US Debt Interest Bill Rockets Past a Cool $1 Trillion a Year (bloomberg.com) 224
An anonymous reader writes: US Treasuries may face renewed selling pressure into the new year if one measure of the nation's swelling debt repayment bill is any guide. Estimated annualized interest payments on the US government debt pile climbed past $1 trillion at the end of last month, Bloomberg analysis shows. That projected amount has doubled in the past 19 months from the equivalent figure forecast around the time. The estimated interest expense is calculated using US Treasury data which state the government's monthly outstanding debt balances and the average interest it pays.
Of course, the gauge of estimated interest costs is different than what the Treasury actually paid. Interest costs in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 ultimately totaled $879.3 billion, up from $717.6 billion the previous year and about 14% of total outlays. But, looking forward, the rise in yields on long-term Treasuries in recent months suggests the government will continue to face an escalating interest bill.
Of course, the gauge of estimated interest costs is different than what the Treasury actually paid. Interest costs in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 ultimately totaled $879.3 billion, up from $717.6 billion the previous year and about 14% of total outlays. But, looking forward, the rise in yields on long-term Treasuries in recent months suggests the government will continue to face an escalating interest bill.
who are the recipients? (Score:3)
Re:who are the recipients? (Score:4, Informative)
Japan, China, and the UK. (Score:3, Informative)
Japan, China, and the UK are the top 3 holders of US debt.
https://usafacts.org/articles/... [usafacts.org]
So yes, a huge portion of that trillion dollars is flowing into China.
Re:Japan, China, and the UK. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Japan, China, and the UK. (Score:5, Informative)
Japan, China, and the UK are the top 3 holders of US debt.
https://usafacts.org/articles/... [usafacts.org]
Top three foreign holders of US debt. Something like three quarters of the debt is held by Americans. And to be clear, not all of that is held by foreign governments, much of that is held by private investors.
Personally, I think the amount of debt is the primary problem. Who exactly holds it is a secondary issue to me.
Re:Japan, China, and the UK. (Score:4, Interesting)
As I understand, the US has carried a constant debt since the US Civil War, when the Union had to borrow at never before seen levels to finance the war.
Sovereign debt is a weird creature that doesn't function like other kinds of debt. One trillion is a monumental amount of debt, but the flip side of that question is the carrying capacity. What got Greece in trouble, for instance, wasn't just the large amount of government debt, but an underperforming economy that couldn't even handle the more mundane liabilities (like public pensions). Seeing as the US has absolutely no problem selling treasury bonds, clearly investors don't see any significant issues with the US government honoring its debts. Even at its worst during the Depression, the government could still borrow money.
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"Seeing as the US has absolutely no problem selling treasury bonds, clearly investors don't see any significant issues with the US government honoring its debts."
This isn't limitless. Already we've had our credit rating downgraded and short term bonds are paying higher interest than long term bonds.
Re: Japan, China, and the UK. (Score:3)
Re:Japan, China, and the UK. (Score:5, Informative)
China owns 2.6% of the US debt. [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080615/china-owns-us-debt-how-much.asp]
Re:Japan, China, and the UK. (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan, China, and the UK are the top 3 holders of US debt.
https://usafacts.org/articles/... [usafacts.org]
So yes, a huge portion of that trillion dollars is flowing into China.
No, those are the largest sovereign foreign owners of U.S. Debt. Most of the U.S. debt is owned by either Government Trusts itself with Social Security being the largest, then the domestic public like retirement funds, banks and individual investors and such. The remainder of about 30% is held by foreign entities.
https://www.crfb.org/papers/qa... [crfb.org].
So, basically the government is really one of its own biggest creditors. In private business that's not very different from a ponzi scheme.
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Those are the largest foreign debt holders. Foreign creditors are only about a third of the total. China holds about 2.5%.
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023... [pgpf.org]
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The top debt holders of US debt are... US citizens. Roughly 75% of US federal debt is held by Americans.
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Japan, China, and the UK are the top 3 holders of US debt.
https://usafacts.org/articles/... [usafacts.org]
So yes, a huge portion of that trillion dollars is flowing into China.
