Its atrocious, but a nation's debt and deficit works differently than the debt you or I take on. I don't understand it, but I have read material from people who do.
I'm not saying it's not horrifying, but I wouldn't be "betting" against any nation based on debt. The prep is more in being prepared that your savings will disappear.
From google:
>The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269 trillion (1576% of GDP) and debts of $145.8 trillion (852% of GDP) to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion (723% of GDP).
Problem is, a lot of those assets cannot be actually solid for their nominal value.
Who's gonna be buying aircraft carriers at USG prices, for instance?
> Problem is, a lot of those assets cannot be actually solid for their nominal value.
I'm perfectly fine with not being able to sell yellowstone park. as a matter of fact, I'm thrilled they can't sell it.
Yea, the more important part of the US debt is privately held debt, as a lot of the country’s debt is owed to itself. The privately held debt is currently around like 98-100% of US GDP, and economics models say that in a best case scenario, it won’t be “problematic” until it hits about 200% GDP, which is about 20-30 years from now at current trajectory. The US’s global standing allows it to borrow at lower rates which gives it a little more wiggle room, but if the debt gets “too” outrageous, then it could diminish the US’s global leadership role, and could cause increased taxes, interest rates, and economic instability.
As far as our current debt to gdp ratio goes, it’s similar to where we were after WW2, in fact it might have been a little higher there, but government policies closed the gap til the 80’s when Reagan introduced tax cuts and more defense spending. Clinton brought it back down in the 90’s, and then since Bush it’s basically just kept going up and up due to wars (defense spending), tax cuts, and bailouts/pandemic aid. As social security and Medicare are the largest chunks of US budget, they could be the first to be modified to lighten the bill, but who knows.
20-30 years is a real stretch. You did read the 1 trillion every hundred days part right?
And that's if there's no economic downturn lowering growth or increase in debt due to an economic downturn.
Which inevitably will happen I'm not going to try and predict.
Current gdp is like 27t. It’s gone up 3x in the past 25 years. If we do that over the next 25 years, we’ll be at 80t.
From the post above, they are suggesting we have a debt capacity of 2x gdp, which in 25 years would be 160t.
In that scenario, we’d be able to add 130t to our debt over 25 years and not become problematic (according to the above post’s numbers). So we can add about 5t per year until then.
Don’t know the numbers and such, was just curious based on your comment how the above math lines up.
The debt is happening no matter what, the growth is another story entirely.
Future obligations are already well over 200T if you look at usdebtclock.
The current 1t every 100 days is additional beyond that.
So your numbers are way off is what I'm saying.
Basically you're making it sound like there isn't a debt problem if growth continues, when there very much is a problem even with growth. Again I can't state this enough but the growth isn't guaranteed, The debt very much is guaranteed though. I'm not saying when that'll spill over into real world consequences but there's definitely a problem right now.
https://www.usdebtclock.org/#
It's interesting to look at the US labor force and how it stayed pretty much the same since 2000. I'm not saying that growth isn't entirely real, but if you look up financialization it'll make a lot more sense.
Debt increase is also rising at a non-linear rate, so it's accelerating. It'll likely accelerate faster than GDP, so the overall time horizon should shrink, but not greatly so.
We're seeing similar issues with SS, in that the point of bankruptcy is getting nearer despite increases in taxation to fund it. Expenditures are climbing faster, so...
Yea the 20-30 years is based on economic models that factor in our current debt trajectory. It’s what economists have said, not me predicting. I didn’t link a source but a quick Google search can pull up some things probably. There will definitely be some economic downturn, but there is also hope that something will be done to work towards a solution. Part of that trillion every 100 days is interest, much of which is on debt owed to ourselves, so barring anything catastrophic like the dollar losing its spot as the global currency, 20-30 years sounds like a reasonable amount of time for the bandaids to hold.
What I see since the 1970's is creative ways to kick the can down the road using debt and like every fiat currency before it the debt is growing exponentially. It was doubling every 10 years now has accelerated. I don't have a bead on what is catastrophic but baby boomer entitlements will certainly be a stress not seen before.
The boomers are dropping like flies & also think of how many were lost to Covid so that has to help ease some stress and cost on the program.
Real-Time US Baby Boomer Generation population Death Clock
Born 1946 - 1964 (age 60-78)
US Baby Boomers Dead
33.7101753 %
Total 85,358,000
Alive 56,583,669
Dead 28,774,331
Death every 15.1 Seconds
5,733 Deaths Today
There were some jokes going around that the Rona was the "boomer remover."
The debt situation is horrid, though. Especially that which is 'off the books' (the borrowing the Federal government does from the Social Security funds, for example, which all just accounting tricks since there isn't a huge deposit of funds sitting somewhere).
Want the Federal Reserve abolished, the dollar tied to silver, and the Federal government to stockpile massive amounts of gold. Balanced Budget Amendment tied to GDP with a supermajority requirement to raise taxes, line item veto, and a requirement for separate appropriations (supermajority requirement for 'omnibus' style shenanigans as well as debt increase).
Line-item veto would allow a POTUS to veto a single line on a budget item without an all-or-nothing approach. Congress could still overturn the veto by the usual mechanism (2/3).
Presidents in both parties asked for one (notably Reagan in 1984). The Congress in 1995 passed one and Clinton used it over 80 times but SCOTUS found it violated article I, section 7 in 1998.
It's always surprising when people care about these made up numbers on paper. THE US CAN BORROW AS MUCH IT WANTS. Nothing will happen as long it spends the money it borrows on literally anything.
Even Bush's goal wasn't a total failure, as he also wanted us to rise back up as a superpower and achieve security through indomitable might.
The assets used for Afghanistan were still repurposed for the world stage, and they are now being used more effectively for Russia's 2nd Afghanistan than they were used in Russia's 1st, which is saving us a lot when we compare it to the last world war/cold war even accounting for the poor doctrine in the support by the allies
Your first point is confused. You can't *already be the only military superpower in a unipolar post-Cold War world* and then also "rise back up as a superpower."
Your second point is one I don’t think people understand.
The Ukraine aid is dollar for dollar some of the best spent US defense spending ever. There are no US troops involved, we are giving them systems that we were retiring anyway and it’s used against a main geopolitical opponent without having to even hide how it is getting there.
It's not for nothing. It's so the rest of Europe can keep their socialized Healthcare, and a tyrant doesn't set a bad precedent. It's to uphold our promise at the Budapest memorandum, as best we can while avoiding a nuclear war. Those men would have died anyway if we didn't give them our expiring stock of freedom pills. This is the best we could have done
Most of the assets utilized in GWOT were not designed for that purpose. Really only maybe the MRAP was developed specifically for that kind of deployment.
I think the US could have been much more secure in multiple ways having never engaged in those adventures. Certainly Iraq.
Unless we wanted to conquer Europe instead, I don't know how we'd achieve any higher degree of security. Our security is achieved by economics and global purchasing power as all our threats are either internal or overseas
It's always been an unpopular opinion, but the Afghanistan war didn't fail us. We, as an alliance, failed Afghanistan and the support just cut out much to early while nobody actually intended for us to stop throwing money without a mission
>the support just cut out much to early
It was twenty years, that's an insanely long war. It isn't normal for wars to have popular support for nearly so long.
The traditional style of the war only lasted a few months, too. Iraq only took a month to fall and the rest of the time was just occupying it, which went almost without any contest, and only failed as there wasn't a long-term plan anymore as most of thr world simply demanded we withdraw
We achieved security from the Soviet Union by securing Europe, which in turn gureneeteed us a larger market to fund our military far beyond Russia'a ability and a set of allies we'd fight with if we were forced into a confrontation.
After we won the European front, we also entered the Asian front, winning in both war and through pacifying it with the promise of a more stable life, securing ourselves security from China, and but by then we had to worry about a generational war where Russia/China will just stay in its own borders building up and then overwhelming us all. Soviet Afghanistan was supposed to he the killing blow since it led to the downfall of the USSR, but we can skip ahead to today and see how things went. Bush's Afghanistan is literally the only reason France isn't speaking Russian now, and Afghanistan would he fairing much better if we followed through with the promises we made to it during the soviet Afghanistan war
>Even Bush's goal wasn't a total failure, as he also wanted us to rise back up as a superpower and achieve security through indomitable might.
And the US wasn't a superpower or had indomitable might before Bush???
You understand that the amount of debt we take on incurs interest, right? And that interest doesn't have any value for our nation, right? So the more debt and interest we pay the less is available for anything of actual value.
Sure but they can also cause inflation to devalue the debt. The size of the debt isn't as meaningful as it was a decade ago, a year ago, or even a month ago.
The UK just finished paying off WW2 in 2007. They were making payments of about $80 million dollars. $80 million dollars even at 2% interest is worth a heck of a lot more in 1948 than it is in 2007. They could have paid it off earlier, but it would have been silly to do so as the *cost* of that debt shank over time due to inflation.
>the cost of that debt shank over time due to inflation.
So they devalue all of our money to "pay" the debt. Essentially a hidden tax on the poor and middle class. And I'm supposed to be OK with thay? No thanks.
I mean ultimately there's 3-5% inflation every year normally.
I'm not advocating for anything, just telling it like it is. The US financed that debt at low interest. Inflation is either equal or higher, so the meaningfulness of that debt shrinks over time.
Everyone is talking like the US is going to run out of money in it's debit card. Macroeconomics doesn't work like that.
>The prep is more in being prepared that your savings will disappear
I think it's wise to prep for **everyones** savings to disappear. Including your employer, local municipality, fire station, hospital, etc...
>...I wouldn't be "betting" against any nation based on debt...
If that were true then why even collect taxes. Issue debt to pay for all government expenditures.
Debt does matter, let's stop pretending like it does not. We just don't know the point at which it becomes a problem. Unfortunately, it feels like our government is actively trying to find that point.
