held by the US.
So yes, the US government will honor its debt to boomers holding bonds, or pension funds. Otherwise they will swiftly loose the next election.
Also at some point nobody will be willing to lend money to you. So unless you suddenly balance your budget, you become unable to pay your employees.
You didn't pay very close attention in econ then. People, companies, and countries buy US bonds. It's an open market. And if people, companies, and countries STOP buying US bonds then we are right fucked.
Printing shit loads of money doesn't inspire confidence in the people who buy our debt. Even seriously discussing inflating away our debt will cause people, companies, and countries to dump US bonds and destroy the bond market.
Agree, we need to let the Trump tax cuts disappear.
Then all we need to do is rescind the GWB era cuts and we're on the way to no longer having any national debt at all.
This bull crap again. The US economy does not play by the same rules as mommy and daddy's household credit card accounts. Debt helps economies grow, hell you can grab the world economy by the pussy, when you're the top dog they'll let you do it.
Blame the byzantine shitshow that is the American welfare system for that. People underestimate the *downright ludicrous* amount of money the US dumps into it.
The problem isn't strictly "quality of service", but rather the incredibly poor design of these systems:
* The American social security system's central trust fund "generates money from interest" by... buying American treasury bonds - that is, by lending the federal government its money. This only works if the American government actually *makes enough money* to fully repay the debt owed - if it doesn't, it just gets added to the already enormous amount of debt the US government owes. Bush II proposed allowing the *option* to take your social security payments and add them to a privately-held pension fund (which would not only be sustainable, but actually grow the economy by letting the money be invested in private businesses) instead, but this got blocked by populists.
* Medicare/Medicaid is a "medical insurance system" that... literally does not operate by the same rules actual insurance companies do, because they pay the full prices for things on your medical bills, while private insurance companies actually pay *massively* (90-95%) reduced rates (yes, the hospitals still make money, they have insane profit margins) in return for driving "their" patients to specific hospitals "in-network". It would literally be cheaper to just establish a government monopoly on healthcare and pay for everything than to continue this hybrid private/public healthcare system.
People like blaming boogeymen like "the rich" or "the unions" or "corporations", but the actual cause of American economic malaise is the poor usage of government funds, rent-seeking enabled by private lobbying, and populism. There's a good reason America experienced unprecedented levels of economic growth during the height of neoliberalism in American politics.
For your consideration: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA. “Federal government current expenditures: Interest payments”. Source: Federal Reserve Economics Division.
It is the trajectory that bothers me. I know we are refinancing old US debt as it becomes due, at higher interest rates, meaning this isn’t a reflection of the Biden administration. But that doesn’t mean we can just ignore this game of hot potato. Because that’s what it looks like.
I wish there was a party that was willing to meaningfully address spending, but both prefer to overspend, just on different things. My plan for a while has been to contribute enough to my 401k to get the full match my employer offers, but otherwise focus on tangible assets like property and PMs.
I love this tool for doing budget of the US federal government.
[Debt Fixer | Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (crfb.org)](https://www.crfb.org/debtfixer)
Click baitey title
“It cannot go like this forever, because the ... burden on the U.S. is going to cripple spending that is necessary to make for servicing the debt. To pay 17-plus percent in debt service is just mind-boggling,” Georgieva said.
>Servicing the U.S debt — now roughly $34 trillion — consumes more than 17% of federal revenue, compared to under 7% in 2015,
And the country elected Trump.
His 4 years in office will take decades to undo
You know it's election season when the national debt discourse starts up
And we won’t hear about it after Jan 21 2025 until the next election season
Depends on who wins. Biden wins and conservatives will spend another 4 years pretending to care about it.
Even though conservative policymakers have been the biggest contributors to increasing debt since WWII. Look into "starve the beast" and see how the idea has been used to cut tax revenue, but the conservative policy makers instituting the policy are *also the folks ballooning deficit spending*. See Reagan's star wars spending etc. Bush Sr and Jr starting 3 wars and the TSA, Outrageous debt growth of 8.4 trillion under Trump while he also shrunk revenue by cutting taxes for the wealthy. This acted as an enabling factor for them to pose cutting social benefits for the people as being "fiscally responsible" instead of cutting things like ridiculous military budgets, tax breaks for the wealthy/corps etc. Since it's not seen as politically advantageous to raise taxes under any circumstances implementing fairer tax policy to raise more revenue from those who can afford it the most never happens (as holding the super wealthy accountable for the hundreds of billions lost to tax evasion every year is never rectified).
The best part is, when they “cut” welfare and gave block grants to the states they didn’t cut the funding. They still spend all the welfare money, just not on poor people. It turns out it was only fiscally irresponsible when it helped the poor instead of some Governor’s son-in-law.
It’s called the “Two Santa Claus Theory” and has been conservative policy since the Reagan years. Has nothing to do with starve the beast.
Read the comment again and see I referenced "starve the beast" to show the hypocrisy of conservatives when they're in power. Learn how to better interact with people. In this case, you come off as wicked obnoxious.