Thats a very how to lie with statistics way to put it. Domestic private investors hold nearly double all foreign investors combined. [wikipedia.org]
finally at the end? (Score:5, Interesting)
The million dollar question of course is what happens next. Historically countries that print their own currency don't default, they will inflate. This will not be a pleasant process. Inflation might be tamed for now but it tends to come in waves. Unlike in the 70s, we can't jack up interest rates to 17% as our debt ratio back then was much smaller. Perilous times but it will likely take longer to play out than we think.
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You can find well-thought-out articles from the 1980s that articulate how the US is imminently going to be in a debt crisis. Well the can-kicking went on for decades. But our debt is now 130% of our GDP which is passed what is commonly considered the point of no return.
While I would completely agree that our debt level is worryingly high the interesting part is that Japan's debt to GDP ratio is well over twice what ours is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and I havent heard any rumblings about their economy collapsing due to debt. Given this I think it's safe to say we arent at any kind of "point of no return" yet as you stated but we dont really want to push things to anywhere close to that point anyways.
Sadly ultra partisanship is the norm of the day in Washington righ
Re:finally at the end? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly ultra partisanship is the norm of the day in Washington right now so I dont expect anything too meaningful to be done about this.
Yep. The opposition party WANTS this so they can point fingers at the president and lie about how they'll be able to fix it.
They should really be working together but that ain't ever going to happen.
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It's a drop in the bucket after what ruling party has spent, both during the Trump presidency and during the current administration, but they did at least try to recycle some of the unneeded spending by redirecting it to Israel rather than spending new funds outright.
Re:finally at the end? (Score:4, Interesting)
Japan's economy hasn't grown appreciably in 30 years either. To an economy where a failure to grow by 3-5% a year is a hand wringing catastrophe, three decades of stagnation might be considered "collapse."
Also, there were lots of speculation about Japan's economy collapsing. Then it didn't. Economists now talk about the four types of economy: advanced, develping, Japan and Argentina.
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Eh, I still think Japan makes a strong enough case that we're not on the precipice of collapse though. Their economy isnt great but it's not bad either.
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Japan also pays zero or negative interest on its 10 year bonds. Their 2023 10 year bond rate is 0.41%, compared to the US rate of 3.74%, so even though their debt is twice as big, the US debt (currently) costs 5x more.
100% debt to GDP ratio isn't necessarily a sign of imminent collapse, but you don't want to be Japan. Let's be clear, their economy is the US equivalent of the end of days. The equivalent of 2018 US growth one year followed by a 2009 recession the next, forever.
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Let's be clear, their economy is the US equivalent of the end of days. The equivalent of 2018 US growth one year followed by a 2009 recession the next, forever.
I remember hearing the same thing all the way back in the 80's. I havent heard it as much recently as it seems our conservatives have strongly embraced debt spending but I remember a lot of talk like this back then. I'm still pretty skeptical although as I've said I do think our debt is too high and we should be working it down some. Raising taxes on the affluent would be a great first start as well as raising corporate taxes as neither of those are even remotely close to historic highs or global highs as w
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Hahaha, I read your post a bit wrong and just realized that. Sorry about that, you said Japans economy was at its end of days. Could be, I'd have to read a bit more to have more of an opinion on that specifically.
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I said Japan's economy is the US equivalent of the end of days. Japan is pretty worried about their economy, but they don't think it's collapsed, which is one of the reasons economists consider Japan extremely weird. It seems to do okay (maybe not great) even zero growth and a pretty much mandatory zero or negative interest rate. The US perspective, on the other hand, is that if an economy isn't growing by at least a few percent every year, it's failed. Five years of zero growth in the US would be considere
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Huh, I was trying to read into what you said something that made sense to me and assumed typos were made. What's so unique about Japan that the conditions you describe as being our near future downfall has only had a mild effect on them?
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isnt bad?
Japan the country that is literally on the verge of demographic catastrophe because nobody is having any children is good? Sure they could open the borders and import people but the reason they need to do that is because there is no household formation and the accepted reason why young Japanese don't marry and have children is they can't afford it.