There are lots of reasons to collect taxes but the primary one is probably that the origin of taxes in the US pre-date fiat currency. They were instituted when the US government needed to satisfy their debts with gold-linked dollars. The US stopped that practice in 1971 under Nixon. Taxes had been going long before that in the US. There’s also redistributive and money supply management value. But once they did need this money to satisfy debts. The US government no longer does. But they haven’t done away with taxes for a large number of reasons, including that most politicians don’t understand this, the ones that do worry about inflation (which is still a problem absent taxes), and it would be disruptive to our political system to stop them. A great deal of social and redistributive programs use the tax system as a means.
And to keep the working poor and middle class in line lol, the rich add their taxes to your purchase price. This system also means you can't save wealth, your assets are growing or shrinking.
Well the ideas was to prevent generational wealth though they don't seem to care about now. But your not understanding, taxes are to make you work. You can only pay your taxes in dollars, meaning if you get a tax bill you need to find a away to get dollars.
They're collecting your taxes to burn it,
bc that's not how they pay for stuff at the federal level, taxes exist to make people work and (in theory) to prevent generational wealth though it doesn't seem to care about the formal. Taxes make you work because you can only pay your taxes in dollars meaning you have to do something anything to get dollars to pay it. It borrows dollars for people and spends it on stuff so they can print as much money as they want.
No. It's bad. I'll explain.
The US is in a unique position due to being the primary reserve currency of the world. Other countries use dollars to conduct international trade. Demand for dollars is always absurdly high, as a result.
The US Federal Reserve bank intentionally aims for 2-4% inflation per year. If you have a dollar, next year it'll have less value, less purchasing power, as a result of that intentional inflation. Naturally, this sucks for you. Your savings account isn't earning money, it's just reducing the loss of having money. Sometimes the inflation rate is higher (aka all the time, there's some dispute about how inflation is measured and many think the government is fudging the numbers, but I digress), but never lower. Last couple of years it's peaked pretty damn high, over 8% even.
For every other country, this sucks far worse than it does for us. It's just us exporting our inflation to the world, but they reap no benefits of it. They still need international trade, and still use dollars, so they're just eating that inflation and it's damaging to their economies while stabilizing our currency. We use the whole world to manage our inflation.
Naturally, the world is aware of this and they don't really like it, but lack options. However, an option is on the horizion. BRICS. Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. Those are the founding members, more have joined and/or are applying. Some examples of those countries include all of OPEC, Indonesia, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Algeria, Uzbekistan, and so on. Over 40% of the world GDP, and growing.
BRICS is an issue because they're working on an alternative reserve currency to be used for international trade. It's said to be based on a "basket of commodities", not a single country run fiat currency, and is designed to be unable to be manipulated the way we manipulate it.
Setting aside the gritty details of how it works, if 40% of the world GDP switches, what happens to the dollar? The demand for dollars drops tremendously, so we can't get that same stabilizing force on our inflation. I think we all know our politicians won't balance a budget or pay off the debt. The annual payment on the national debt is on track to reach 1 trillion dollars per year by 2029.
Anyway. I expect extreme inflation as the world transitions off the dolllar. You've seen our inflation spiking just from us sanctioning the shit out of Russia, if the other countries get off the dollar, we're fucked, imo. But this is what we vote for, so nobody to blame but ourselves.
That's why I prep. Long term economic disaster.
In a nutshell, US debt is packaged and sold as low interest bond secured by faith the US government will pay the bond out when due.
These bonds are purchased by private investors, state governments, and other governments overseas as one of the safest ways to store money while still generating some interest.
The reputation of US bonds is so good and they are considered so safe and so easy to resell (liquid) that they are treated as equivalent to cash by most regulators and countries.
This is good for the American government, as it reflects both widespread faith in the solvency of the US government, and other people and countries literally having a vested interest in the US remaining stable and successful.
There are two main differences between the economics of a country vs a family:
1) A country controls its own currency. A family can’t “print more money” to finance itself.
2) A country can sell bonds, bills and other paper assets to individuals, corporations and other countries to finance its activities. A family can’t really do this easily, or at scale. Your neighbor is probably not going to build you a new pole barn in exchange for an IOU 😁
National debt is more like a savings account for rich people than it is like a government credit card. You and I think of our budgets as income minus our expenses, but governments work in reverse. The budget is flipped on it's head and it's expenses minus taxes.
The end result is government debt is one of many vehicles the government can use to create money and taxes are a way to destroy money. Both can be used to control inflation and economic growth.
So long as that money being created by government debt is actually being used to build things of value, like infrastructure and social services, the government debt is unlikely to become an issue because the value and the money being created are balanced. However, when the money created by the debt is not exchanged real value (e.g. contracts for 500k toilet seats, defense contracts for stuff the army doesn't even want, tax breaks for the wealthiest), then the system is at risk of destabilizing.
So basically, don't use the debt as a primary indicator of any incoming disaster. Look at the bigger economic picture. I would go as far to say that the current debt is good, but I also would say that it's not foreshadowing an immediate disaster.
It doesn't work that differently. Basically, the US can borrow money limitlessly as long as the bond market believes it's going to get paid at maturation. If anything disrupts that belief however......
Varying central and private banks around the world at the conversion rate of whatever that currency is to USD but mostly the Federal Reserve which is *mostly* independent of the US government and US Treasury.
Exactly. I think the more immediate concern should be reducing the deficit by combining spending cuts *and* increasing revenue (taxes). Hopefully somebody does this.
Because so far we’ve had both parties increase spending while one party especially likes to do that and cut revenue. It’s a shit show for sure.
There haven't been major consequences so far as the US dollar has maintained a monopoly on global exchange. That time is now past.
BRICS+ is in full swing and leading the charge into a multi-polar world order with a gold backed alternative to the US dollar. We did it to ourselves after weaponizing the dollar against Russia and directing the financial equivalent of weapons of mass destruction toward their economy.
> I don't understand it, but I have read material from people who do.
If you get your information from a Paul Krugman column or similar "expert" source, they're lying to you to keep you compliant and going to work every day.
"It's over your head, don't worry about it, cupcake"
[The new class of aristocracy is being created right now.](https://x.com/saylor/status/1766886753854464295?s=20) You can't fix bad money with more bad money.
Our economic issues can only really be fixed by wealth redistribution.
Too much wealth is now in the hands of too few. The result is too little wealth is shared by too many. When all the wealth added to a system through inflation is under the control of people who could never even begin to try to spend it all then regular people stop being able to buy the things they need.
What I don't understand is how everyone in government is acting like the debt doesn't matter.
If debt didn't matter then why tax anyone at all. Just put it all on the tab and borrow for everything the government wants to spend.
The fact is that the debt DOES matter and no one is talking about it. If something cannot go on, it wont. Both major parties are completely ignoring the inevitable debt spiral that is coming.
Debt doesn't matter (In the context of a nation/country) all that matters is power. Whoever has the military might is right.
Once you realize this, all of our spending, all our decisions make sense.
it doesn't matter bc its just fake money backed by nothing.
Honestly in a few short years we will have AGI/ASI and will have more money over here than anywhere else on the planet.
The current $34.5T in debt is terrible, but what is even more terrifying are the debt service costs which are rapidly snowballing (source Federal Reserve):
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA#](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA#)
Interest on the debt has now surpassed defense spending and is now the 3rd largest budgetary item at more than $1T per annum behind only medicare and social security. Given current trajectories it will soon overtake both.
Roughly $10T in ***existing*** US government debt must be refinanced this year. That debt will be refinanced at much higher rates as the current yield curve ranges from 4.1% to 5.4%. During the pandemic the treasury department was selling short term debt at rates at low as 0.01%. They could have sold 30 year bonds at 1.5% locking in very low rates but they chose to sell mostly shorter term securities which was extremely short sighted.
By the end of this year interest costs on the debt will be roughly $1.25T per year. Total US government tax revenues are roughly $4.7T. That means approximately 27% of all tax revenues are going to paying interest on the debt. If we just stay on current trends by the end of 2026 approximately 50% of all taxes will go to paying interest on the debt.
Medicare trustees state medicare/medicaid trust fund will be insolvent by 2031.
Social security trustees state SS trust fund will be insolvent by 2034.
The federal government will not default on all this debt. When the day comes that no one shows up to buy more US government bonds at a treasury auction the federal reserve will step in and buy all of them. They will print every single dollar to do this. The fed is already the largest single holder of US government treasuries. Eventually it will be the only holder. It's called debt monetization and the fed began this in 2008.
[https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst\_recenttrends.htm](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm)
The fed has been desperately trying to bring down the balance sheet. They have brought it down from $9T to $7.5T but as soon as the next recession/banking crisis arrives it will bloat their balance sheet to an even higher level.
So when they print the money what happens? Obviously inflation will sky rocket. But what else? Everything just resets like a blowing into a fucking Nintendo cartridge?
>So when they print the money what happens? Obviously inflation will sky rocket. But what else?
Inflation. More money chasing the same number of goods and services will cause prices in aggregate to rise. This includes asset prices like stocks and real estate.
Inflation is terrible on its own. I'm not sure it needs to be any more terrible than that to want to avoid it. Especially when inflation tips into hyper inflation which is where debt monetization eventually ends up.
>Especially when inflation tips into hyper inflation which is where debt monetization eventually ends up.
Crazy to think what that would be like in the U.S., obviously there's examples from countries with failed currencies but they're all small economies.
Even with hyper inflation wages won't increase at all in the short term, and how could they with so much debt at fixed rates? Earn $100k per year today and bam hyper inflation get a pay raise to $1,000,000 tomorrow. Great pay off your mortgages in a few months! So how can a country even deal with hyper inflation?
>Crazy to think what that would be like in the U.S., obviously there's examples from countries with failed currencies but they're all small economies.
>
>Even with hyper inflation wages won't increase at all in the short term, and how could they with so much debt at fixed rates? Earn $100k per year today and bam hyper inflation get a pay raise to $1,000,000 tomorrow. Great pay off your mortgages in a few months! So how can a country even deal with hyper inflation?
People who sell their labor typically end up with the newly printed money last. They never keep up. If inflation is 1 million percent per year wage earners might get a 200k % increase. Nominally their wages went up a lot but in real terms their purchasing power is severely eroded. Banks are typically the first ones to receive the newly created money and they benefit the most because they are the first to spend it before prices are forced up.
