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As U.S. Debt Hits a Worrying Milestone, Washington Barely Notices

24 points by tcp_handshaker

by ericpauley

2 subcomments

The GDP-relative amount of US debt held by foreign investors has actually gone down on since 2014: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HBFIGDQ188S

by sharts

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Why does US debt even matter? Why does GDP even matter? Just print some cash and cancel the debt if the borrowers and creditors are two pockets on the same pants. All these abstractions don’t measure what matters anyway.

by scuff3d

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We don't hear anything about it because the Republicans are in charge. If a Democrat was in the White House right now you wouldn't be able to shut Fox News and it's ilk up about how the national debt is a harbinger of doom for the entire country.

by tardedmeme

1 subcomments

100% debt-to-GDP sounds like some fundamental threshold when it's actually just a Schelling point. It's 1.00 GDP-years of debt, which is a number with an arbitrary time unit in it (why not GDP-month or GDP-decade?)

by SilverElfin

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It’s not just US debt that’s a problem. It’s also state level and local level. Every part of our government is spending irresponsibly. A lot of the debt is hidden too. A pension with more future liabilities than it can pay for isn’t going to show up as deficit on this year’s budget. A state putting out bonds may count interest payments in the budget numbers that show up in press conferences, but the actual total debt isn’t talked about much.
I’m not sure why anyone expects differently. Politicians corruptly waste money to helping themselves, their careers, their party, and their causes. It’s other people’s money that they are spending. And most of them never had substantial experience in private industry to learn the skills it takes to manage billions of dollars of budget. Governments are far, far more wasteful and inefficient than anyone realizes.

by expedition32

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Remember the Tea Party?
But yes you don't hear anyone about this because politicians waste no time on things they know they can't fix. DOGE was a fucking embarrassment.
In the 1930s the Dutch cabinet knew very well that they likely couldn't keep up neutrality. But they also knew there was no chance in hell that they could build up an army in 3 years that could stop Hitler. So what did they do? Lie to the public and secretly open Canadian bank accounts.