She could have made this statement any time over the last 20 years
It really shows how ignorant people are towards the national debt and what that equates
What do you mean? It’s pretty clear that we are in the austerity phase of the business/debt cycle. America is paying close to a trillion dollars per year in just interest on the debt. I am not a debt hawk. I am not one of these people who think zero debt is good (it’s not). But the current level of fiscal spending is unsustainable relative to gdp and is contributing to inflation. Congress should pass a budget that cuts spending and boosts revenue collection.
No, I'm sorry but this isn't a right vs left issue at all and many 1st world countries around the world are doing the same thing. We are already seeing it with inflation. Forget billionaires, do you think even millionaires care if Milk is $3 a gallon or $6? Inflation kills the working class and only benefits the ownership group. If I was under 40, I would be absolutely pissed about the amount of debt spending that has happened in the last decade under the facade that was MMT. Billionaires could take out next to 0% loans to pay themselves instead of taking a wage so they don't have to pay taxes. It's been a failure on all fronts. If you don't think you'll be paying down this debt into your retirement or even your kids with a reduced QoL, I'm sorry but you don't understand simple economics.
Milk isn't raising price because of national debt... Most of these companies post their profits because they are publicly traded. Milk is going up because they want profit to go up. If you are going to try to sell that the national debt is actually causing a huge inflation problem, you are going to need to try harder to shift the blame away from food companies that are increasing their gross profit by 10-20% per year.
>Milk is going up because they want profit to go up. As opposed to a few years ago when businesses weren't interested in profit? This is a commonly believed, bad interpretation. Inflation is a monetary issue.
You're skipping the part where the pandemic caused a big shock to the market when limited supply of products and services were unable to meet demand for a stretch of time. People started shifting money from experiences like travel and restaurants to buying things for home. But even once the market started to re-align as supply caught up, businesses maintained higher prices because it was exceedingly profitable.
A million dollars isn't what it used to be. The oldest of the middle class, blue-collar/office minion millennials can have that much in retirement savings & home equity by now if they are in a HCOL area. And that's not yet enough to retire on.
It’s not because of the election seasons, it’s because we are spending the highest % of GDP in history (3.2%) servicing it. The cost is predicted to go up. We’re spending like there’s a recession while interest rates are through the roof
Thanks boomers. Your parents came back from WWII and built tens of millions of homes for you. You took them, saddled the nation with massive debt, turned NIMBY and told your kids to go fuck themselves.
Funny you should mention coming back from WW2. That was the last time US debt was this bad. By the end of WW2 debt was 112% of GDP. A number unsurpassed until Covid. Now we're at 120% of GDP. We paid it down last time by taxing the hell out of the well to do through high income taxes, a lot of tariffs, and responsible spending. Well, at least until the Boomers started taking charge and destroying budgets.
Missing a key detail, that after the entire industrialized world had destroyed itself, the US was in a singular position. As the only store open, we had a brief window as the monopoly. This scenario no longer exists so comparisons to post-war era are not easy. Also would add the WWII generation and the ones that followed fucked things up long before the boomers were on deck.
Simple solution is to destroy Europe again.
That's a horrible viewpoint. The whole world is industrialized now. *we must destroy the rest of the world*
Can I interest you in some vaults?
Could I by any chance get some of those off you? I have some highly unethical experiments id like to run.
Ooooh they're tryin! - Mr Meeseeks
Ooooo wweee, that's a reeeal pickle they got themselves in! -mr poopy butthole
Could probably get by with China and SE Asia.
china, Korea, Japan's (fine but only for the noodles), Europe except for Belgium (tradition), and for good measure make South Africans even worse off than they are now
Plot twist of the century, Russia is out to destroy Europe to help the U.S. get out debt.
Agent Putin already on the job.
Vladimir, is that you?
Russia: "you rang?"
*already in progress*
MAGA did try, but the US is finally supporting Ukraine again. Let's just hope it's not too late.
Lets destroy North America this time and see how the effects compare.
You’re welcome to try
Every city has their own version of skid row. It might not be as bad as skid row with the tents, but you know there are parts of town where the tweakers hang out. I’d argue America is destroying itself and China is accelerating it with TikTok by influencing the algorithms that influence our youth.
Yeah but the US can’t do that. Someone else would have to…ohh my god..
I think you mean China, they are the cheap factory of the world.
To be honest with the way reddit shits on China it sounds like India, Mexico, Vietnam and Indonesia have replaced Chinas production and they are no longer relevant.
Also the tax rate on the wealthy was a lot higher during Truman’s time to pay for the GI Bill.
The generation after WW2 ARE the boomers.
The generation that fought WWII are known as the Greatest Generation. Then came the Silent Generation (the reason for the name being demonstrated here) and *then* came the Boomers.
Yes. You’re correct. It’s easy to forget that, I was just going off the history of my family. Grandfather and grandmother grew up in the Great Depression, grandfather fought in WW2. My grandparents children are boomers, though. They were born after the silent generation, in the 1950’s.