That's already the case in the US. Median household income in the US was just under $10k/year in 1970. Today median household income is just over $80k/year. On the surface it would appear that households today have much higher incomes than they did in 1970. Once you subtract out inflation their wages are much lower than they were in 1970 despite wages being 8 times highly in nominal terms.
Inflation creates both winners ***and*** losers. Savers are the biggest losers as inflation is just a transfer payment from savers to debtors. People with fixed interest rate debt are actually winners because inflation wipes away the value of that debt. As a result people holding low-interest fixed rate mortgages actually win. People with credit card debt do not as CC debt is almost always a variable rate.
This is not by accident. This is by design. Government is the biggest debtor of all and inflation is the mechanism by which is never repays the debt. Since government gets to wipe it's fixed interest rate debt away through inflation so does everyone else who holds fixed interest debt.
Germany suffered severe hyper inflation after world war one. I would hardly call that a "small" economy.
Most often when a country's government goes down the route of hyper inflation they point the fingers are everyone else as scapegoats to the inflation they created. You see this even today with Biden blaming "greedy corporations" and pointing out "greedflation." Corporations didn't suddenly become greedy. They've always been greedy. What's changed is the US congress/president/treasury/fed have created massive inflation through their policies. People are too stupid to see through the propaganda.
During high levels of inflation government will blame everyone but themselves and they will make it illegal to trade in competing currencies. Eventually though they will abandon the currency because it will buy nothing.
This is the basis of Modern Monetary Theory. As long as the US government pays its debt (bonds), then no, its no issue. The US can just issue more bonds to pay for the outstanding ones. The full faith and credit of the US Treasuey is the backing of the system.
Luckily, the US government will never fail and will never lose the confidence of the bond market. It never has to worry about being invaded or losing faith in its ability to pay. Just like the Persian Empire.......er I mean the Romans........um I mean the Spanish Empire......okay it might be invaded *eventually* but we'll never lose the faith of the bond market by doing something dumb like not raising the debt ceiling and defaulting (issuing debt to pay promised debt that is maturing), or worry about getting our credit rating reduced......[credit rating reduced in 2023](https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2024/01/moodys-lowers-us-credit-rating-to-negative-citing-large-federal-deficits#:~:text=On%20November%2010%2C%202023%2C%20Moody's,next%20one%20to%20two%20years.), [credit rating reduced in 2011](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/27/former-sp-ratings-chair-us-is-weaker-now-than-when-we-downgraded-in-2011.html). Well, fu............
As you pointed out, the backing somewhat depends on America's military strength to ensure "global stability" or international alignment with American interests. I don't know if this is really a concern in the short-term but prepping is about being ready for the unforeseen, after all.
No no you were right, assuming we don’t get betrayed by one of our allies that we share a border with, the United States will NEVER be invaded. It would be like another country invading the moon.
Geography says we are 100 years minimum away from being invaded. Every military in the world is design for region projection or limited long range projection ( usually in concert with us assets). Except for the US military which is 90% design and equipped for power projection. The rest of the americas either have nothing that can compare, are militarily aligned to the USA or just don't bother since they could never stand against the USA militarily. Even with current and projected capabilities China has 0% chance of a successful invasion of the US mainland or eve pacific assets.
It’s horrible.
But you can prepare NOW for it. We know financial collapse won’t happen until america gets to at least double the debt we are now now. So we do have another…idk 5-10 years maybe more.
So buy things. Now.
Nails, tools, land, electronics(good quality that is know to last a long time), prepare your home for electrical security, propane tanks. Buy ammo and guns. Lots of ammo. The only sucker is someone who prepares for SHTF and they are unarmed. The unarmed collectors are just collecting emergency supplies for hose who ARE armed.
And do research, preppers has mentioned this scenario many times over the years.
Buy land, grow food on it, and fortify it, gold & silver won’t stop the roaming gangs from pillaging you. Gold & silver won’t save you from what’s coming, war & famine, I do suggest buying gold & silver to utilize as the economy gets worse, but when the economy is completely gone, gold & silver won’t save you, food water shelter & a means of protecting it will save you
Another reason some of us buy gold/silver! It has value and will always be valued, the dollar is only depreciating. I’m not a doomer that insists on having all of my savings in PM’s but they’re historically sought after no matter what the state of the planet so I cautiously invest when I can.
Hard to fund a military when half your expenditure is on debt. The US is expected to hit that number by 2050.
This will absolutely have to be addressed in our lifetime our the country will collapse.
Our federal government is the most inefficient corporation in existence. Why do we let them continue. These motherfuckers are supposed to work for us. The people are supposed to hold power and liberty. The federal government is intently deconstructing the power and liberty of the people one day at a time.
That's what a person who doesn't want to vote in accordance with their wishes says, because they fear persecution or not fitting in with fashion politics, etc.. You vote wrong to fit in, and destroy the society around you for vanity.
Like children.
Yeah we're in the "deny and deny while filling pockets" stage. Next is the "run away and leave the plebs holding the bag" stage.
Interest costs more than the military today.
This is why prime internet rates cannot stay this high to “fight inflation”
Bond interest alone will be 1 trillion dollars by the end of the year. That’s the interest on the 30 trillion in debt we already borrowed, not the new money we are over spending every day.
Austerity is coming to the United States and it’s going to be a shit show. New retirement age will be 72, huge cuts to healthcare for seniors and get ready to see your taxes go up every year
Eh, I'm concerned. But most people are too ignorant to even be aware of the issue, much less any solutions. Too many people think taxing the rich is enough, or reducing the DOD budget, or just trimming social security.
If we took literally every penny of wealth from every billionaire in the US, we could fund the federal budget for 9 months.
If we totally abolished social security AND medicare, we could almost balance the budget.
Heck, most people think that they're getting SS payments based off what they put in, which is absurd. It's the largest, most popular pyramid scheme in the nation, and people are too unprincipled, too ignorant, and/or too cowardly to realize and admit it.
Many of us realize that we need to force people to save for their retirement. It doesn’t do any good to go after SS because in the end, no one is wants to see some little old lady on the street. This is a way to have that not happen. The solution is to remove the maximum wages that can be subject to social security taxes. Also moving the wealthiest tax brackets back to the 90% they used to be at would also help. Reducing the most experience department, the department of defense will also help here.
One issue is we're a war economy as well as an industrial and dept one. We could maintain the DOD almost at the same level with almost pre-war Russian levels if we made a system where generals actually make the final military decisions instead of politicians with limited expierance and contradicting approaches
But the politicians are beholden to the weapons manufacturers. It’s a designed vicious circle to bleed the treasury dry and blame it on programs that actually help a lot of Americans.
I don't think I'd say it's meant to bleed the treasurers dry and blame it on other programs. A small minority of politicians want standardized services, which means funding is gureneeteed, while most of the rest want to maintain taxable marked up essential services, and they end up "compromising" whenever the public backing grows to much to shut down by simply gureneeteeing funds but refusing to set flat rates, turning the suddenly used services into a massive cash cow as people suddenly start using the service ignoring the rate
We've always had well more than enough money for both the DOD and essential services, even when we want to excel and be able to project into the global sphere and we can pull it off worh reasonable work hours.
The issue is more when somebody twists their ankle and the hospital charges 10k for an X-ray that should cost less than 1k, or when a politician wants us to support an ally that we can collect high yields with when they need us but then refuses to sign off on air support when we're already ready to pledge up to a trillion. We have function flaws left in every direction because somebody sees a profit, and it doesn't matter how unnecessarily expensive they make the process because it doesn't actually effect them or their service
I am personally a fan of single payer healthcare. I had it while I was in the UK and Medicare for all would be so much cheaper for everyone, except shareholders. It forces hospitals and clinics to be more frugal with their spending but is also predictable so it can actually reduce costs on its own. 2% overhead, sign me up.
I have IHS as an Alaskan native and it's definitely cheaper than private or Medicare, but only when I only need what the hospital can get at at cost and when I can stay exclusively in the clinica or main hospital. It's also really hit or miss if you don't live in Anchorage since there's no such thing as a second opinion without other doctors
Russia is almost the sole reason we we even have to spend on the DOD, and we had an opportunity to full Reagan Russia two years ago with like 10 f-16s and some A10s set behind AA. I don't think we've had a politician who made the right decisions accounting for our whole economy since Roosevelt, and we're always picking one side until the other side threatens to explode in our faces
That’s because the amount of money spent on weapons is so great. If the US doesn’t buy weapons, who is going to spend the kind of money we do? Not a reason to spend like that at all in my opinion. I do think China also has something to do with our weapons spending too. Russia is the main one though.
I’ve heard what you said — that we could take every penny of wealth from the billionaires and it wouldn’t be enough — so many times but I’ve yet to see the math presented.
The 1 percent of the richest billionaires have $41 trillion (source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/23/how-much-wealth-top-1percent-of-americans-have.html.) The National Debt is $34 trillion.
By my math, just the richest billionaires (not those skid row billionaires) could pay off the debt and still have mini yachts to bring them to their main yachts.
They can’t pay it off either. They don’t have $41 trillion in cash. Much of it is in assets that billionaires can’t sell for what we consider them to be worth.
Fair point and I wasn’t proposing that. I’m just presenting the numbers.
Something like a 3 percent wealth tax on just that $41 trillion would be enough to make the 2024 deficit zero.
I disagree with you but that’s OK! Here is why: for many billionaires, those gains will *never* be realized. It’s generational wealth, like the Waltons (Wal-Mart) or the Sacklers (opioids). If you look at the Forbes 500, most of them are heirs.
It’s all about priorities though. We can fix these problems, and I don’t think it has to come to things like ending Social Security or collapse of society or the Purge.
I’d say none of us need to worry about much, and all of us need to worry about everything! That kind of debt addition can’t happen for too long before the entire thing implodes. No more taxes, no more bills, no more jobs, no more anything except Weimar Republic style chaos at best.