Japan and the western world is rediscovering serfdom without realizing it. Sure maybe there is an elected government rather than a king but the reality i
Re:finally at the end? (Score:4, Insightful)
> I havent heard any rumblings about their economy collapsing due to debt
The last 30 years of Japan's history have been called the "lost decades" due to their stagnation and decline.
Its certainly a failure mode and more than fair to call an eternal winter a type of "collapse". QE, first innovated in japan, is the monetary policy which enabled this, and it has certainly proved capable of drawing a recession out, but likewise incapable of ending one.
Over these decades, their population has become an inverted pyramid, and more and more of the economy is now centrally owned. At some point QE will have to end; at the very latest when the BOJ owns 100% of the economy, making them a de facto soviet style state, at which point they cease having anything you can call an "economy" whatsoever.
Having a shrinking working population supporting a huge pension state is another recipe for accelerated decline, either to that end state, or a more typical hyper-inflationary or deflationary collapse.
This is certainly not a model to copy.
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Japan's problem isn't debt or old folks (Score:4, Insightful)
First, China's right there, and they ate Japan's manufacturing base for breakfast. What Chinese slave labor didn't take automation did. Go look up the Gundam factory. It's like 4 guys making half a billion kits a year.
Thanks to Automation you really don't need that many young people to support a society. Now an economy is something else entirely. We've set it up so that to pry money out of the factory owners you need consumers, and with a shrinking population that's a problem.
This can put the remaining young folk into a hilarious death spiral. There's fewer jobs because machines are doing them (and what machines aren't doing slaves in penal colonies are) so you're competing with everyone for less and less jobs which drives down wages further so you don't have kids which pushes companies to automate more so they can keep productivity vs wages at the same or better as last quarter so your wages go down again and you have even fewer kids and so on so on so forth.
That's the death spiral Japan is in. The US avoided it so far because of immigration and, to be blunt, bubbles (.com and housing). But sooner or later the rest of the world is going to stop letting us have their kids (which will be in increasingly short supply, everyone's birthrates are below sustainability except some of Africa, and they're modernizing fast). So without changes the same fate is coming for us. China too.
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Not entirely. The democrats spend like there is no tomorrow and the subset of the Republicans called RINOs do as well, unfortunately RINOs represent the leadership of the party.
Together we call them the uniparty because they pick different spin but their policies always result in bigger government, reduced personal liberty, reduced state autonomy [so you can't get something different by voting with your feet], push toward a surveillance/police state, increased spending, increased special interest spending,
Re:finally at the end? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can find well-thought-out articles from the 1980s that articulate how the US is imminently going to be in a debt crisis. Well the can-kicking went on for decades. But our debt is now 130% of our GDP which is passed what is commonly considered the point of no return. And you can expect the interest costs to keep growing as debt has to be rolled over into a higher interest rate environment. So unless interest rates rapidly go down AND we avoid a major recession, the problem will become a positive feedback loop.
The million dollar question of course is what happens next. Historically countries that print their own currency don't default, they will inflate. This will not be a pleasant process. Inflation might be tamed for now but it tends to come in waves. Unlike in the 70s, we can't jack up interest rates to 17% as our debt ratio back then was much smaller. Perilous times but it will likely take longer to play out than we think.
The US is the world's reserve currency.
Therefore, when you print more money it's not just Americans biting the devaluation bullet, everyone takes a hit.
So unlike those other countries you can actually print money to pay off your debt without huge inflation because wealth is also getting extracted from all the foreigners holding USD.
That's one of the reasons why the US has such a strong economy, the basically perpetual wealth transfer from the rest of the world to you as a result of being the reserve currency. Also one of the reasons why Americans freak out about another currency taking its place (the only plausible candidate is the Euro).
Oh, and most importantly, IANAE (I am not an economist). So everything I said might be complete BS.
Dr. Stephanie Kelton proves your point (Score:3)
Here's a clear explanation as to why the US debt isn't such a large reason for concern [harryshearer.com]. Dr. Stephanie Kelton explains how monetary policy works. You can listen or read the transcript.