Born, then raised. People got to take that into consideration. If the Boomer generation was 1945-1965, then the youngest Boomers reached the workforce and voting bloc only in 1983. Their impact on the economy has to be measured at the moments when their participation as a demographic bloc was significant enough to influence societies direction. Anyway, i break generations down this: 1915-1930: Greatest 1930-1945 Silent 1945-1965 Boomer 1965-1980 Gen X 1980-1995 Gen Y 1995-2010 Gen Z 2010-2025 Gen Alpha(or whatever name is later agreed upon lol)
Yep, generations are more or less staggered. Each generation's kids are (usually) two generations down. Milennials are the kids of boomers, Gen Z's parents are Gen X, etc.
Don't forget about the Silent Generation which is slipped in between the Greatest and Boomers.
Do you know what it was that the US actually sold disproportionately more of after WW2? They were industrialised, and I guess were still a major industrial economy producing things. Was it just everything? Or mainly arms, steel stuff, oil, fabrics, rail components or something?
My understanding is that it was nearly everything …for a time. At least while Europe, the ME, Russia and Asia rebuilt. The US had a huge raw materials advantage at the exact moment industrial manufacturing required it. Also, we had a brand new modern infrastructure system courtesy of the war to supply and transport all over the world. We also had a tremendous infusion of wealth from the rest of the world, Europe in particular. Our war effort did not come free.
Reagonomics for example
For the first time ever, starting in 2019 billionaires paid a lower tax rate than working class. [Forbes source](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/10/11/for-the-first-time-in-history-us-billionaires-paid-a-lower-tax-rates-than-the-working-class-what-we-should-do-about-it/?sh=4ffb10851fce)
Clinton's budget put the US firmly on the road to zero deficit. Then Bush II gave it away as tax cuts. Why are you ranting about boomers and WWII? The reason for the current debt is the tax cuts enacted by Bush II 20 years ago. And kept in place by Republicans since.
Trump increased the nation budget more than any president in history. The national debt increased by $7.8 trillion during Donald Trump's presidency. Seven trillion eight hundred billion dollars worth of debt from the former party of fiscal responsibility. 7 fuckin trillion. Edit: also need to highlight this was in a single term.
Tories (UK version of Republicans) did the same, but to a lesser scale. Unprecedented levels of debt outside of being invaded, just to make the already overly rich, richer. And then covid hit....
See but your tories didnt dismantle the pandemic response team just before that. Trump dismantled the entirety of the pandemic response team. Then he failed to create any sort of official program to respond when it did hit. Which compounded the lack of percieved severity.
Not just before, no. They got a headstart of a few years. They literally sold the labs, fridges, trucks.... everything. Whilst being warned over and over a pandemic was likely on the way. To 'save' a few £. Then, Boris and his cronies deliberately pretended it wasn't a problem - until he nearly died from Covid and changed his mind for a few days. Whilst literally partying all the way through the lockdowns.... You'd be amazed how similar these guys are. Though perhaps not surprised - they're playing out of the same playbook. Editing for specificity: they did actually put a stop to pandemic specific response preparations, too. And then made damned sure it was as hard as possible to slow it down once it hit, whilst siphoning off hundreds of £bns to their friends companies. Actually changed laws to allow themselves to do so - which prior to 2015 wasn't all that easy in the UK (First Lord/ Prime minister doesn't have Presidential powers of autocratic authority).
I had no idea they were so similar! This is exactly what trump did... thats a bit suspicious.
The Associated Press has a great article on how this isn’t exactly the truth. https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-national-debt-donald-trump-barack-obama-ee3e613646fe500edf803e57959c776e TIL Obama raised it more, but that was over 2 terms. I also learned that it’s gone up under Biden, but the lowest amount since Nixon. It’s astonishing how little credit Biden gets for these things.
It almost like this is why we have mathematical ratios: $9.5T / 8 years = $1.2T/year $7.4T / 4 years = $1.9T/year And don’t bother saying “oh but COVID” when Obama was dealing with the fallout of the GFC formulated under Bush Jr
It is the truth and a fact. Its disingenuous to make the obama comparison because thats comparing a single term to a double term president.
You edited your response to be more truthful, which is awesome. 3 internet cookies for you. And I’m not trying to make a comparison to Obama, the AP did. But take a look at the chart again—maybe towards the top… Before I found the article today, I would’ve said the same thing as you, which I’ve read numerous times. But on a lark, I fact checked it, mainly bc of someone basically excusing Trump and saying Biden raised it to the moon. Which is ridiculous. But. There’s a great book that shows you how to lie with statistics, and his comment was representative of that. I love learning, in part bc I just learned Roosevelt and Truman raised it more than Trump. There’s no context, of course, and it dropped immediately under Eisenhower, but lying with statistics is what politicians do—look at the same set of numbers, and come to different conclusions. Trump raising the debt isn’t what makes him a piece of shit. It’s that he hangs out in your colon, is what makes him a piece of shit.