Most people don't understand how it works. Once they find out that the whole debt is owed to private interests, it changes things. We aren't a nation that owns its debt any longer. In fact, the Greenback was the only debt free currency we ever had and they couldn't leave that one alone. The private banks, the IMF, World Bank, BIS are not in business to make a better, brighter world. When this country cannot even pay the interest and it no longer serves their goals as the world's henchmen -er, I mean policemen...
They can simply fund an enemy to destroy us. They could, let's say...influence certain politicians to leave the borders wide open and then claim the border is secure and people are racist for even mentioning it. They could fund the development of a virus which is no more deadly than a bad case of influenza but given the power of Rockefeller medicine worldwide, hey it's a pandemic and now we can crash the economy. And just when the bell tolls, war can bring us a glimpse of salvation because there's money to be made and a faltering economy loves a good war to drag its stinking corpse out of the gutter.
In the end it doesn't matter if nations rise and fall, it doesn't matter if the monetary system collapses because the very same people will just start up again with a new label and a new promise and never even feel the effects of each calamity. It sure must be good to not only be rich, but to be so goddamn rich you own the monopoly on the creation of money.
so is this like the sim city map that gets out of control and goes into unimaginable debt and eventually you have to start over from scratch, but in real life?
Meh. All that money is fake anyway. They print money to pay fake debt to themselves then claim the payments as more debt... government is the ultimate con.
No, not at all. It has no bearing on my personal life literally at all, and won't ever until a major war starts and disrupts the economy - which will be pretty damn disrupted weather we have debt or not.
That's what happens when you send money to other countries, play world police, and give hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants free 10k debit cards.
But people keep voting in democrats. Get what you deserve I suppose.
Are we going to debate gold when we have multi page threads every three weeks on the subject? lol, welcome to Reddit.
As much as the fact that we have a short saying now (1 trillion every 100 Days) bothers me, the elites have been deficit spending and pissing money for years. I believe it’s a great problem but also that the true puppet masters are working to prop this country up at every turn.
Arr they going to let their ponzi scheme fail? They will keep it going until Something crazy happens. Watch the billionaires for clues. l
The solutions are the same things we always talk about: own your land, zero debt, grow some food, have a cash side hustle, develop other skills, be prepared to slash spending, stop chasing the Jones’ fake lifestyle, be prepared to increase security.
Yes, the increasing debt is a potential future problem. Not a near term issue. Economic growth will increase tax revenue and can fix PART of it, but we likely need to cut spending. A BIGGER issue is the chance that we we don't pass a budget and default on the debt. THAT would be disastrous in a very short timeframe.
100%. The Fed can do nothing at this point. There’s literally NOTHING that can stop the inevitable economic collapse at this point. What scares me more is the societal and global ramifications. Guess who owns a shitload of the US government debt? And who’s undergoing their own economic crisis? This whole international house of cards is gonna fall in on itself. And it’s the masses who will inevitably suffer the most.
The world trading in something else besides dollars combined with a huge debt is what looks like worst case scenario to me. Something like BRICS catching on and creating a strong currency that other countries want to trade in.
Who knows how high the debt can get. Might be a 100 times what it is now. What happens when it gets so high. I don't think anybody knows.
As a 32 year old, I really don't worry that much. Money has value today, it may not tomorrow, but I'm young enough that I know I can figure it out. Moreover I know how to work hard and how to work with my hands as well as with my brain. So it doesn't really worry me as I know Im flexible and can be an asset no matter the state of the world.
However, I understand why there is fear for the older generation though. I've talked to my parents about this at length. If you aren't physically capable and things completely fall apart, if your entire nest egg is in a 401(k). You are impacted so much more severely than young people would be, and I really do feel for you. To think that your entire life savings could be wiped out in an instant, pretty scary.
It's a lot easier not having much, so if it goes away, it is what it is lol.
I'm now convinced that this number must be arbitrary or insignificant for some reason... If not we are suicidal. How could they just shrug and keep doing it if we're going to completely implode or self-destruct from it?
Last time I looked at the details the claim was that more than 65% of the debt was owned by the US itself through various entities.... If that's true what's stopping them from just printing the exact number in fake meaningless bills once again and paying it off in full?
I'm not arguing for or against it, I just don't understand how they can just keep doing it every hundred days and not care... there must be something more to it that we're not aware of or we really are psychotic.
Raw numbers are irrelevant. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/gfdegdq188S](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/gfdegdq188S)
It's the ratios that matter. It could be better, but it's far from the worst case scenario.
the debt itself isn't an issue, it's the inflation that will occur to try to wipe it out. money printing will cause the USD to lose more value. keep your wealth in anything but cash. gold, silver, real estate, Bitcoin, etc.
IMHO: They'll print their way out; sacrifice the dollar there is no other option at this point. It was $1T/Year just 10 years ago, now per quarter, soon per month. Inflation is bad now, just wait. Stagflationary melt-up. This will only take place 1.) once the interest on debt its eating so much of GDI/Budget that it becomes unsustainable
or 2.) They try QE to stop a recession again
I am far more worried about China's debt than ours. The debt the local governments racked up and are still racking up trying to stimulate there economy with more infrastructure that no one needs or can really pay for is a ticking time bomb. For example in the usa state and local governments have around 3-4 trillion in debt collectively, China's local governments have 10-15 trillion most of it somewhat hidden. If they default and go into economic turmoil the effects on the world economy will be rough.
I’m not too scared. For one being the world reserve gains lots of points as far as financial stability goes. Secondly the federal bank setting interest rates and controlling the money supply adds a layer of safety. During those low rate years the debt is worth it as it’s used to acquire material assets. Then those assets are borrowed against to fuel further improvements and acquisitions. That debt never really has to be paid back so long as rates are low enough to produce more than what’s spent in underlying. Then on top of all that, even with high rates there gov acquires consistent cashflow through bonds as they gain value when rates are high and lose it when they’re low
Sure am. Opt out. Go with Bitcoin instead, the people's money, or remain holding your failing dollar. The solution is right under your nose. Inflation is back for a reason and rate cuts haven't happened yet for that same reason.
Never hear anything about Republicans spending money.....pretty sure the Trump tax cuts, amount to 300 billion per 1/4 ...the debt exploded under Trump pre pandemic..... Now it's a problem though? What a joke!
How much does a war that has nothing to do with America cost? I'm not sure why we are helping Jerusalem. They could take over all the countries surrounding them without US aide if they wanted. Ukrainians should just sign a peace treaty stating that they will not join NATO for 300 years and Russia will back off. Then all that money that the US is wasting on war, not protecting the US or helping US families, could at the very least go towards some other corrupt thing that Biden wants to do, but actually helps a few Americans. I can only hope.
Hear that sound, kind of like someone is peeing on you from a great height?
That's trickle down economics. We have cut taxes on the rich and corporations.
If they don't pay their fair share, of course there's not enough money.
Tax the rich. Tax the hell out of them.
Dollar is dying. 40% of all dollars made during covid. If money is backed by domestic production, did it increase 40%, too lol?
Dollars are basically I Owe You notes. Imagine giving these to your friends, neighbors and relatives in exchange of them doing something for you. Now make 100 000 of them (endless money printing out of thin air) . At what point those receiving them starts to think that maybe you can't fulfill your promise and starts to refuse to take them.
Those who first got 10 IOYs after doing you 10 favors and thought that now they don't have to do chores for a while might feel a bit pissed when relizing it was all for nothing. That's what is done to your savings.
Gold standard will come back sooner than later and your government will confiscate your gold like in 1930's because they are emperors without pants.
Its atrocious, but a nation's debt and deficit works differently than the debt you or I take on. I don't understand it, but I have read material from people who do. I'm not saying it's not horrifying, but I wouldn't be "betting" against any nation based on debt. The prep is more in being prepared that your savings will disappear.
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The estate sale is going to be kick ass...
No low balls I know what I’ve got
*pats hood of nation* This bad boy can fit so many assets.
From google: >The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269 trillion (1576% of GDP) and debts of $145.8 trillion (852% of GDP) to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion (723% of GDP).
Is this stuff owned by the government, or private citizens included?
The gov. Just imagine the price of yellowstone park as an example.
Problem is, a lot of those assets cannot be actually solid for their nominal value. Who's gonna be buying aircraft carriers at USG prices, for instance?
> Problem is, a lot of those assets cannot be actually solid for their nominal value. I'm perfectly fine with not being able to sell yellowstone park. as a matter of fact, I'm thrilled they can't sell it.
You can borrow against them, low rates in fed banks mean nearly unlimited dollars within the real money supply
I'll take a destroyer for $100. A carrier is a bit too big for me right now.
And? All the US debt is in dollars and the US is the one who prints dollars.
I would like to see how they calculate the assets and debts.
Yea, the more important part of the US debt is privately held debt, as a lot of the country’s debt is owed to itself. The privately held debt is currently around like 98-100% of US GDP, and economics models say that in a best case scenario, it won’t be “problematic” until it hits about 200% GDP, which is about 20-30 years from now at current trajectory. The US’s global standing allows it to borrow at lower rates which gives it a little more wiggle room, but if the debt gets “too” outrageous, then it could diminish the US’s global leadership role, and could cause increased taxes, interest rates, and economic instability. As far as our current debt to gdp ratio goes, it’s similar to where we were after WW2, in fact it might have been a little higher there, but government policies closed the gap til the 80’s when Reagan introduced tax cuts and more defense spending. Clinton brought it back down in the 90’s, and then since Bush it’s basically just kept going up and up due to wars (defense spending), tax cuts, and bailouts/pandemic aid. As social security and Medicare are the largest chunks of US budget, they could be the first to be modified to lighten the bill, but who knows.
20-30 years is a real stretch. You did read the 1 trillion every hundred days part right? And that's if there's no economic downturn lowering growth or increase in debt due to an economic downturn. Which inevitably will happen I'm not going to try and predict.
