Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- by latchkey
- Welp, I am just glad I have no debts or loans myself; paid all my student loans off well over a decade ago. Excited to not have a credit rating whatsoever.by jambalaya8
- I'm happy for you, but suspect the "Everything is Fine" meme could have substituted for your comment.
The ebbing tide will lower all ships…
by JKCalhoun - You still have a credit rating and you should be biased towards being indebted in the current environment. The likely path out is inflation, which decreases the real value of debt.by rowens794
- brought to you by the "party of fiscal responsibility"
- And democrats were the party of slavery, these things change since there are only 2 parties in the countryby HDThoreaun
- What if we viewed national debt like CPI? It’s not that it’s ridiculously higher now, it’s that money works differently now.
What used do seem implausible is now accepted as normal, and tough luck if your income and wealth fell behind / didn’t keep pace.
by odyssey7 - the scary part is how much they spend from budget to service debt and pay interestsby andriy_koval
- They need to cut your taxes and raise everyone elses.
The US needs the binface party as a credible 3rd choice.
by oivaksef - > The US needs the binface party as a credible 3rd choice.
Infinitely more credible than either of our current parties at this point.
by blooalien - The USA has Mr Vermin Supreme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermin_Supreme
- What the USA needs is more decentralisation and direct democracy.
Why has the federal state accumulated $40T debt?
by Gud - The media should report the number that actually matters: debt to GDP ratio. It’s quite high as well, but it’s the more meaningful number.by lokar
- And yet more meaningful than that is what the debt increase is spent on. If it's infrastructure/education/etc, productivity/population welfare will rise over time. If it's debt through tax cuts, temporary productivity might be argued (some of the GDP here), but the nation will be in decline.by croon
- By the time Trump leaves office, the whole federal government will be completely trashed, up to and including the East Wing of the White House being torn down to a hole in the ground.
I've never felt so alienated from the leaders of my industry, from my politicians, and from my fellow citizens. Ya'll should have known better. It is the information age, all ignorance is willful ignorance.
by rhelz - This debt problem was long before Trump and this is why the US dollar is being printed straight to $0, until it loses its reserve currency status.by rvz
- The challenge now is that we have to have a vision for what we want to build.by conartist6
- This started long before Trump. Ironically things quite stable under Clinton. 2nd term Bush not so great, 2nd term Obama not great, Trump post covid not great, Biden was terrible, Trump 2.0 terrible.
The only real solution is to enforce the actual debt ceiling, the begin lowering it a few hundred billion each year, destroying things we don't need. Require all new spending be funded by the 2.5x destruction of existing spending and departments.
by exabrial - I don't understand how US Republicans talk about fiscal conservation, yet allow rampant profligacy. They must have a different agenda than the one they speak of.by adamredwoods
- "I've never felt so alienated from the leaders of my industry, from my politicians, and from my fellow citizens."
I'm with you, brother/sister.
by JKCalhoun - Citizens United ruined the great american experiment. if you have seen the chart of campaign financing since CU, you would understand. Politicians have zero need to represent citizens because they know unlimited funds are available for marketing to keep/earn your seat.
America simply is no longer a democracy or representative democracy.
by frogperson - New representation will get voted in because of the current macro, will have to raise taxes to pay down the debt to prevent an eventual debt spiral, the electorate will be angry they don't have cake (unless the taxes are applied disproportionally to the top income and wealth percentiles), and we'll be right back to irresponsible policy. I don't have much hope for the US, but at least the bond market are the adults in the room currently. Congrats to those who strip mined the country successfully.by toomuchtodo
- > I've never felt so alienated from the leaders of my industry, from my politicians, and from my fellow citizens. Ya'll should have known better. It is the information age, all ignorance is willful ignorance.
^^^ 1000% this right here. Right there with ya (sadly)... Not at all the world we were promised as children. "Star Trek" vs "Mad Max"/"Terminator"? Humanity chose the latter. We ain't gonna survive long enough to escape this planet.
by blooalien - And who's going to hold the US responsible for repayment? Way I see it, US has the power to just tell any creditor that they won't be repaying, whether through structuring it as some economic package or just straight up saying go suck it. The former's been done before (1933); maybe eventually we'll see the latter, if a nation has the balls to ask. And talking about it is pretty pointless, like talking about how wet you'll get swimming in a pool.by skeledrew
- > US has the power to just tell any creditor that they won't be repaying
To think about it, we have the perfect president who has been telling creditors to go pound sand for decades: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/...
by malshe - > Way I see it, US has the power to just tell any creditor that they won't be repaying
It does not. The Fourteenth Amendment forbids that. Section 4:
"The validity of the public debt of the United States...shall not be questioned."
by otterley - 80% of bonds are held domestically, and it's what US banks use to back deposits. If the US government stops paying its debt, your money in the bank will vaporize. And no, the FDIC won't be able to restore it. That's among the least bad things that will happen.by IAmGraydon
- Yes, some sort of technical default is likely in a few decades. I expect that when debt payments become unsustainable the government will force bondholders to exchange their holdings with new bonds that have the same nominal face value but longer maturity and artificially low interest rates. The next step will be legislation that forces all retirement accounts such as 401(k) to purchase Treasury bonds for "safety".by nradov
- > talking about it is pretty pointless, like talking about how wet you'll get swimming in a pool.
Until the pool runs out of funding to do to replace the evaporated water.
by DANmode - > And who's going to hold the US responsible for repayment?
untrivial (vast majority) of debt holders are US corps, banks and citizens.
by andriy_koval