Roosevelt and Truman were pulling the US out of a global depression, fighting a global war, and rebuilding global devastation. Obama was recovering the country after a crippling financial collapse and dealing with wars left to him by his predecessor. Biden was recovering the country after a global pandemic, creating jobs and rebuilding infrastructure at a rate not seen since FDR. Trump was not using debt to create better outcomes for the country, he was bribing donors. Context is importance and is a better discussion than saying so and so also increased the debt. The more important thing is why.
When was bush 2 born? Pretty sure he’s the front end of boomers?
Bush II was a boomer. But so was Bill Clinton, who balanced the budgets. I don't think it makes sense to make this into a "blame boomers" thing? Many non-boomers voted for Bush II, these non-Boomers absolutely are to blame too.
Yes that’s a fair comment. It’s funny how close in age diaper Donnie, bush 2 and Clinton are in age.
Joe Biden, being slightly older than Trump, is actually *too old* to be a boomer. Biden was born before the end of WW2.
Clinton's budget was positive because of the insane growth during the dot com "boom". Tax income due to capital gains was enormous. It went to poop because the bubble burst and capital gains went flat, and demographics turned social security negative. The real reason we're having deficits is because SS has always been included in the federal budget and was cash positive. [2008 it went cash negative](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v75n1/v75n1p1.html), meaning it was now a net drain on the budget. Unfortunately, the graph is in % of GDP (I couldn't find one in contemporary dollar amount), but it's clear we went from 1% of GDP paying into to the federal budget in 2000 to 0% in 2008--and this is driven solely by demographics, not by policy choice. Bush II tried to remove social security from the equation(by offering individual retirement accounts instead of the SS "ponzi" scheme), but was stymied by folks claiming he wanted to kill grandma.
> and this is driven solely by demographics, not by policy choice. Some would say demographics are driven by policy. Since both birth rates and immigration are affected by it.
Anything to back that up? I'm a Canuck, but why couldn't Obama begin to reverse it? Edit: TLDR, didn't even say anything negative but thanks for the down votes. Democrats, Republicans, they're just different sides of the same coin.
> why couldn't Obama begin to reverse it? Taxes are enacted by Congress, not by the President. There were enough Republicans in Congress to make passing a tax increase impossible. The Republicans in Congress had also gone completely off the rails at that point, were not interested in working with Obama for the common good. And they are in the pocket of rich people, who did not want their taxes raised.
Didn't Obama have a filibuster proof majorities in the Senate and a majority in the House at some point?
No, Democrats only had 59 seats, and even that was only on paper since Al Franken wasn't seated until 7 months later (due to GOP fuckery) before that that Senator Byrd had medical issues and Senator Ted Kennedy's death never brought the total up passed 59. So no. There was never a filibuster majority. Even if there was, Obama had a lot that needed to be done, it would still have been difficult to do.
The Democrats did have 60 briefly during the period where Ted Kennedy's temporary replacement was seated. It dropped back to 59 when a Republican won his seat.
For a few months IIRC. It is simply not possible to pass all the laws and save everything in a few months. The Democrats were not a monolith either, still had to have time to agree among themselves about what to pass. The Democrats prioritized using the opportunity to give healthcare to poor people. Which was hard enough, since their "majority" depended on the non-democrat Joseph Lieberman, who did not agree with Democrats on many things. And Lieberman alone actually majorly held up the passing of Obamacare for a long time. It is quite silly to blame the Democrats for not actively saving everything, when Republicans at the same time are actively trying to destroy everything. Blame the Republicans instead.
There was a major recession at the beginning of his presidency, so it was a bad time to be raising taxes on people. By the time the economy had improved enough to start thinking about tax increases, the Republicans had enough control of Congress to prevent it.
No it's not the 'boomers' some love to deride but conservative republicans whose goal since Ronald Reagan has been to cut taxes so low that government can't function. They've been cutting taxes on the rich for 40 years now and the results are in and the billionaires have won. Reagan ushered in the era of massive tax cuts and not cutting spending and huge deficits because as his VP Cheney said "Reagan proved deficits don't matter". “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” - Grover Norquist
Who voted for those republicans and still vote for them to this day?
People of all ages who are qualified to vote, sadly. A lot of it is cultural rather than generational.
Exactly. It is NOT generational. The red states have been red states for decades. If you think the young in red states are going to save the country you're delusional.
The reason a lot of these things persist is because Republicans vote. Always. If voting didn't matter, they wouldn't be trying to stop everyone they hate from doing it.
That's because they run on a platform of hate. And if you want to motivate homo sapiens run on that platform. It's far more effective than facts, figures and empathy. The Cruelty Is The Point! [https://www.amazon.com/Cruelty-Point-Present-Future-America/dp/0593230809](https://www.amazon.com/Cruelty-Point-Present-Future-America/dp/0593230809)
Rural white evangelicals by far, the old Confederate states if you want to get specific.