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Did this guy also say there would be no inflation?
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Also one of the reasons why Americans freak out about another currency taking its place (the only plausible candidate is the Euro).
If the Euro is the 'plausible' candidate, then there is really no candidate...
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The million dollar question of course is what happens next.
Pfft, 'million' dollar question? Funny...
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The parallels to the climate change "debate" are striking.
Unsustainable (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Unsustainable (Score:4, Interesting)
Trouble is, everyone has the same problem. Therefore, everyone and their mother has a vested interest in keeping the masquerade going, at least for another decade or two. There are mechanisms to make this happen, but it'll be even uglier when the bubble pops. Think Great Depression times a factor of two or three plus social media and a soft population that's mostly ever only known first world problems for two or three generations. I'd say decamp to somewhere else, except there's no place worth living that doesn't have it as bad, or worse. Maybe that means personal and collective responsibility will come into vogue again.
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But where to cut?
You could start with oil and gas companies. Is there a need for the U.S. taxpayer to have their money handed over to companies who are making multiple billions in profits?
Wall Street should be next. Again, there is no need for the U.S. taxpayer to have their money taken and given to corporations whose literal job it is to make money. If these companies need the billions of dollars each year to stay alive, perhaps it's time to let them fail since they obviously can't survive without the
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Re:Unsustainable (Score:5, Informative)
how much does it cost to pay the salaries of the IRS employees. We should definitely continue with audits, but we need to show more for it.
It's generally accepted that additional IRS agents results in the Treasury receiving additional taxes that are multiples of the cost to employ them, perhaps 5x. So IRS agents' salaries are the very last place you should be looking for cuts.
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Most of the expense is entitlements
Yes, entitlements that taxpayers have paid for and earned. But now that it's time for the government to pay the citizens their earned benefits they paid for it's suddenly a big problem?
And it's not like it was an opt-out thing either, everyone was forced to pay in with the reasoning being that by doing so there'd be enough to pay out what you'd earned at the end. So now we're going to tell all those people who were forced to pay in, and were banking on that money for their retirement, that their money was
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I don't think everybody socking away lots of savings would have the effect people assume. If you have a lot of rich old people and a small number of workers, what you are going to see is rampant inflation. This has already begun in earnest in service industries like restaurants. Everybody saving a lot could make capital available for investments that will make the
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Everybody saving a lot could make capital available for investments that will make the total economic pie larger in the future, but too much savings could also just reduce demand and thus current output, i.e. make everybody poorer.
This idea is why central banks set their goals towards a small amount of inflation over disinflation.
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It was called the sequestor [crfb.org]. The idea is simple: cut everything, all at once. But it couldn't affect Social Security or Medicare because reasons. So if those two things implode then you've got an entirely different mess on your hands.
Otherwise though, one answer is to just cut everything, all at once, without considering the consequences.
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yes a politically that is about the only way can ever expect any meaningful reduction in government spending.
It was the right thing to do, it is the right thing to do again
Re:Unsustainable (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone born after the 1970s knows full-well that social security and medicare are unsustainable.
Social Security would be sustainable if the upper salary limit for contributing was raised. Right now only the first $160,000 in wages [thomsonreuters.com] is taxed for Social Security. Raise that to $1 million and there wouldn't be an issue.
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Yup, Social Security issues are just a math problem. It has its own tax, it is separate from discretionary spending and taxes.
Also people mix up the "Trust Fund" and the "General Fund".
At the trajectory now when the trust fund empties it means something like up to 20% reduced payouts and that is effectively solved by as you stated, removing the income cap.
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Except that raising taxes has multiple negative economic effects. It reduces GDP and exacerbates inflation. It may also reduce tax revenues elsewhere.
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Where do you draw the line for when cuts start? Do we screw everyone under 50, 40, 30, 20? We would be better off raising payroll taxes on everyone AND increasing the ceiling on payroll taxes. I think it's around 147k. Bump that up even higher while capping the max payout of social security per individual.
You can cry, that's not fair but clearly those who can afford to pay the taxes won't be hurt nearly as bad by this as those who can't afford to not get social security when the system completely fails.