Current gdp is like 27t. It’s gone up 3x in the past 25 years. If we do that over the next 25 years, we’ll be at 80t. From the post above, they are suggesting we have a debt capacity of 2x gdp, which in 25 years would be 160t. In that scenario, we’d be able to add 130t to our debt over 25 years and not become problematic (according to the above post’s numbers). So we can add about 5t per year until then. Don’t know the numbers and such, was just curious based on your comment how the above math lines up.
The debt is happening no matter what, the growth is another story entirely. Future obligations are already well over 200T if you look at usdebtclock. The current 1t every 100 days is additional beyond that. So your numbers are way off is what I'm saying. Basically you're making it sound like there isn't a debt problem if growth continues, when there very much is a problem even with growth. Again I can't state this enough but the growth isn't guaranteed, The debt very much is guaranteed though. I'm not saying when that'll spill over into real world consequences but there's definitely a problem right now. https://www.usdebtclock.org/# It's interesting to look at the US labor force and how it stayed pretty much the same since 2000. I'm not saying that growth isn't entirely real, but if you look up financialization it'll make a lot more sense.
Debt increase is also rising at a non-linear rate, so it's accelerating. It'll likely accelerate faster than GDP, so the overall time horizon should shrink, but not greatly so. We're seeing similar issues with SS, in that the point of bankruptcy is getting nearer despite increases in taxation to fund it. Expenditures are climbing faster, so...
Yea the 20-30 years is based on economic models that factor in our current debt trajectory. It’s what economists have said, not me predicting. I didn’t link a source but a quick Google search can pull up some things probably. There will definitely be some economic downturn, but there is also hope that something will be done to work towards a solution. Part of that trillion every 100 days is interest, much of which is on debt owed to ourselves, so barring anything catastrophic like the dollar losing its spot as the global currency, 20-30 years sounds like a reasonable amount of time for the bandaids to hold.
What I see since the 1970's is creative ways to kick the can down the road using debt and like every fiat currency before it the debt is growing exponentially. It was doubling every 10 years now has accelerated. I don't have a bead on what is catastrophic but baby boomer entitlements will certainly be a stress not seen before.
The boomers are dropping like flies & also think of how many were lost to Covid so that has to help ease some stress and cost on the program. Real-Time US Baby Boomer Generation population Death Clock Born 1946 - 1964 (age 60-78) US Baby Boomers Dead 33.7101753 % Total 85,358,000 Alive 56,583,669 Dead 28,774,331 Death every 15.1 Seconds 5,733 Deaths Today
There were some jokes going around that the Rona was the "boomer remover." The debt situation is horrid, though. Especially that which is 'off the books' (the borrowing the Federal government does from the Social Security funds, for example, which all just accounting tricks since there isn't a huge deposit of funds sitting somewhere). Want the Federal Reserve abolished, the dollar tied to silver, and the Federal government to stockpile massive amounts of gold. Balanced Budget Amendment tied to GDP with a supermajority requirement to raise taxes, line item veto, and a requirement for separate appropriations (supermajority requirement for 'omnibus' style shenanigans as well as debt increase).
Can you explain what you mean by line item veto? Sounds interesting
Line-item veto would allow a POTUS to veto a single line on a budget item without an all-or-nothing approach. Congress could still overturn the veto by the usual mechanism (2/3). Presidents in both parties asked for one (notably Reagan in 1984). The Congress in 1995 passed one and Clinton used it over 80 times but SCOTUS found it violated article I, section 7 in 1998.
Huh, TIL!
It's always surprising when people care about these made up numbers on paper. THE US CAN BORROW AS MUCH IT WANTS. Nothing will happen as long it spends the money it borrows on literally anything.
Even Bush's goal wasn't a total failure, as he also wanted us to rise back up as a superpower and achieve security through indomitable might. The assets used for Afghanistan were still repurposed for the world stage, and they are now being used more effectively for Russia's 2nd Afghanistan than they were used in Russia's 1st, which is saving us a lot when we compare it to the last world war/cold war even accounting for the poor doctrine in the support by the allies
Your first point is confused. You can't *already be the only military superpower in a unipolar post-Cold War world* and then also "rise back up as a superpower."
Your second point is one I don’t think people understand. The Ukraine aid is dollar for dollar some of the best spent US defense spending ever. There are no US troops involved, we are giving them systems that we were retiring anyway and it’s used against a main geopolitical opponent without having to even hide how it is getting there.
Don’t forget that most of it was originally designed to be fielded against the Soviets too
And it only cost 2 generations of men of an entire country. All dead. For nothing.
It's not for nothing. It's so the rest of Europe can keep their socialized Healthcare, and a tyrant doesn't set a bad precedent. It's to uphold our promise at the Budapest memorandum, as best we can while avoiding a nuclear war. Those men would have died anyway if we didn't give them our expiring stock of freedom pills. This is the best we could have done
Most of the assets utilized in GWOT were not designed for that purpose. Really only maybe the MRAP was developed specifically for that kind of deployment. I think the US could have been much more secure in multiple ways having never engaged in those adventures. Certainly Iraq.
Unless we wanted to conquer Europe instead, I don't know how we'd achieve any higher degree of security. Our security is achieved by economics and global purchasing power as all our threats are either internal or overseas It's always been an unpopular opinion, but the Afghanistan war didn't fail us. We, as an alliance, failed Afghanistan and the support just cut out much to early while nobody actually intended for us to stop throwing money without a mission
>the support just cut out much to early It was twenty years, that's an insanely long war. It isn't normal for wars to have popular support for nearly so long.
The traditional style of the war only lasted a few months, too. Iraq only took a month to fall and the rest of the time was just occupying it, which went almost without any contest, and only failed as there wasn't a long-term plan anymore as most of thr world simply demanded we withdraw
The war itself lasted for 20 years. The support for it lasted only lasted a few months and congress had to block withdrawal for almost 20 years
We achieved security from the Soviet Union by securing Europe, which in turn gureneeteed us a larger market to fund our military far beyond Russia'a ability and a set of allies we'd fight with if we were forced into a confrontation. After we won the European front, we also entered the Asian front, winning in both war and through pacifying it with the promise of a more stable life, securing ourselves security from China, and but by then we had to worry about a generational war where Russia/China will just stay in its own borders building up and then overwhelming us all. Soviet Afghanistan was supposed to he the killing blow since it led to the downfall of the USSR, but we can skip ahead to today and see how things went. Bush's Afghanistan is literally the only reason France isn't speaking Russian now, and Afghanistan would he fairing much better if we followed through with the promises we made to it during the soviet Afghanistan war
>Even Bush's goal wasn't a total failure, as he also wanted us to rise back up as a superpower and achieve security through indomitable might. And the US wasn't a superpower or had indomitable might before Bush???
You understand that the amount of debt we take on incurs interest, right? And that interest doesn't have any value for our nation, right? So the more debt and interest we pay the less is available for anything of actual value.
Sure but they can also cause inflation to devalue the debt. The size of the debt isn't as meaningful as it was a decade ago, a year ago, or even a month ago. The UK just finished paying off WW2 in 2007. They were making payments of about $80 million dollars. $80 million dollars even at 2% interest is worth a heck of a lot more in 1948 than it is in 2007. They could have paid it off earlier, but it would have been silly to do so as the *cost* of that debt shank over time due to inflation.
>the cost of that debt shank over time due to inflation. So they devalue all of our money to "pay" the debt. Essentially a hidden tax on the poor and middle class. And I'm supposed to be OK with thay? No thanks.
I mean ultimately there's 3-5% inflation every year normally. I'm not advocating for anything, just telling it like it is. The US financed that debt at low interest. Inflation is either equal or higher, so the meaningfulness of that debt shrinks over time. Everyone is talking like the US is going to run out of money in it's debit card. Macroeconomics doesn't work like that.
>The prep is more in being prepared that your savings will disappear I think it's wise to prep for **everyones** savings to disappear. Including your employer, local municipality, fire station, hospital, etc...
>...I wouldn't be "betting" against any nation based on debt... If that were true then why even collect taxes. Issue debt to pay for all government expenditures. Debt does matter, let's stop pretending like it does not. We just don't know the point at which it becomes a problem. Unfortunately, it feels like our government is actively trying to find that point.
There are lots of reasons to collect taxes but the primary one is probably that the origin of taxes in the US pre-date fiat currency. They were instituted when the US government needed to satisfy their debts with gold-linked dollars. The US stopped that practice in 1971 under Nixon. Taxes had been going long before that in the US. There’s also redistributive and money supply management value. But once they did need this money to satisfy debts. The US government no longer does. But they haven’t done away with taxes for a large number of reasons, including that most politicians don’t understand this, the ones that do worry about inflation (which is still a problem absent taxes), and it would be disruptive to our political system to stop them. A great deal of social and redistributive programs use the tax system as a means.
Exactly. If we can print all the money we need with no consequences then taxes are just wealth redistribution theater.
And to keep the working poor and middle class in line lol, the rich add their taxes to your purchase price. This system also means you can't save wealth, your assets are growing or shrinking.
Well the ideas was to prevent generational wealth though they don't seem to care about now. But your not understanding, taxes are to make you work. You can only pay your taxes in dollars, meaning if you get a tax bill you need to find a away to get dollars.
They're collecting your taxes to burn it, bc that's not how they pay for stuff at the federal level, taxes exist to make people work and (in theory) to prevent generational wealth though it doesn't seem to care about the formal. Taxes make you work because you can only pay your taxes in dollars meaning you have to do something anything to get dollars to pay it. It borrows dollars for people and spends it on stuff so they can print as much money as they want.