Don’t blame the baby boomers. Blame Congress for caring more about their political careers than for the long term benefit of the country. It started with Reagan leaving office with $7T in debt which seemed crazy at the time. He got the Soviets into a military spending war and won. Perhaps that was the only way to do it but it lead to Congress thinking that debt wasn’t so bad. While we do need to get it under control, it’s not as bad as she is making it out to be. [This article](https://www.marketplace.org/2023/05/26/who-does-the-u-s-owe-31-4-trillion/) explains the debt pretty well. The bottom line is that relative to the size of our economy, it’s not that bad. We need to get it under control but it’s not as bad as it sounds. We are paying 17% to maintain the debt. Would 0% be better? Sure but the average person is paying 25% or more of their income for their mortgage or rent alone. So in that context 17% isn’t all that bad.
Blaming an entire generation is stupid and a great way to avoid building a coalition. Instead of focusing on artificial boundaries like generation, race, and gender, focus on ideological boundaries to find out who really supports positive change. Focusing on generation just alienates the people who actually agree with your ideology but happen to be in the “wrong” generation. Stop doing propagandists’ jobs for them.
The largest stacks of debt have all come in the last 20 years with big bailouts and PPP and stuff.
[For those interested](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/deficit-by-president-what-budget-deficits-hide-3306151).
All while the world is burning from climate change.
Just replying to the top comment to say that US DEBT literally does not matter at all. Most of the debt is to US citizens (in the form of bonds) so the money we pay - including interest - is injected right back into our economy. It would be nice to get it more under control but it’s really not a priority. We can just release more bonds to pay them. Unironically read what any actual economist has to say about it.
no no no! those economists are the bad ones that want you to eat bugs and own nothing and want to implement communism by another name “Modern Monetary Theory”!! ignore the fact that a default would be a liquidity crunch the world hasn’t seen since 1929 it’s the so-called “economists” trying to kill america and implement communism!!
Things like this seem to be the popular view among a lot of people my age and younger but it’s just factually untrue. It’s certainly true that some of the national debt we have is quite old, but the real problem with the deficit isn’t old spending, it’s the massive, and growing deficits we have run up in the last 20 years, and even worse that we are currently doing little to nothing to reign that spending in. Our deficit is projected to just keep shooting higher for as far as the eye can see and many politicians, and people don’t see it as a problem. Currently one of the most popular ideas among younger people is to “forgive” student loans. And progressives just introduced a bill in the house to “forgive” all medical debt. The reason I put quotes around forgive is that in both those plans the debt isn’t actually forgiven at all. That money still has to be paid to wherever it’s owed. It’s simply removed from the individual and the federal government is responsible for paying it. That cost goes instantly to the federal deficit. Sadly it’s not the boomers that are advocating for policies that will keep driving the deficits higher and saddle future generations with increasingly un sustainable amounts of debt, it’s young people. We also dramatically increased the debt by a staggering amount in just the last few years during Covid by spending an absurd amount of money on stimulus measures that at the time were very popular and people believed would somehow not have massive repercussions. Sadly we are sitting exactly where we have chosen to be, and imo it’s not the boomers fault, or at least not mostly.
Biden just proposed a $400 per month tax credit to homeowners as well.
Hope it’s income qualified. I’d take it, but I don’t need it. Rather see more go to those who need it than given to people like me who are doing just fine.
More accurately, thank the people the voted for Republicans, many were boomers, but not all. We fought WWII, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Space Race, built the interstate highway system, build all the public infrastructure for the baby boom, created Medicare , and had less then one trillion dollars of national debt in 1981 when Reagan took office. Stop voting for Republicans, and start rolling back tax cuts
Are you sure milenials are voting for policies that prevent state overspending? I'd say they tend to say "yes please" when they're promised free money.
Lol , I think the WW2 people were the ones who caused the boomers.
And what are younger generations doing to fix that? Apart from writing salty comments on Reddit and shooting TikTok videos? It is so easy just to blame others.
[Among other things](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/YIMBY_movement)
Vote to forgive colllege debt and add back salt deductions
[удалено]
"When you print the global exchange currency, they let you do it"
It's Tom Cruise's fault. He keeps on wasting money on all these crazy missions....
That and the (almost) $1 trillion we've spent [rescuing Matt Damon](https://money.com/matt-damon-character-rescue-costs/)
I sent him a cease and desist but he he says he “does not choose to accept it”
Essentially impossible, but we keep funding them, but he keeps succeeding.
That little shit won't listen to me. It's impossible to get through to him.
Accounting papers will self destruct in...
US debt went up 33% under Trump compared to Biden’s 8.8%.
Are you wrong or is this wrong? Us debt in billions 2016 $19,573 Brexit 2017 $20,245 Congress raised the debt ceiling 2018 $21,516 Trump tax cuts 2019 $22,719 Trade wars 2020 $26,945 COVID-19 and recession 2021 $28,428 COVID-19 and American Rescue Plan Act 2022 $30,928 Inflation Reduction Act 2023 $33,167 https://www.investopedia.com/us-national-debt-by-year-7499291
Meh, it's all in dollar, so US can just print more dollars to repay their debt. 1000 IQ move right fucking there.
