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Imagine how America would be transformed if that money could be diverted away from fighter jets and debt to oligarchs.

Allow me just one more statistic....

The Congressional Budget Office projects that interest costs in 2024 will total $892 billion — a jump of 36 percent from the previous year and following increases of 35 and 38 percent in each of the two years before that. This year’s high interest bill isn’t a one-year phenomenon, it’s part of a trend that stretches out into the future, as debt continues to climb and relatively high interest rates push up the cost of federal borrowing. Over the next decade, the U.S. government’s interest payments on the national debt are now projected to total $12.9 trillion

That's just the inerest...so just the cost of borrowing money, you don't even get any oligarchs or fighter jets for that money.

zorg wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 12:42 pm Slice this any way you want....but the "blinders on" approach seems to be popular. What a weird cultural shift that this is no longer a relevant topic.

What if I told you national debt has always been growing? What if that number were just an abstraction? What if in 1965 some fiscal alarmist pointed out how much debt every family in 1990 would have to pay to erase it..... and their numbers were pretty close.... and in 1990 nothing happened. Except another think tank predicted how severe the debt would be in 2010. And then nothing happened again.

There's no gold backing money, it's an abstract agreement that becomes more vague as you scale it up.

zorg wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 1:28 pm Allow me just one more statistic....

The Congressional Budget Office projects that interest costs in 2024 will total $892 billion — a jump of 36 percent from the previous year and following increases of 35 and 38 percent in each of the two years before that. This year’s high interest bill isn’t a one-year phenomenon, it’s part of a trend that stretches out into the future, as debt continues to climb and relatively high interest rates push up the cost of federal borrowing. Over the next decade, the U.S. government’s interest payments on the national debt are now projected to total $12.9 trillion

That's just the inerest...so just the cost of borrowing money, you don't even get any oligarchs or fighter jets for that money.

A lot of that interest is on debt to oligarchs that the government borrows from.

losthighway wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 1:52 pm There's no gold backing money, it's an abstract agreement that becomes more vague as you scale it up.

Well you're right that we'll just keep printing more money to pay the interest, but if you think this isn't going to come to a head where things stop being funded because the repayment will stop holding the corresponding value, I would say that's incorrect. There is technically a "budget". for this reason. Just because it might reach it's apex after the Boomers are dead doesn't mean we shouldn't shame them now, rather than piss on their graves when it becomes a reality.

Krev wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 2:07 pm A lot of that interest is on debt to oligarchs that the government borrows from.

I get it, that was just a joke...

The “debt” is nonsense. The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Turning it into a “just like your family finances” schtick is a conservative trope to sell you cuts to public services.

Gramsci wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 2:39 pm The “debt” is nonsense. The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Turning it into a “just like your family finances” schtick is a conservative trope to sell you cuts to public services.

Now the national debt is a conservative conspiracy theory? Talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face. I'll let you guess whose services get cut first. it won't be the profiteers, it will be the "robust tax base" who are keeping things afloat in the first place. Things will crumble when we run out of exploitable assets. Might be tomorrow, might be a few generations from now. I don't know how it would be beneficial to the US for this to persist. And furthermore for what? Corporate tax incentives for Elon Musk and "defense" spending. Great, glad you're happy.

Debt is no different than a home mortgage, and the per-household share of it is . . . close to the amount of a mortgage on an inexpensive home.

As a share of GDP, however, it is high. It had been trending up before Covid but then rocketed higher because of it. But it’s now at a level similar to what we saw after WWII, and that didn’t lead to catastrophe.

It’s true that the cost of servicing the debt went up, but inflation also meant that debt accumulated years or decades ago is cheaper to service. (Inflation is good if you hold debt, less good if you’re a saver.)

It’s legitimately not an issue. We’re not Greece or even Puerto Rico.

Wood Goblin wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 3:57 pm Debt is no different than a home mortgage, and the per-household share of it is . . . close to the amount of a mortgage on an inexpensive home.

As a share of GDP, however, it is high. It had been trending up before Covid but then rocketed higher because of it. But it’s now at a level similar to what we saw after WWII, and that didn’t lead to catastrophe.

It’s true that the cost of servicing the debt went up, but inflation also meant that debt accumulated years or decades ago is cheaper to service. (Inflation is good if you hold debt, less good if you’re a saver.)

It’s legitimately not an issue. We’re not Greece or even Puerto Rico.

After WWII we could milk a destroyed world that needed rebuilding from our untouched industry and plentiful resources. By the looks of it, that's what we're betting on again? But Jesus, you people have the mindset of a compulsive gambler.....you're selling "servicing debt" as a positive? Servicing debt is a net zero. What is the valuable stuff we are buying with all this debt that will then make it worthwhile? Sure, war profiteering has a bright future, but what else is it that persists? When you mortgage a home, at the end you have a home. What will we have? I don't see any progress being made, I just see a desperate lifeline for already shitty social services and a bunch of other disposable crap. This is credit card debt for expensive dinners, not a home mortgage.

Just to be clear I don't see either candidate in a positive light on this....or any light at all as they refuse to acknowledge it.

FWIW, our debt-to-GDP ratio is similar to that for France and is a hell of a lot less than the ratio for Japan. Some of the Scandinavian countries have low ratios, but so do Mexico and Russia. It really is manageable, and there’s a reason economists don’t fret about it.