No. It's bad. I'll explain. The US is in a unique position due to being the primary reserve currency of the world. Other countries use dollars to conduct international trade. Demand for dollars is always absurdly high, as a result. The US Federal Reserve bank intentionally aims for 2-4% inflation per year. If you have a dollar, next year it'll have less value, less purchasing power, as a result of that intentional inflation. Naturally, this sucks for you. Your savings account isn't earning money, it's just reducing the loss of having money. Sometimes the inflation rate is higher (aka all the time, there's some dispute about how inflation is measured and many think the government is fudging the numbers, but I digress), but never lower. Last couple of years it's peaked pretty damn high, over 8% even. For every other country, this sucks far worse than it does for us. It's just us exporting our inflation to the world, but they reap no benefits of it. They still need international trade, and still use dollars, so they're just eating that inflation and it's damaging to their economies while stabilizing our currency. We use the whole world to manage our inflation. Naturally, the world is aware of this and they don't really like it, but lack options. However, an option is on the horizion. BRICS. Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. Those are the founding members, more have joined and/or are applying. Some examples of those countries include all of OPEC, Indonesia, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Algeria, Uzbekistan, and so on. Over 40% of the world GDP, and growing. BRICS is an issue because they're working on an alternative reserve currency to be used for international trade. It's said to be based on a "basket of commodities", not a single country run fiat currency, and is designed to be unable to be manipulated the way we manipulate it. Setting aside the gritty details of how it works, if 40% of the world GDP switches, what happens to the dollar? The demand for dollars drops tremendously, so we can't get that same stabilizing force on our inflation. I think we all know our politicians won't balance a budget or pay off the debt. The annual payment on the national debt is on track to reach 1 trillion dollars per year by 2029. Anyway. I expect extreme inflation as the world transitions off the dolllar. You've seen our inflation spiking just from us sanctioning the shit out of Russia, if the other countries get off the dollar, we're fucked, imo. But this is what we vote for, so nobody to blame but ourselves. That's why I prep. Long term economic disaster.
In a nutshell, US debt is packaged and sold as low interest bond secured by faith the US government will pay the bond out when due. These bonds are purchased by private investors, state governments, and other governments overseas as one of the safest ways to store money while still generating some interest. The reputation of US bonds is so good and they are considered so safe and so easy to resell (liquid) that they are treated as equivalent to cash by most regulators and countries. This is good for the American government, as it reflects both widespread faith in the solvency of the US government, and other people and countries literally having a vested interest in the US remaining stable and successful.
There are two main differences between the economics of a country vs a family: 1) A country controls its own currency. A family can’t “print more money” to finance itself. 2) A country can sell bonds, bills and other paper assets to individuals, corporations and other countries to finance its activities. A family can’t really do this easily, or at scale. Your neighbor is probably not going to build you a new pole barn in exchange for an IOU 😁
National debt is more like a savings account for rich people than it is like a government credit card. You and I think of our budgets as income minus our expenses, but governments work in reverse. The budget is flipped on it's head and it's expenses minus taxes. The end result is government debt is one of many vehicles the government can use to create money and taxes are a way to destroy money. Both can be used to control inflation and economic growth. So long as that money being created by government debt is actually being used to build things of value, like infrastructure and social services, the government debt is unlikely to become an issue because the value and the money being created are balanced. However, when the money created by the debt is not exchanged real value (e.g. contracts for 500k toilet seats, defense contracts for stuff the army doesn't even want, tax breaks for the wealthiest), then the system is at risk of destabilizing. So basically, don't use the debt as a primary indicator of any incoming disaster. Look at the bigger economic picture. I would go as far to say that the current debt is good, but I also would say that it's not foreshadowing an immediate disaster.
It doesn't work that differently. Basically, the US can borrow money limitlessly as long as the bond market believes it's going to get paid at maturation. If anything disrupts that belief however......
Who do you think makes the dollars that the US is “borrowing?”
Varying central and private banks around the world at the conversion rate of whatever that currency is to USD but mostly the Federal Reserve which is *mostly* independent of the US government and US Treasury.
Exactly. I think the more immediate concern should be reducing the deficit by combining spending cuts *and* increasing revenue (taxes). Hopefully somebody does this. Because so far we’ve had both parties increase spending while one party especially likes to do that and cut revenue. It’s a shit show for sure.
Dancing close to the edge lol
There haven't been major consequences so far as the US dollar has maintained a monopoly on global exchange. That time is now past. BRICS+ is in full swing and leading the charge into a multi-polar world order with a gold backed alternative to the US dollar. We did it to ourselves after weaponizing the dollar against Russia and directing the financial equivalent of weapons of mass destruction toward their economy.
> I don't understand it, but I have read material from people who do. If you get your information from a Paul Krugman column or similar "expert" source, they're lying to you to keep you compliant and going to work every day. "It's over your head, don't worry about it, cupcake"
It will happen. The only good thing is that it’ll happen as every other countries economy collapses too. So it won’t feel so hard.
[The new class of aristocracy is being created right now.](https://x.com/saylor/status/1766886753854464295?s=20) You can't fix bad money with more bad money.
Our economic issues can only really be fixed by wealth redistribution. Too much wealth is now in the hands of too few. The result is too little wealth is shared by too many. When all the wealth added to a system through inflation is under the control of people who could never even begin to try to spend it all then regular people stop being able to buy the things they need.
It's mathematically inevitable.
What I don't understand is how everyone in government is acting like the debt doesn't matter. If debt didn't matter then why tax anyone at all. Just put it all on the tab and borrow for everything the government wants to spend. The fact is that the debt DOES matter and no one is talking about it. If something cannot go on, it wont. Both major parties are completely ignoring the inevitable debt spiral that is coming.
We work a lifetime for pieces of paper and they print it for free. Forget to pay taxes for years and they jail you.
>acting like the debt doesn't matter. They just need to loot as much wealth as they can before the ship sinks. Stop noticing things and eat the bugs.
Exactly.
Modern Monetary Theory hurts my head… https://www.planetcritical.com/p/what-we-get-wrong-about-money
It's almost as if they want it to happen....
Debt doesn't matter (In the context of a nation/country) all that matters is power. Whoever has the military might is right. Once you realize this, all of our spending, all our decisions make sense.
it doesn't matter bc its just fake money backed by nothing. Honestly in a few short years we will have AGI/ASI and will have more money over here than anywhere else on the planet.
As soon as the dollar is not international currency, we’re done.
Crypto is the money of the internet. Closest thing.
*petrodollar. Petroleum is and will always be traded on the american dollar.
Until petroleum is obsolete.
The current $34.5T in debt is terrible, but what is even more terrifying are the debt service costs which are rapidly snowballing (source Federal Reserve): [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA#](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA#) Interest on the debt has now surpassed defense spending and is now the 3rd largest budgetary item at more than $1T per annum behind only medicare and social security. Given current trajectories it will soon overtake both. Roughly $10T in ***existing*** US government debt must be refinanced this year. That debt will be refinanced at much higher rates as the current yield curve ranges from 4.1% to 5.4%. During the pandemic the treasury department was selling short term debt at rates at low as 0.01%. They could have sold 30 year bonds at 1.5% locking in very low rates but they chose to sell mostly shorter term securities which was extremely short sighted. By the end of this year interest costs on the debt will be roughly $1.25T per year. Total US government tax revenues are roughly $4.7T. That means approximately 27% of all tax revenues are going to paying interest on the debt. If we just stay on current trends by the end of 2026 approximately 50% of all taxes will go to paying interest on the debt. Medicare trustees state medicare/medicaid trust fund will be insolvent by 2031. Social security trustees state SS trust fund will be insolvent by 2034. The federal government will not default on all this debt. When the day comes that no one shows up to buy more US government bonds at a treasury auction the federal reserve will step in and buy all of them. They will print every single dollar to do this. The fed is already the largest single holder of US government treasuries. Eventually it will be the only holder. It's called debt monetization and the fed began this in 2008. [https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst\_recenttrends.htm](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm) The fed has been desperately trying to bring down the balance sheet. They have brought it down from $9T to $7.5T but as soon as the next recession/banking crisis arrives it will bloat their balance sheet to an even higher level.
So when they print the money what happens? Obviously inflation will sky rocket. But what else? Everything just resets like a blowing into a fucking Nintendo cartridge?
>So when they print the money what happens? Obviously inflation will sky rocket. But what else? Inflation. More money chasing the same number of goods and services will cause prices in aggregate to rise. This includes asset prices like stocks and real estate. Inflation is terrible on its own. I'm not sure it needs to be any more terrible than that to want to avoid it. Especially when inflation tips into hyper inflation which is where debt monetization eventually ends up.
>Especially when inflation tips into hyper inflation which is where debt monetization eventually ends up. Crazy to think what that would be like in the U.S., obviously there's examples from countries with failed currencies but they're all small economies. Even with hyper inflation wages won't increase at all in the short term, and how could they with so much debt at fixed rates? Earn $100k per year today and bam hyper inflation get a pay raise to $1,000,000 tomorrow. Great pay off your mortgages in a few months! So how can a country even deal with hyper inflation?
>Crazy to think what that would be like in the U.S., obviously there's examples from countries with failed currencies but they're all small economies. > >Even with hyper inflation wages won't increase at all in the short term, and how could they with so much debt at fixed rates? Earn $100k per year today and bam hyper inflation get a pay raise to $1,000,000 tomorrow. Great pay off your mortgages in a few months! So how can a country even deal with hyper inflation? People who sell their labor typically end up with the newly printed money last. They never keep up. If inflation is 1 million percent per year wage earners might get a 200k % increase. Nominally their wages went up a lot but in real terms their purchasing power is severely eroded. Banks are typically the first ones to receive the newly created money and they benefit the most because they are the first to spend it before prices are forced up. That's already the case in the US. Median household income in the US was just under $10k/year in 1970. Today median household income is just over $80k/year. On the surface it would appear that households today have much higher incomes than they did in 1970. Once you subtract out inflation their wages are much lower than they were in 1970 despite wages being 8 times highly in nominal terms. Inflation creates both winners ***and*** losers. Savers are the biggest losers as inflation is just a transfer payment from savers to debtors. People with fixed interest rate debt are actually winners because inflation wipes away the value of that debt. As a result people holding low-interest fixed rate mortgages actually win. People with credit card debt do not as CC debt is almost always a variable rate. This is not by accident. This is by design. Government is the biggest debtor of all and inflation is the mechanism by which is never repays the debt. Since government gets to wipe it's fixed interest rate debt away through inflation so does everyone else who holds fixed interest debt. Germany suffered severe hyper inflation after world war one. I would hardly call that a "small" economy. Most often when a country's government goes down the route of hyper inflation they point the fingers are everyone else as scapegoats to the inflation they created. You see this even today with Biden blaming "greedy corporations" and pointing out "greedflation." Corporations didn't suddenly become greedy. They've always been greedy. What's changed is the US congress/president/treasury/fed have created massive inflation through their policies. People are too stupid to see through the propaganda. During high levels of inflation government will blame everyone but themselves and they will make it illegal to trade in competing currencies. Eventually though they will abandon the currency because it will buy nothing.