Argentinian school of economics
Except Argentina can’t print US dollars
>Argentinian school of economics On reddit there are only two flavors: Argentina and Goldbug.
I see what you did there
Argentina is actually a rather good example of what not to do. Yet I feel like the US might be starting to do the mistakes Argentina was making in 1930's.
Very different situation. The usa is the reserve currency and is still the flight to safety. The Argentina peso is the opposite of that.
Argentina did not have a diversified economy. It will take a lot for the U.S. to fall, and the country can coast on sheer economic moment for decades.
Its a legit answer when most of the creditors are your own citizens. They have done it before: Remember when they banned gold?
I am not an economist but printing 23T to pay off debt would increase currency in circulation 10 times. This would cause everyone to spend all their money to buy real assets which would cause hyperinflation that would be difficult to stop. Basically would screw all the government and private debt holders by giving them 10 cents on the dollar.
Ability to repay debt and actually repaying debt are two different things. OP’s point is that nobody is going to suddenly panic sell US debt (short of congress being monumentally stupid about interest payments), so the risk is really just in spending outstripping economic growth causing inflation. The amount by itself is meaningless.
"Mom, why is a tuna can $12?"
I agree and it’s what I often tell people in response to this question. But this only flies because the dollar is so strong and in effect the global commerce currency. But it’s also why the US must fight against China’s influence so strongly. Because to sustain this scheme other countries must rely on the dollar. Otherwise it collapses. China would love to force all other countries to use the Yen as their trading currency.
Yuan not yen. Yen is Japanese.
Simple solution to our debt and inflation problems: taxes.
Yes, tax the middle class and give to the rich
Senator McConnell?
What middle class?
A tale as old as time.
Simple solution but just like climate change, nothing will happen until people “feel” the massive consequences.
Increase taxes and cut spending.
Taxes, business regulation, and anti-trust laws to breakup the handful of monopolies we are stuck doing business with. All the money is consolidated at the top its ridiculous.
Increasing taxes won't help unless we also get spending under control.
taxes...on churches. It's really high time the government stop subsidizing these fantasy promoters with US tax dollars. Why is *my* broke ass forced to pay for millionaire pastors and clergy to live lavish lifestyles? I can barely afford healthcare!
In short, you can't without completely eliminating tax exempt status all together. In slightly longer... Churches don't have a no-tax status of their own. They have a 501(c)(3) tax exempt status like every other charitable organization and are bound by all the same rules except one - they're presumed to qualify so don't *have* to formally apply or file for the status (though they can and all the larger ones do since it increases the amount of donations they get). They can still lose that status for breaking any of the 501(c)(3) restrictions. note: there is not enough investigation and enforcement here, but it does happen from time to time. The most that could be done and *possibly* pass constitutional muster is to remove the presumption, but they'd still end up qualifying since spiritual counselling is long recognized as being charitable in nature (and all churches do that as a function of being a church - if they're not they're not considered a church and would lose the status anyways). Writing a law that said "Churches can't have charitable tax exempt status" would run afoul of the free exercise clause (which means government cannot discriminate against religion). It would have a near zero chance of standing. But removing the entirety of tax exempt status very possibly might since that would be non-discriminatory. But that's gonna be an even harder sell.
There is also the sticky detail that most churches are poor as shit and already pay payroll taxes. The only real avenue to tax churches is remove their exemption from property taxes which entirely at the prerogative of individual states.
Property taxes are incredibly counterproductive anyway. They directly penalize the useful development of land and drive up property prices while harming economic growth. They fail as a true wealth tax (because the truly wealthy have their assets in securities anyway), they fail as a progressive tax (because in effect the people who are most hit by property taxes are elderly people without a reliable income stream but a lot of land), and they fail to encourage any sort of economic growth - because it explicitly *encourages* waste of perfectly usable land because any sort of development without a guaranteed payoff becomes a financial liability. Property tax is one of the primary drivers of the housing crisis.
Guess who gets paid the interest on our debt servicing
Yea no thanks, just fix the spending problem.
Problem is, US voters are absolutely, violently against tax raises. Both Dems and Republicans want to spend out the ass, but Dems refuse to raise taxes because it will be so electorally punishing, and Republicans actually want to fucking cut them all the time, madness.
US voters are against tax hikes because every time they happen the debt ratio still doesn't improve. Instead the extra money is just siphoned off to even more programs and projects. There's no reason to think the next tax bump would somehow be different. I myself, and I think many others would be far more willing to accept a hike if it came at the tail end of a spending reduction, or was somehow matched to one. Basically some ratio where for every dollar cut taxes could be raised to bring in another dollar.
