U.S. government debt passes $40T, more than doubling in a decade

mmfiguiere about 3 hours ago 25 commentsRead Article on cnbc.com

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Discussion (25 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

rbanffy•about 3 hours ago

I guess it’s time to elect a couple democrats to curb the deficit while solving the impending social collapse.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that will happen this time.

DoesntMatter22•about 2 hours ago

I don't understand that at all. The deficit has been running rampant ever since Clinton left office. Both sides spent with reckless abandon.

epolanski•about 2 hours ago

Trump, 1st term, added 24% of GDP worth of debt.

That's more or less the same number of Obama and Bush, but they served two terms each.

In his second term, he's already added 11% in a record 19 months.

voxl•about 2 hours ago

Don't bother, Republicans are the only ones that care about the debt and their ideology makes them incapable of realizing there very choice of candidates is the exact problem

bigstrat2003•about 2 hours ago

Every single administration since the turn of the century, regardless of party, has run a deficit. It's clear that if we want fiscal responsibility (and I do, very much), we can't look to either of the major parties for it. Unfortunately the chances of that are low at best, and on top of that it's not actually very popular to do what is needed to balance the budget. The cold hard reality is that we will need to both raise taxes and cut spending to balance the budget, but lots of people are ideologically opposed to one or both of those things. And even if they aren't, there's no agreement on how to implement said tax hikes/budget cuts. It's a pretty grim situation.

porkpieshoe•41 minutes ago

It's helpful to avoid "both sides"-ing, or abandoning all hope.

Clinton through 2001 - ended with a 1.2% GDP surplus

Bush through 2009 - ended with a 9.8% GDP deficit

Obama through 2017 - ended with a 3.4% GDP deficit

Trump through 2021 - ended with a 12.3% GDP deficit

Biden through 2025 - ended with a 5.9% GDP deficit

Trump now - running even higher, though final data isn't yet available.

There's a clear pattern available, where one party reliably leaves makes the situation worse, and the other party reliably makes the situation better. The fact that Democrats cannot undo all of the massive damage done by each Republican administration does not mean "both sides" are the same.

If you want third parties to win, they realistically need to start with local elections, so they can gain momentum and take the spot of one of the majors. (also helpful to get rid of FTTP voting in as many elections as possible).

We're seeing great success with local democratic socialists, who keep showing that government can be a force for good, it can be improved, and it can be done without blowing budgets. It's a promising start, and it's clearly threatening Dems and the GOP alike.

b1gTekken•about 1 hour ago

Financially ledger is just a social construct; the IOUs of the past are never paid off as they never mattered.

Finance shit just keeps innumerates and those ignorant of physics believing wild end of the universe theories.

For more look up Debt jubilee's; humans wiped the debt of the dead off the books and no black holes opened within the sun, no gods descended from Olympus and slaughtered the children

Fucking mesmerizing how its not just MAGA nutters obsessed with old spoken and written finance traditions; different semantics than religion but same goal of kowtowing the proletariat.

This site helps propagate such paranoias with the tilt it has towards startup funding and yada yada. Smartest engineers I have ever worked with earned PhDs designing experiments for Tevatron and working on NASA satellites. We often had a laugh at how such social hacks dupe so many wannabe smart and educated people.

On the contrary startup genius software engineers are easily duped by social hacks.

Ohentis•33 minutes ago

Occasionally countries do default on debt. It doesn't go well.

just_mc•37 minutes ago

US Treasuries happen to be a significant part of many peoples retirement savings. So I think your hot take is pretty uninformed.

fragmede•about 2 hours ago

I mean, there's fiscally responsible but the welfare department is never gonna make money at the end of the day spending is a political football. Trump's ICE got $10 billion, because what? So now in addition to DEA we have ICE and the TSA, and well, we can't un spend that money and shut them down so, well, shit.

pstuart•13 minutes ago

ICE got $75 billion, with $45 billion of that allocated for concentration camps. And somebody's got to build those camps and supply them, and their CEOs are all buddies with Trump.

oivaksef•about 2 hours ago

They need to cut your taxes and raise everyone elses.

The US needs the binface party as a credible 3rd choice.

motbus3•about 2 hours ago

I am ignorant. If they don't pay, who will charge it if the default?

GuB-42•41 minutes ago

If you are American, then it is you, for the most part.

Most of the US government debt is owed to institution and people in the US. All these retirement funds, social security, health insurance, etc... that own part of the government debt... well, you won't get what you paid for.

This is a simplistic and partial view, but I think that's the most personal way of thinking about it.

xarwex•about 2 hours ago

A country that controls its currency can always bail itself out of all debt by printing all that money. Now they would destroy their whole economy in the process because of inflation and countries being mad about a country doing that. If they don't pay and default they kind of also piss everyone off and that makes the curency rates fall as well. In that case they would repay as much as they want really, the price for not doing that is economy strengt. The dollar could lose the global currency status either way, fun!

owebmaster•40 minutes ago

The US citizens hold the majority of the debt so if the government default the people's savings and pension funds evaporate.

epolanski•about 2 hours ago

It's literally impossible to default as you can simply emit new money and buy back the debt or pay the interest with the minted money.

Of course this comes with its own set of gigantic issues, likely triple digit inflation and hardship to raise money for generations.

But US can't default really.

partloyaldemon•20 minutes ago

You’re the only one in the thread that gets any of this right. But: Monetizing the debt is replacing one asset (treasuries eg) that pays interest with a nominally equal asset that doesn’t (US dollar). How does that spur inflation? It’s a reduction in income over time. How does paying back our debt IN FULL hurt our credit worthiness?

kotaKat•about 1 hour ago

> But US can't default really.

It could. We'd just reorganize and call the old debts part of "Old US". This is all "New US".

pstuart•18 minutes ago

And that New US Dollar as a global currency? Not likely.