Sadl
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So, your solution to a corrupt government stealing the SS funds, is to give them MORE power and money? They CAUSED the problem. It would have been fine (well, probably, depends on who you ask) if they hadn't stolen the money people were paying in. They have proven they can't be trusted. ANY of them. D, R, they both did it and helped each other do it.
As a counter, anyone 10 years from the retirement age for SS will get what they are currently promised. After that, age goes up, amounts go down. Sliding scale
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I'm on board with most of what you said but do take this into considering. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/2... [cnbc.com]
From the article linked: In the first quarter of 1990, the top 1% had roughly six times the wealth as the bottom half of Americans.
1% of US society has 16 times more then the bottom 50%. That's an astonishing stat. Society truly has no need for billionaires. These same people would still be doing the same activities they are doing now if they "only" controlled say $10 million. They'd still be the top
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And for another stat, since these are fun, here is this. https://www.yourlawyer.com/lib... [yourlawyer.com]
Lot of fun stuff there. Even in Alaska, the state with the smallest wealth gap, the top 1% earn 12.7 times more then then entire 99% below them.
So I can see plenty of reasons to eat the rich.
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No? Let's not burn down society. It's pretty good the way it is, even if people have more money than me. The only thing wrong with some of the top 1% is how much they spend on little footsoldiers who run around saying things like "Burn down society and send them to the gallows". It seems like every monied activist has their own little army of brownshirts these days.
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What would be the drawbacks of having a flat income tax, everywhere, where there are no more deductions, ever?
So, with my rental houses, I could not deduct the cost of the mortgages or repairs on them? Is that your vision?
I buy and sell items, I can't deduct my cost of buying the items? Is that your vision?
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Nobody's ever going to get back that money, and the men (and women, but mostly men) who are responsible for "borrowing" from the trust fund are mostly dead and gone. They're beyond the human ability to punish.
The only thing left to do is to figure out how to stop the program from imploding completely.
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How is that relevant? Taxation is first-and-foremost an exercise in producing revenue for the government. If the "ultra wealthy" are generating the most tax revenue by volume, it doesn't really matter how much of their wealth isn't being paid in taxes. Unless you honestly think you can squeeze more out of them and then spend like a drunk.
What's funny is that we've been trying to tax "the rich" for years, and somehow the "ultra wealthy" seem to keep getting away with low effective tax rates. Hmm wonder wh
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What's funny is that we've been trying to tax "the rich" for years, and somehow the "ultra wealthy" seem to keep getting away with low effective tax rates. Hmm wonder why that is . . .
It's neither funny, nor surprising. The explanation is simple: people keep voting for politicians who claim to be for low taxes, but are really only for low taxes for the wealthy. These voters have been duped by the politicians they vote for.
Taxing the rich properly lacks only political will.
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"Anyone born after the 1970s knows full-well that social security and medicare are unsustainable."
Anyone born in the 1970s remember that Social Security was going to be out of money by 2012. Look how that turned out.
The tell that you were not making a good faith argument is when you combine Social Security and Medicare into one argument, citing problem with one to cut the other.
"just cut it, while people still have time to start saving on their own"
If people have the ability to save on their own, then they
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Ronnie and Tip pushed that date out a bit, but theirs was not a permanent fix.
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Social Security and Medicare aren't the only problems we face at a budgetary level. Remember that those are obligations under the law. The entire idea was to take care of old people, especially since their families (apparently) weren't doing it anymore as was the old way. Much of the rest of our spending is discretionary: we can or can not spend on those programs as we see fit in a manner that is rather arbitrary.
If you want to cut those two particular programs, the first thing you've got to admit is tha
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Because:
a). Despite people hating Laffer, he isn't entirely wrong. Raising taxes can lower revenues beyond a certain point
b). raising taxes worsens the effects of inflation, at least in the short term
Spending cuts at the Federal level have an immediate positive effect on inflationary pressure - the United States gub'ment borrows less, meaning there's less competition for capital AND less money printing, which can drive down inflation AND interest rates at the same time.
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The credit rating of the US has already been downgraded once, just a bit.