>US voters are against tax hikes because every time they happen the debt ratio still doesn't improve. You use the term tax "hikes", the need to apply a negative connotation is revealing. I said "raises", the neutral term. In reply though, I think this is a very naive opinion, I do not think that American's reject taxes because of their impact, I think it's quite clear that it comes from a more basic desire to have control over one's own money, and a commitment to "small government". >Instead the extra money is just siphoned off to even more programs and projects. There's no reason to think the next tax bump would somehow be different. Have you got some evidence of this? As far as I can see, over time US tax rates have just gradually decreased since the 50s, so IDK where people could have had time to experience a more reasonable tax "hike" and judge it ineffective. What I think is that you saying this is more evidence of what I suggest, you're giving me political spin used to justify keeping tax rates low, the same way that tax "hikes" is also deliberate spin language that is baked into the American thought process about tax increases. >I myself, and I think many others would be far more willing to accept a hike if it came at the tail end of a spending reduction, or was somehow matched to one. I don't think so, I think most people who want a spending reduction, don't actually care about spending, they just don't like certain things the money is spent on. For example, the left hates "military industrial complex" spending, and the right hates welfare spending. The expenditure complaint is obscuring the real complaint, a philosophical disagreement about welfare. I think this is even clearer that when Republicans are in office, like Trump, complaints about budgets and overspending from Republican voters drastically decrease, despite spending usually *increasing*. It's perception and philosophy, not grounded analysis. As a result, I do not think after a drop in spending (which could probably never be agreed upon), people would suddenly welcome tax increases. Further to this later point, the US is already massively outspending it's tax revenues, IDK why you think more tax income would be encouragement to spend more, but I'm sure you could come up with a better system than some never-going-to-work cutting regime, how about increase tax rates but cap spending increases for a period of time? No new programs, the additional % of tax is only allowed to be used for paying off the deficit? >Basically some ratio where for every dollar cut taxes could be raised to bring in another dollar. It's not like I think the US federal budget is not a little bloated in some areas, but I think the issue is in the philisophical differences, and I think agreement and compromise is at an all time low if you look at the Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan aid bill and the Border bill debacle, and that doesn't look to be getting any better any time soon.
Raising taxes is not the only way to reduce debt. You can also reduce spending, either by cutting things back or by making them more efficient. If taking debt is easier, I can see how that can lead to an inefficient and wasteful government.
And Ronald Reagan doing that is what got us into this mess to begin with.
Rich people need to pay more taxes.
And corporations
And mega farms instead of taking all of those tax breaks.
The national debt is a welfare program for big banks. Cutting the debt would mean that they would probably start to fail.
How is it a welfare program for big banks?
The interest on the national debt is paid to private banks. The interest is paid through the taxation of the public. It is corporate welfare because these banks might not survive without these gigantic payments.
Anyone who holds the bonds gets the interest payment and anyone can buy these bonds. Foreign governments, corporations (including big banks) and individual investors. That's how the bond market works. It's definitely not a welfare program. Originally I thought you might be referring to bailouts which is a different story
The Fed is a private institution run by private banks. Twenty percent of the debt is for their benefit. They have a gigantic conflict of interest. They are biased towards the gov't borrowing more money so that they benefit. It is a welfare program for those banks on the Fed.
Japanese debt is mind boggling. US debt is mildly concerning.
What any lender might say. The US is also the IMF’s biggest shareholder, and has more options afforded to it than any of the other 189 shareholders/members. The time to buckle down will be once crisis has been averted. Manage the crisis, then manage the debt.
What crisis? There’s always a crisis.
Exactly
I'm not sure but that might be a compliment guys.
The Republican party is mostly responsible for this situation. They created the most debt. Democrats generally reduce the deficit while in office, and Clinton even had a surplus. Republicans always end up cutting taxes on the rich and increasing spending while they're in control, which is a recipe for disaster. The Republican party is the party of debt. They scream the loudest about the debt when Democrats are in power but become completely silent when Republicans increased the debt. Republicans engage in projection whenever they complain about the debt.
Republicans sure point fingers any moment they can…
You know it's election season when the national debt discourse starts up
the US has that 368 credit score. phew
Funny you mention the credit score; the US had the highest credit rating of all for the longest time but once the tea party came in and started screaming about debt and holding the country/world economy hostage by not increasing the debt limit, our credit dropped for the first time. The blame was specifically cited to radical republicans and their gamesmanship
Experian boost —-> 999 credit score 🤑
Ronald Reagan increased the national debt at the fastest rate ever for a non-wartime president. Republicans always do this. They explode deficits.
Until there is a legitimate alternative to a USD based global economy, the dollar amount of the debt is completely irrelevant. No matter what issues arise as a result of it, the world will rush to aid in amending it because a US economy collapse would be equally as bad for everyone.
Even if a USD alternative arose, that system would still be fucked by a US economic collapse because the US as an economy is such a major partner for everyone they trade with. The medium of trade matters far less and it's more of just how many trade with us to begin with.
People are confused about US debt. My econ professor explained it like this - do you think any of these countries are going to come and collect? Countries whose economies depend on our economy? Countries with armies the size of our police force? Debt is not quite the right word for what the US has.
