I've seen the current national debt situation compared to the U.S. national debt situation following WW2 a number of times (e.g., national debt to GDP ratios),

I've seen the current national debt situation compared to the U.S. national debt situation following WW2 a number of times (e.g., national debt to GDP ratios), but there is a key difference between now and the past: past episodes of rapid national debt increases were limited to only a very few years and the government then moved to reduce debt. For example, most of the expenses related to WW2 occurred in under a decade and the national government immediately started taking measures to start paying it off. Instead of taking measures to reduce our national debt, the federal government currently is actually increasing it to the tune of a trillion dollars a year in an economy that's only approximately 20 trillion (GDP). People hear the word "deficit" and they think that means "national debt" when in fact the deficit is how much is being added to the national debt each year. Politicians never talk about reducing debt - only reducing the deficit. Do you think Congress or either party has the self discipline to eliminate the deficit entirely and to actually meaningfully reduce the actual debt? It will be a lot more painful if they do that during an inflationary crisis than today. (If you aren't familiar with it, look up the Misery Index and talk to someone who dealt with the inflation in the 1970s.) What's actually happening currently is that the Fed is monetizing a larger and larger part of the debt as (1) other nations are reaching the limit of how much they will put into US gov bond purchases and/or even starting to plan to scale back their purchases in future years, and (2) the deficit continues to grow. As Milton Friedman pointed out, inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. There are a number of deflationary forces at play as well, but these types of inflationary forces seem to be stronger - and hyperinflation doesn't seem as far fetched as it used to.