Only after the system totally crashes and they have to find a solution, that's when something like this could possibly be enacted.
Regarding the title of this thread... I learned something today. The tendency for Chinese speakers to use singular nouns instead of plural ones in English is partly influenced by the structure of Mandarin. In Mandarin, pluralization works differently than in English, and it is often less explicitly marked. Lack of Mandatory Plural Marking: In Mandarin, nouns do not change form to indicate plural or singular. For example, the word "书" (shū) can mean "book" or "books," depending on the context. Plurality is typically inferred from context or explicitly indicated using quantifiers (e.g., "两本书" liǎng běn shū, meaning "two books") or collective words. Pronouns Have Plural Forms: Mandarin does have plural forms for personal pronouns, such as "我们" (wǒmen, "we") and "他们" (tāmen, "they"). However, this pluralization is specific to pronouns and does not extend to nouns in the same way.
How come other countries (Scandi/AU/NZ/NDL/Swiss)are able to offer substantial retirement benefits without hosting unmanageable debt? (sub 60% of GDP) with similar if not older populations and similar if not lower birth rates than the US? If it's purely a structural problem with retirement / social benefits, aging pops/low birth rates.
Honestly. The Question has always seemed to be an bit of overly complicated mismash of bolderdash As of November 29, 2024, the U.S. national debt is $36.09 trillion. however Other Countries owe us maybe 10 Trillion and we have this belief (IMO) that if anyone calls in our debt. . . .we will simply declare and win war Almost like Reverse Loan Sharks Rocket River
They don't have to ask the US to pay the debt, there will come a point, hopefully decades down the line, that people will stop buying US treasuries, at that point, the US will be like Argentina today.
you mean should all the other countries decide to sell US debts. for the sake of discussion, it does happen; price of US debts drops and interest rates will sky rocket, driving the global inflation surge
I was going to write a host of different factors like culture, conservative govs that value efficiency, size, and types of economy (raw/developed exporter vs value added/service driven importer economies), but when you compare housing debt levels, those countries you listed might have a similar reckoning to the ones deeply loaded in debt from the GFC. These guys are much smaller, so it'll take more than a handful before anyone notices the music stopped playing. Credit Suisse (and some of our regional banks) went poof with a whimper because of coordinated Central Bank intervention that the sleepy public didn't bother to care too much about. The second img is to compare the debt heavy countries we know and love. Those households debt burden are relatively less because they've been paying off bad debts for a good 15 years. I don't know wtf happened to Canada but they're falling into a Cali-like quagmire after letting in cheap foreign money through every orifice since the GFC. S. Korea is another country to watch, and I don't mean coups and martial laws. https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/household-debt.html?oecdcontrol-0c34c1bd70-var3=2021&oecdcontrol-0ad85c6bab-var1=AUS|CAN|FIN|NLD|NZL|NOR|CHE|SWE|DNK|USA|KOR https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/household-debt.html?oecdcontrol-0c34c1bd70-var3=2021&oecdcontrol-0ad85c6bab-var1=BEL|CAN|FRA|DEU|GRC|ISL|ITA|JPN|KOR|ESP|GBR|USA You can play with the countries in the link. For some reason it doesn't have 2022+ numbers for AUS and NZ. So it's not just public debt. It's also household and corporate debt. What Trump/Biden did during covid to make the government assume all debt has been the boldest move in our lifetimes, to say the least.
Wanted to get back to this post I forgot to reply and this subject popped in my mind today. How would you say that personal debt (for what I imagine have to be mostly mortgage, car, various credit card debts) is effected (or effects) government debt and welfare systems? I'm genuinely ignorant about it. I've seen that data for household debt before, and have noted that it's a pretty clear trend on the countries with the absolute highest development/best quality of life being on top. Which is interesting. If you look at it from the standpoint of income instead, the US is a bit of an anomaly. Is this long term economic stability driving this? High incomes, strong labor protections, more comfortable with taking on loans? An aspect I thought of on housing debt levels, for say Denmark/Norway at the top in comparison with Italy/Greece/Spain low on the list is the housing culture/situation. Kids leave the home very early and buy homes much younger in Scandinavia vs the Mediterranean (in countries with more competitive housing markets, as the population is growing vs declining). A culture of buying your own house young with low wealth and a large mortgage vs staying home until your 30's and inheriting your parents home in your 50's I imagine has a real impact on that data. We bought our home at 25 a few years ago, a bit earlier than most in our age group. Sure we have a high debt number to income ratio for the time being but I'm not sure I'm worse off than a counterpart version of us renting. I hope we don't have a reckoning coming lol.