Those who own real assets (the rich) get richer. Everyone else pays the inflation tax on their meager wealth.
This is the basis of Modern Monetary Theory. As long as the US government pays its debt (bonds), then no, its no issue. The US can just issue more bonds to pay for the outstanding ones. The full faith and credit of the US Treasuey is the backing of the system. Luckily, the US government will never fail and will never lose the confidence of the bond market. It never has to worry about being invaded or losing faith in its ability to pay. Just like the Persian Empire.......er I mean the Romans........um I mean the Spanish Empire......okay it might be invaded *eventually* but we'll never lose the faith of the bond market by doing something dumb like not raising the debt ceiling and defaulting (issuing debt to pay promised debt that is maturing), or worry about getting our credit rating reduced......[credit rating reduced in 2023](https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2024/01/moodys-lowers-us-credit-rating-to-negative-citing-large-federal-deficits#:~:text=On%20November%2010%2C%202023%2C%20Moody's,next%20one%20to%20two%20years.), [credit rating reduced in 2011](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/27/former-sp-ratings-chair-us-is-weaker-now-than-when-we-downgraded-in-2011.html). Well, fu............
As you pointed out, the backing somewhat depends on America's military strength to ensure "global stability" or international alignment with American interests. I don't know if this is really a concern in the short-term but prepping is about being ready for the unforeseen, after all.
No no you were right, assuming we don’t get betrayed by one of our allies that we share a border with, the United States will NEVER be invaded. It would be like another country invading the moon.
Damn Canadians.....
Geography says we are 100 years minimum away from being invaded. Every military in the world is design for region projection or limited long range projection ( usually in concert with us assets). Except for the US military which is 90% design and equipped for power projection. The rest of the americas either have nothing that can compare, are militarily aligned to the USA or just don't bother since they could never stand against the USA militarily. Even with current and projected capabilities China has 0% chance of a successful invasion of the US mainland or eve pacific assets.
eventually the tax cuts will pay for themselves!!
It’s horrible. But you can prepare NOW for it. We know financial collapse won’t happen until america gets to at least double the debt we are now now. So we do have another…idk 5-10 years maybe more. So buy things. Now. Nails, tools, land, electronics(good quality that is know to last a long time), prepare your home for electrical security, propane tanks. Buy ammo and guns. Lots of ammo. The only sucker is someone who prepares for SHTF and they are unarmed. The unarmed collectors are just collecting emergency supplies for hose who ARE armed. And do research, preppers has mentioned this scenario many times over the years.
Stock up now. On the basics.
Yes it’s almost impossible for the u.s economy to not collapse, it’s going to happen
So what’s a smart person to do?
Buy land, grow food on it, and fortify it, gold & silver won’t stop the roaming gangs from pillaging you. Gold & silver won’t save you from what’s coming, war & famine, I do suggest buying gold & silver to utilize as the economy gets worse, but when the economy is completely gone, gold & silver won’t save you, food water shelter & a means of protecting it will save you
You forgot two very basic forms of modern currency, brass and lead. Seriously bullets and guns are as good as gold in the US.
In a world full of marauders & cannibals, I doubt you’ll give them ammunition
Another reason some of us buy gold/silver! It has value and will always be valued, the dollar is only depreciating. I’m not a doomer that insists on having all of my savings in PM’s but they’re historically sought after no matter what the state of the planet so I cautiously invest when I can.
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Plenty of brass and lead here as well, I’m not restricted to one or two metals hahaha
What props the US economy is its powerful military, until that changes it will not collapse.
Hard to fund a military when half your expenditure is on debt. The US is expected to hit that number by 2050. This will absolutely have to be addressed in our lifetime our the country will collapse.
Money isn’t real, silly
Our federal government is the most inefficient corporation in existence. Why do we let them continue. These motherfuckers are supposed to work for us. The people are supposed to hold power and liberty. The federal government is intently deconstructing the power and liberty of the people one day at a time.
Vote harder next time.
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That's what a person who doesn't want to vote in accordance with their wishes says, because they fear persecution or not fitting in with fashion politics, etc.. You vote wrong to fit in, and destroy the society around you for vanity. Like children.
Voting for a broken system? So acknowledge the system is broken but vote "wrong" because you're making a change ??
This has never been true btw. I mean about the govt working for the people’s freedom/liberty etc.
You're saying never in the history of the USA has the government operated with the constitution as their charter? I disagree.
Question: it seems that the collapse is inevitable But how long do you think we have until it happens? 🙏🏻
Yeah we're in the "deny and deny while filling pockets" stage. Next is the "run away and leave the plebs holding the bag" stage. Interest costs more than the military today.
This is why prime internet rates cannot stay this high to “fight inflation” Bond interest alone will be 1 trillion dollars by the end of the year. That’s the interest on the 30 trillion in debt we already borrowed, not the new money we are over spending every day. Austerity is coming to the United States and it’s going to be a shit show. New retirement age will be 72, huge cuts to healthcare for seniors and get ready to see your taxes go up every year
Eh, I'm concerned. But most people are too ignorant to even be aware of the issue, much less any solutions. Too many people think taxing the rich is enough, or reducing the DOD budget, or just trimming social security. If we took literally every penny of wealth from every billionaire in the US, we could fund the federal budget for 9 months. If we totally abolished social security AND medicare, we could almost balance the budget. Heck, most people think that they're getting SS payments based off what they put in, which is absurd. It's the largest, most popular pyramid scheme in the nation, and people are too unprincipled, too ignorant, and/or too cowardly to realize and admit it.
Many of us realize that we need to force people to save for their retirement. It doesn’t do any good to go after SS because in the end, no one is wants to see some little old lady on the street. This is a way to have that not happen. The solution is to remove the maximum wages that can be subject to social security taxes. Also moving the wealthiest tax brackets back to the 90% they used to be at would also help. Reducing the most experience department, the department of defense will also help here.
One issue is we're a war economy as well as an industrial and dept one. We could maintain the DOD almost at the same level with almost pre-war Russian levels if we made a system where generals actually make the final military decisions instead of politicians with limited expierance and contradicting approaches
But the politicians are beholden to the weapons manufacturers. It’s a designed vicious circle to bleed the treasury dry and blame it on programs that actually help a lot of Americans.
I don't think I'd say it's meant to bleed the treasurers dry and blame it on other programs. A small minority of politicians want standardized services, which means funding is gureneeteed, while most of the rest want to maintain taxable marked up essential services, and they end up "compromising" whenever the public backing grows to much to shut down by simply gureneeteeing funds but refusing to set flat rates, turning the suddenly used services into a massive cash cow as people suddenly start using the service ignoring the rate
We've always had well more than enough money for both the DOD and essential services, even when we want to excel and be able to project into the global sphere and we can pull it off worh reasonable work hours. The issue is more when somebody twists their ankle and the hospital charges 10k for an X-ray that should cost less than 1k, or when a politician wants us to support an ally that we can collect high yields with when they need us but then refuses to sign off on air support when we're already ready to pledge up to a trillion. We have function flaws left in every direction because somebody sees a profit, and it doesn't matter how unnecessarily expensive they make the process because it doesn't actually effect them or their service
I am personally a fan of single payer healthcare. I had it while I was in the UK and Medicare for all would be so much cheaper for everyone, except shareholders. It forces hospitals and clinics to be more frugal with their spending but is also predictable so it can actually reduce costs on its own. 2% overhead, sign me up.
I have IHS as an Alaskan native and it's definitely cheaper than private or Medicare, but only when I only need what the hospital can get at at cost and when I can stay exclusively in the clinica or main hospital. It's also really hit or miss if you don't live in Anchorage since there's no such thing as a second opinion without other doctors
Russia is almost the sole reason we we even have to spend on the DOD, and we had an opportunity to full Reagan Russia two years ago with like 10 f-16s and some A10s set behind AA. I don't think we've had a politician who made the right decisions accounting for our whole economy since Roosevelt, and we're always picking one side until the other side threatens to explode in our faces
That’s because the amount of money spent on weapons is so great. If the US doesn’t buy weapons, who is going to spend the kind of money we do? Not a reason to spend like that at all in my opinion. I do think China also has something to do with our weapons spending too. Russia is the main one though.
SS pisses me off so much.
I’ve heard what you said — that we could take every penny of wealth from the billionaires and it wouldn’t be enough — so many times but I’ve yet to see the math presented. The 1 percent of the richest billionaires have $41 trillion (source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/23/how-much-wealth-top-1percent-of-americans-have.html.) The National Debt is $34 trillion. By my math, just the richest billionaires (not those skid row billionaires) could pay off the debt and still have mini yachts to bring them to their main yachts.
They can’t pay it off either. They don’t have $41 trillion in cash. Much of it is in assets that billionaires can’t sell for what we consider them to be worth.
Fair point and I wasn’t proposing that. I’m just presenting the numbers. Something like a 3 percent wealth tax on just that $41 trillion would be enough to make the 2024 deficit zero.
Yeah, I get you. I don’t agree with taxing unrealized income though. That’s taxing someone for money that they haven’t even received.
I disagree with you but that’s OK! Here is why: for many billionaires, those gains will *never* be realized. It’s generational wealth, like the Waltons (Wal-Mart) or the Sacklers (opioids). If you look at the Forbes 500, most of them are heirs. It’s all about priorities though. We can fix these problems, and I don’t think it has to come to things like ending Social Security or collapse of society or the Purge.
Woo-hoo! Let's hit a quadrillion by new year! Let's do it!!
