JohnRawls wrote:Back on topic of National debts:
Russia debt as % of gdp: 15.4% -> Maintenance of debt as % of budget is 8.5%
USA debt as % of gdp: 124.7% -> Maintenance of debt as % of budget is 10%
As I said, its not how much debt you have but how you handle the consequences and maintenance of debt and how you invest it.
"Net Interest Outlays. Over the 10-year projection
period, net outlays for interest increase by 6.2 percent
a year, on average, rising from $951 billion in 2025 to
$1.6 trillion in 2034. Measured relative to the size of the
economy, those outlays rise from 3.2 percent in 2025 to
3.9 percent in 2034—1.9 percentage points higher than
their 50-year average and higher than they have been in
any year since at least 1940 (the first year for which the
Office of Management and Budget reports such data). "
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-0 ... k-2024.pdf The question should be “Do we want to increase interest payments on the national debt by 6.2% every year for the next 10 years, ending in 2034 at $1.6 trillion.”?
You want to refocus the question to ask, “Can we afford to do this another 10 years?”
Even if we can, do we want to do this? It is not sustainable forever, and in the meantime, we are asking our children and grandchildren (like my two grand daughters) to pay that $1.6 trillion, or possibly pass even worse debt on to their own children.
The alternative is to finally start acting fiscally responsible in Congress. According to CBO, this will all come to a head in Congress in the 2030’s, as funds for Social Security, Medicaid, and other “entitlement” programs become critical. The Republicans will finally have their chance to gut this spending from the federal budget. Or the Democrats will have their chance to tax billionaires to pay for them. If neither party has control of the government to get anything done (as usual), I have no idea what they will do. They probably don’t, either. In fact, I doubt many members of Congress bother to think beyond their next reelection campaign, which is largely how we got here.