The U.S. credit rating has been downgraded twice. In 2011 and 2023.
We are seeing the start of a really ugly feedback cycle.
It's like the Bush (the second) years all over again. Using debt to finance debt. I'm sure Wall Street will tell us it's different this time.
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There is a difference between dept end deficit.
The deficit is the spending minus the income (taxes), and that is over 1.7 trillion in 2023, which is lower than in 2020. Here is yearly deficit curve: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org] One can see that 2023 is a bit worse than 2022 but has gotten better during 2021 and 2022. Historically the US had it's highest deficit percentage
Re:Unsustainable (Score:5, Informative)
"The credit rating of the US has already been downgraded once"
But not because of the amount of debt, but rather because of debt ceiling shenanigans. Even if the US had only short-term debt, the credit rating would be affected.
I just love (Score:3)
Is this a possible transition to CBDC? (Score:2)
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It certainly may be a path to a decentralized plethora of digital tokens masking as currencies.
Who are the payers of the debt? (Score:2)
Government Stimulus (Score:2)
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One could also look at the period of the IRA was passed in as a recession-type downturn which Keynesian economics would say is the time to spend and if anything the IRA is a model of a pretty decent bill combining spending with new tax revenues. I don't think he IRA had a goal of reducing the debt only covering as much of it's own spending as possible.
What it definitely absolutely wouldn't say is to pass a $1-2T debt financed tax cut in 2017 when the economy was riding some historical economic peaks and on
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Governments get deluded when times are good, so they spend more, only compounding things and being not able to bring out social safety nets or help mitigate things when the bottom falls out of the economy. For example, the 1T given to Wall Street in 2020 at the start of COVID would have been far better used for allowing businesses to keep running even without customers.
Cut the debt (Score:2)
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Nah they paid for that crap in advance. The program is grossly mismanaged.
Not to worry (Score:2)
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Bollocks, Trump loves debt.
20% of Federal Revenue (Score:2)
The US collected about $5T in revenues in 2022. So that's 1/5th. Yes, it's blind stupid math and there's more to it... but that's a lot of money that can't fix roads or build bridges.
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The IRS just announced that they have $688 billion dollars a year in uncollected taxes.
Why on earth would you trust the IRS on that? And how much would it cost to go after that money? Any attempt to collect it will go to court for years anyway. The supposed "uncollected taxes" are the IRS claiming that people filed forms wrong. There's no proof of that. The IRS has been claiming for years that they need more money to extract more money from citizens. Why would you believe them?
The US government is not your kitchen table. That debt is for a reason. It connects and ties foreign nations to the US Dollar, massively inflating it's value and allowing us to buy super cheap import goods, making our economy stronger. It's a form of economic imperialism.
I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm sure you don't either. Why would the government be like a kitchen t
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The only way out is to cut costs and start paying off our debt.
Cutting costs, yes. We can then wait for inflation to catch up to our current interest rates and the borrowed money effectively becomes free because the interest is payed off because of inflation.
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Why on earth would you trust the IRS on that? And how much would it cost to go after that money? Any attempt to collect it will go to court for years anyway. The supposed "uncollected taxes" are the IRS claiming that people filed forms wrong. There's no proof of that. The IRS has been claiming for years that they need more money to extract more money from citizens. Why would you believe them?
The IRS has been hamstrung due to conservative budget cuts for years. https://www.gq.com/story/no-ir... [gq.com]
You want to ensure that our economy crashes? Make the US inhospitable as a place to run a business. Business tax in the US is already too high; if you chase off the people who run the economy, you will utterly destroy the US.
The only way out is to cut costs and start paying off our debt. Most of what the federal government spends money on is wasted anyway. There's no reason to "make the 1% pay their bills" (by which you really mean "tax hikes") when you can balance the budget simply by cutting unnecessary expenses.
I agree cut some costs. Let's shave 10% of the biggest expensive, the military.
Re:The IRS just announced (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately we've created a very terrible tax code that grossly benefits the rich and big business. Simplifying this mess seems to be apparently impossible.