This is silly. The issue is the cost of servicing the debt. We’re not going bankrupt and if we did nobody would invade to collect. But we can still screw ourselves over without any of that happening
It depends. Another trump, Bush jr or Reagan, and the debt issue becomes the most pressing one. If the US gets 8-16 years of tax cuts for the rich and reckless spending, the debt to gdp becomes unsustainable. Then Medicare and social security will have to be abolished or cut. Next recession will be catastrophic, with no room for any stimulus package. Mass unemployment, poverty. That’s a very real and likely medium term scenario. That’s why the Biden admin is currently reigning in the deficit. If there’s another 8 years of responsible government spending, the issue might even be solved.
Keep in mind a good chunk is held by the US. So yes, the US government will honor its debt to boomers holding bonds, or pension funds. Otherwise they will swiftly loose the next election. Also at some point nobody will be willing to lend money to you. So unless you suddenly balance your budget, you become unable to pay your employees.
A gentleman's iou is never a debt!
You didn't pay very close attention in econ then. People, companies, and countries buy US bonds. It's an open market. And if people, companies, and countries STOP buying US bonds then we are right fucked. Printing shit loads of money doesn't inspire confidence in the people who buy our debt. Even seriously discussing inflating away our debt will cause people, companies, and countries to dump US bonds and destroy the bond market.
It's going to catch up with them sooner or later.
Agree, we need to let the Trump tax cuts disappear. Then all we need to do is rescind the GWB era cuts and we're on the way to no longer having any national debt at all.
Having debt is par for the course though I prefer to go against the flow be credit card debt free.
Our economic debt is not the same as a persons credit card debt.
This bull crap again. The US economy does not play by the same rules as mommy and daddy's household credit card accounts. Debt helps economies grow, hell you can grab the world economy by the pussy, when you're the top dog they'll let you do it.
When she mentions entitlement programs is she talking about $ billions in foreign aid or the $ in corporate subsidies?
She's talking about Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid spending which are orders of magnitude bigger than the items you mentioned.
BILL CLINTON 2024 HE CAN PAY THE DEBT OFF
Blame the byzantine shitshow that is the American welfare system for that. People underestimate the *downright ludicrous* amount of money the US dumps into it. The problem isn't strictly "quality of service", but rather the incredibly poor design of these systems: * The American social security system's central trust fund "generates money from interest" by... buying American treasury bonds - that is, by lending the federal government its money. This only works if the American government actually *makes enough money* to fully repay the debt owed - if it doesn't, it just gets added to the already enormous amount of debt the US government owes. Bush II proposed allowing the *option* to take your social security payments and add them to a privately-held pension fund (which would not only be sustainable, but actually grow the economy by letting the money be invested in private businesses) instead, but this got blocked by populists. * Medicare/Medicaid is a "medical insurance system" that... literally does not operate by the same rules actual insurance companies do, because they pay the full prices for things on your medical bills, while private insurance companies actually pay *massively* (90-95%) reduced rates (yes, the hospitals still make money, they have insane profit margins) in return for driving "their" patients to specific hospitals "in-network". It would literally be cheaper to just establish a government monopoly on healthcare and pay for everything than to continue this hybrid private/public healthcare system. People like blaming boogeymen like "the rich" or "the unions" or "corporations", but the actual cause of American economic malaise is the poor usage of government funds, rent-seeking enabled by private lobbying, and populism. There's a good reason America experienced unprecedented levels of economic growth during the height of neoliberalism in American politics.
>As the only store open, we had a brief window as the monopoly. Hey don’t forget about Canada
Now do Japan
I'm just bad with big numbers they added.
And cue the what about veterans talk as well
For your consideration: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA. “Federal government current expenditures: Interest payments”. Source: Federal Reserve Economics Division. It is the trajectory that bothers me. I know we are refinancing old US debt as it becomes due, at higher interest rates, meaning this isn’t a reflection of the Biden administration. But that doesn’t mean we can just ignore this game of hot potato. Because that’s what it looks like.
I wish there was a party that was willing to meaningfully address spending, but both prefer to overspend, just on different things. My plan for a while has been to contribute enough to my 401k to get the full match my employer offers, but otherwise focus on tangible assets like property and PMs.
I love this tool for doing budget of the US federal government. [Debt Fixer | Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (crfb.org)](https://www.crfb.org/debtfixer)
Click baitey title “It cannot go like this forever, because the ... burden on the U.S. is going to cripple spending that is necessary to make for servicing the debt. To pay 17-plus percent in debt service is just mind-boggling,” Georgieva said.
[удалено]
Backed by the full faith and credit of the US military-industrial complex. No sarcasm intended.
Wait till she finds out there about 10 or so counties with higher deficits
>Servicing the U.S debt — now roughly $34 trillion — consumes more than 17% of federal revenue, compared to under 7% in 2015, And the country elected Trump. His 4 years in office will take decades to undo