that's a good starting point to reduce the deficit; egs inculde, but not limited to, re-instate the Alternative Minimum Tax raise the tax rate on high income earners, such as those w income over $400K capital gain transaction
Government spending is part of GDP which I've always thought was weird. So of course spending 300B on defense is good for GDP. Spending 1 Trillion on interest also increases GDP. You could just hand that 1.3 Trillion out to citizens and it would have the same boost to GDP and probably do more good than handing out to banks and the military industrial complex. But that's socialism , while giving the money to banks and Lockheed Martin is capitalism .
What’s the function of this being a cost to us? Germany, last I checked had a debt to GDP ratio in the .60s which isn’t bad. US is around 1.20 right now
the US economy is much bigger and has 2 X the debt/GDP ratio of Germany; yet , pos the pandemic, US GDP has grown faster than Germany one can infer that having a currency that is the de-facto global reserve mitigates the attendant debt / spending problem
The more the US weaponize the dollar, the less likely it will remain the world currency. The politicians in DC are squandering the most valuable asset in the US, a bunch of short sighted fools.
That's based on our willingness to protect it. The two opec countries that wanted to use the Euro were Iraq and Venezuela. Coincidence?
Debt/spending/monetary debasement is at the root of all societal problems. There is no political solution, as the near-term incentives only allow for more of the same. Of course, there is a technical solution, one that is inevitable and unstoppable.
What happens when 50% of the budget goes to paying interest on the national debt? I would imagine the national debt and annual deficits are a huge problem.
50% of the budget being paid towards Americans with Treasury bonds... As long as America has 10 nuclear powered naval carriers ruling the high seas along with having world hegemonic power, the deficit actually doesn't matter. As long as there is a economy that has economic growth that provides a tax base, there is no future where America falls apart because of the national debt. America will fall apart because of the cost of living that creates cascading events like wealthy people trying to distract Americans with said cost of living by scapegoating migrants, minorities etc which will result in more civil tensions that peak with violence.
The most obvious response would be to inflate the dollar to pay off older debt. I was watching John Stewart's podcast where he had two mid economists argue w/ each other and none of them could answer "why other countries had inflation" and were worse off fighting it. Sure there were supply chain woes and Ukraine did a number on energy, but Fed's post-lockdown rate policy and Congress flooding trillions into the money supply through CARES and IRA exported a good chunk of that inflation globally. It's all related but it's not soundbyte friendly or something.
TSMC chip supply shortage has more effect on inflation than "the money supply". Almost every modern product has some form of microprocessor inside the product.