I think people would be more interested in funding the IRS if it didn't result in a lot more audits for the lower 99%. Time and again they've shown the IRS proportionality goes after people claiming the child tax credits and small businesses. The people typically unable to defend themselves as they're already running on tight margins. The poor certainly can't fight back and small businesses don't have the money like the big guys do.
The 1% may owe $500B but since we're created laws for them to avoid paying this, the IRS seems more intent on rape the rest of us.
Otherwise, sure, I could get behind your of your ideas on this one.
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You could completely vaporize the DoD, perennial bogeyman of spending, and still have a monster annual debt.
It was pointed out two decades ago that spending and borrowing, per capita, was the same as during WWII, yet these were good times, not even a recession. What would happen to the debt if something major happened?
Wonder no more!
Kiss goodbye to 20% of your savings!
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Yes and no (Score:2)
Also if Trump had managed the crisis correctly we could've kept it all in China like we did with Bird flu....
Also, Nixon would've been a Democrat today. We'd call him a "corporate dem" sure, but neither he or Eisenhower could win a GOP primary today. If they were going to run they'd be running as Democrats.
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Let's be honest here: Trump doesn't care about deficit spending. He is not 1990s John Kasich.
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The budget will never be balanced because politicians will borrow what they think they can get away with, to buy more votes.
This was proven during the Internet boom in the late 1990s, when Congress found itself with a banced budget.
Well, this won't stand! They spent more and more, spending all that without losing it, and in two years were back in the red.
You will need an amendment to force the issue.
We've balanced it before (Score:2)
I mean seriously, if you took your car to a mechanic and they told you it was the devil and must be destroyed you'd find another ****ing mechanic. But we do that for politicians all day long.
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Even if you collected every penny you still wouldn't cover the extra interest on the debt right now.
Things are bad. Everyone knows how the story ends.
Buy Bitcoin and hard assets.
Buy Bitcoin? (Score:2)
I gotta ask, when the collapse you think is coming comes what are you going to do with all that Bitcoin? I mean, there's not gonna be electricity right? Do you think you can just wave your USB stick full of cryptographic keys at people?...
As for the interest, the part that matters is the $7t we owe overseas. The rest we owe ourselves. We could take back the $50 trillion we gave the 1% and pay it off tomorrow.
But a sucker's born every minute right? Wa
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Wow, when was this 'time'? Clinton used the accounting trick of rolling social security into the general fund which lasted a few years. Other than that I have no idea what you are talking about. Both Biden and Obama had a democrat congress for years....
You didn't put them in charge (Score:2)
Putting the Democrats in charge does not mean giving them the White House. It means 60+ seats in the senate and a majority in the House. If you're not American I can forgive you for not knowing how our system works though.
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Kind of makes you wonder why they're bothering with 1099-K then, doesn't it?
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We owe about $7 trillion overseas. That's the only amount that matters, since the rest we owe to ourselves.
Umm how about die in a fire comrade. I expect my US Bonds to be paid.
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Social Security: 21%
Health Insurance 24%
These are non-discretionary, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are funded via their own taxes so it's a bit of misdirection to included them in the general discretionary budget proposals. Look at your pay stubs people.
Also I don't like the huge military budget but that is still 3.5% of GDP which is not much higher than other comparable nations and actually less than others (like Russia at 4.1%)
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Okay let's make it simpler for you.
Republicans suck, Democrats suck more. If you want a balanced budget you keep the Republicans at arms length and throw the Democrats out of the discussion entirely.
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Or, you know, we could return to an era where those departments didn't exist, and instead Congress would have to do the job of those departments instead of farming out the work to unelected/unaccountable bureaucrats that last between administrations.
The Executive has plenty of things to do without heading departments created by Congress and staffed by the Executive.
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Eh depends on who you're listening to and what they're saying.
Mostly your point (however wrong you may be) is based around certain Republicans wanting to cut taxes while claiming the tax cuts would be revenue neutral. Which in retrospect they weren't. Spending cuts should have gone along with those tax cuts, or at the very least there should have just been some spending cuts without any change to tax policy. But that is beside the point.
There have been plenty of conservatives that have been calling for s