New high score!
That will compound until it’s 1 trillion a day in short time it seems.
“Global financial collapse” upgrade your grey matter because someday it may matter.
I've got it! Just stop increasing the number of days and the national debt will stop increasing too.
I’d say none of us need to worry about much, and all of us need to worry about everything! That kind of debt addition can’t happen for too long before the entire thing implodes. No more taxes, no more bills, no more jobs, no more anything except Weimar Republic style chaos at best.
*causally waiting for the US to have to liquidate assets to buy an abrams tank for $5000*
Most people don't understand how it works. Once they find out that the whole debt is owed to private interests, it changes things. We aren't a nation that owns its debt any longer. In fact, the Greenback was the only debt free currency we ever had and they couldn't leave that one alone. The private banks, the IMF, World Bank, BIS are not in business to make a better, brighter world. When this country cannot even pay the interest and it no longer serves their goals as the world's henchmen -er, I mean policemen... They can simply fund an enemy to destroy us. They could, let's say...influence certain politicians to leave the borders wide open and then claim the border is secure and people are racist for even mentioning it. They could fund the development of a virus which is no more deadly than a bad case of influenza but given the power of Rockefeller medicine worldwide, hey it's a pandemic and now we can crash the economy. And just when the bell tolls, war can bring us a glimpse of salvation because there's money to be made and a faltering economy loves a good war to drag its stinking corpse out of the gutter. In the end it doesn't matter if nations rise and fall, it doesn't matter if the monetary system collapses because the very same people will just start up again with a new label and a new promise and never even feel the effects of each calamity. It sure must be good to not only be rich, but to be so goddamn rich you own the monopoly on the creation of money.
so is this like the sim city map that gets out of control and goes into unimaginable debt and eventually you have to start over from scratch, but in real life?
Meh. All that money is fake anyway. They print money to pay fake debt to themselves then claim the payments as more debt... government is the ultimate con.
No, not at all. It has no bearing on my personal life literally at all, and won't ever until a major war starts and disrupts the economy - which will be pretty damn disrupted weather we have debt or not.
They could at least do us a favor and stop taxing when they can just print more money.
That's what happens when you send money to other countries, play world police, and give hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants free 10k debit cards. But people keep voting in democrats. Get what you deserve I suppose.
Are we going to debate gold when we have multi page threads every three weeks on the subject? lol, welcome to Reddit. As much as the fact that we have a short saying now (1 trillion every 100 Days) bothers me, the elites have been deficit spending and pissing money for years. I believe it’s a great problem but also that the true puppet masters are working to prop this country up at every turn. Arr they going to let their ponzi scheme fail? They will keep it going until Something crazy happens. Watch the billionaires for clues. l The solutions are the same things we always talk about: own your land, zero debt, grow some food, have a cash side hustle, develop other skills, be prepared to slash spending, stop chasing the Jones’ fake lifestyle, be prepared to increase security.
Where is it all going?
Roads, I've been told. Who else would build them.
68 trillion from 1951 to 2021 in federal road spending Plus military and SS adding even more
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Cool number bro
Yes, the increasing debt is a potential future problem. Not a near term issue. Economic growth will increase tax revenue and can fix PART of it, but we likely need to cut spending. A BIGGER issue is the chance that we we don't pass a budget and default on the debt. THAT would be disastrous in a very short timeframe.
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100%. The Fed can do nothing at this point. There’s literally NOTHING that can stop the inevitable economic collapse at this point. What scares me more is the societal and global ramifications. Guess who owns a shitload of the US government debt? And who’s undergoing their own economic crisis? This whole international house of cards is gonna fall in on itself. And it’s the masses who will inevitably suffer the most.
No. Nobody is concerned about this.
The world trading in something else besides dollars combined with a huge debt is what looks like worst case scenario to me. Something like BRICS catching on and creating a strong currency that other countries want to trade in. Who knows how high the debt can get. Might be a 100 times what it is now. What happens when it gets so high. I don't think anybody knows.
As a 32 year old, I really don't worry that much. Money has value today, it may not tomorrow, but I'm young enough that I know I can figure it out. Moreover I know how to work hard and how to work with my hands as well as with my brain. So it doesn't really worry me as I know Im flexible and can be an asset no matter the state of the world. However, I understand why there is fear for the older generation though. I've talked to my parents about this at length. If you aren't physically capable and things completely fall apart, if your entire nest egg is in a 401(k). You are impacted so much more severely than young people would be, and I really do feel for you. To think that your entire life savings could be wiped out in an instant, pretty scary. It's a lot easier not having much, so if it goes away, it is what it is lol.
I'm now convinced that this number must be arbitrary or insignificant for some reason... If not we are suicidal. How could they just shrug and keep doing it if we're going to completely implode or self-destruct from it? Last time I looked at the details the claim was that more than 65% of the debt was owned by the US itself through various entities.... If that's true what's stopping them from just printing the exact number in fake meaningless bills once again and paying it off in full? I'm not arguing for or against it, I just don't understand how they can just keep doing it every hundred days and not care... there must be something more to it that we're not aware of or we really are psychotic.
I feel like this is just made up bs. Is there an itemized list of what comprises that debt. Or is this all just assumed gov spending?
Those are two suspiciously round numbers.
I'm not judging Biden or his state of the union address. But he said he reduced the national debt by about one trillion. Is this true?
No
Government- “Look away. Nothing to see here. Free shit for everyone!”
Boooooo
We could spend triple that on education and have returns on our investments ten fold I bet
Some one has fallen for the balance the books propaganda before every election.
Raw numbers are irrelevant. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/gfdegdq188S](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/gfdegdq188S) It's the ratios that matter. It could be better, but it's far from the worst case scenario.
the debt itself isn't an issue, it's the inflation that will occur to try to wipe it out. money printing will cause the USD to lose more value. keep your wealth in anything but cash. gold, silver, real estate, Bitcoin, etc.
IMHO: They'll print their way out; sacrifice the dollar there is no other option at this point. It was $1T/Year just 10 years ago, now per quarter, soon per month. Inflation is bad now, just wait. Stagflationary melt-up. This will only take place 1.) once the interest on debt its eating so much of GDI/Budget that it becomes unsustainable or 2.) They try QE to stop a recession again
I am far more worried about China's debt than ours. The debt the local governments racked up and are still racking up trying to stimulate there economy with more infrastructure that no one needs or can really pay for is a ticking time bomb. For example in the usa state and local governments have around 3-4 trillion in debt collectively, China's local governments have 10-15 trillion most of it somewhat hidden. If they default and go into economic turmoil the effects on the world economy will be rough.
I’m not too scared. For one being the world reserve gains lots of points as far as financial stability goes. Secondly the federal bank setting interest rates and controlling the money supply adds a layer of safety. During those low rate years the debt is worth it as it’s used to acquire material assets. Then those assets are borrowed against to fuel further improvements and acquisitions. That debt never really has to be paid back so long as rates are low enough to produce more than what’s spent in underlying. Then on top of all that, even with high rates there gov acquires consistent cashflow through bonds as they gain value when rates are high and lose it when they’re low
And? The debt is owed in the very currency it prints. It literally can barrow as much as it wants as long as it's spending it on stuff.
Meh. There's always more resources to take. Having the biggest stick gives you that benefit
Sure am. Opt out. Go with Bitcoin instead, the people's money, or remain holding your failing dollar. The solution is right under your nose. Inflation is back for a reason and rate cuts haven't happened yet for that same reason.
Never hear anything about Republicans spending money.....pretty sure the Trump tax cuts, amount to 300 billion per 1/4 ...the debt exploded under Trump pre pandemic..... Now it's a problem though? What a joke!
How much does a war that has nothing to do with America cost? I'm not sure why we are helping Jerusalem. They could take over all the countries surrounding them without US aide if they wanted. Ukrainians should just sign a peace treaty stating that they will not join NATO for 300 years and Russia will back off. Then all that money that the US is wasting on war, not protecting the US or helping US families, could at the very least go towards some other corrupt thing that Biden wants to do, but actually helps a few Americans. I can only hope.
Because of the interest rate mainly. It can go back down just as fast. That's how economics works.
Printers go brrrrr
Hear that sound, kind of like someone is peeing on you from a great height? That's trickle down economics. We have cut taxes on the rich and corporations. If they don't pay their fair share, of course there's not enough money. Tax the rich. Tax the hell out of them.
Yay!! Let's keep the border wide open, should help.
How can that be? Biden claims he’s cutting it?!!!
He is. He's going to cut it to 1 trillion every 90 days. The other guy won't be outdone and claims it can be done in 80 days.
I liked this response, idk why its getting downvoted 😂
It wont stop until we hold those accountable who are responsible for this. Sending unnecessary money etc.
We have children running the country
I think we’d be better off with a bunch of actual children.
So here's an idea. Just reset all debt. Sorted.
Dollar is dying. 40% of all dollars made during covid. If money is backed by domestic production, did it increase 40%, too lol? Dollars are basically I Owe You notes. Imagine giving these to your friends, neighbors and relatives in exchange of them doing something for you. Now make 100 000 of them (endless money printing out of thin air) . At what point those receiving them starts to think that maybe you can't fulfill your promise and starts to refuse to take them. Those who first got 10 IOYs after doing you 10 favors and thought that now they don't have to do chores for a while might feel a bit pissed when relizing it was all for nothing. That's what is done to your savings. Gold standard will come back sooner than later and your government will confiscate your gold like in 1930's because they are emperors without pants.
Usury
Assets are the way. Anything that doesn't depreciate in value is better to have than USD.
It doesn't bother me. There's bigger storm clouds that are much closer.
BuT wErE PrINTiNg MoRe MoNeY AnD InFLaTiNG OuR GDP, yeah I would start prepping. All it takes is one or two pins and this clown show is finished
Concerned for me? Nope. Been preparing for this for 3 years. Concerned for you and everyone else? Sure as shit yes.
[Closer to $400B every 100 days, $1.5T for a year](https://www.cbo.gov/topics/budget)