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U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
- etchalon 2mo ago[flagged]
- jasonmp85 2mo ago[dead]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- juujian 2mo agoUpsetting how we are reaching these lows while the administration is accusing everyone else of wasting taxpayer money except for themselves. At least under previous administrations you would get something for your money, like science funding and healthcare for the needy, not just bombing runs and posturing.
- joinjune 2mo agoBoth can be true. The previous administration bailed out the unfunded pension funds of cities and state employees when they did Covid-19 bailouts despite it having nothing to do with Covid-19 and without requiring these local governments to properly fund these pensions moving forward. They bailed these pension programs out many times more than their financial support for restaurants they forced closed. Basically, America has an economy that is buoyed by AI development and infrastructure spending right now but is poised to pop and the national debt has been ballooned by two to three generations of political leadership failing to properly address underlying issues and instead printing money.
- notfromhere 2mo agoThe problem is that half the political system thinks you can cut taxes and grow revenues. Which is an intentional strategy to repeal social programs that they’d never get the votes to do so via legislation
- ModernMech 2mo agoRight they (the politicians) don't actually think that, they just say that to get cooked projections. Once those revenue projections turn out to be false, it doesn't matter because they already have their tax cuts baked in. Then everyone can blame the other side for deficits and campaign on fixing it. Rinse and repeat.
- thenewnewguy 2mo agoLet's be clear and not do this both sides thing - by "they" we mean Republicans. You may not agree with their policies or what they want to spend money on, but Democrats (at least in aggregate) live in the real world where they acknowledge for the government to spend money they will have to raise taxes. Republicans are the only party that in the 21st century acts as though we can simultaneously cut taxes and increase spending and everything will be fine.
- ghastmaster 2mo agoAs far as I have seen, in federal politics, the majority(left and right) spends, while taxes in general have not been significantly increased or decreased(percentage). What you are talking about is their rhetoric, which may be rhetorical itself. What does change(and is more important) is Debt/Revenue: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=TZfm https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=TZfm The ratio is looking like it is trending in the right direction. If GDP decreases while nominal tax receipts increase, GDP does not change the debt, while the debt/Revenue ratio looks good for paying bills, while not boding well for economic health. What is this "real world" you are referring to? There has to be a balance between current and future expenditures and economic health to facilitate these. Nothing exists in a vacuum.
- win311fwg 2mo agoThere are two ways to tax the people: By destroying money or by creating money. Republicans may generally prefer creating money over destroying money, but that doesn't mean they aren't applying taxation. "Tax cuts" in normal speak just means a reduction in how much money is being destroyed. It does not refer to a reduction in your tax burden.
- throwaway894345 2mo agoThere are more than two numbers, so we don't have to force this weird "it's either 0% waste or 100% waste" dichotomy. No one is claiming the Biden admin didn't waste a cent, the claim is that the Trump administration is wasting _orders of magnitude_ more money than the Biden administration.
- jhickok 2mo agoIt's likely not politically feasible for a genuine attempt at right-sizing our budget, although we have had attempts (short-lived) in the past. Blaming a political party for this is pointless, although there is a party that has postured as the fiscal adult in the room. It could be a very messy bubble if/when it collapses, and I think our way out at this point would have to be AI-driven productivity gains. Hopefully Altman's little wish-granting machine ends up being accurate.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoBailing out workers is okay. They are, by definition, the people who have done the work. Bailing out the wealthy, or tax cuts for them is not. Unless you are very wealthy, you are a worker, and unless you experience a lottery winning type event, will never be very wealthy. > Basically, America has an economy that is buoyed by AI development and infrastructure spending right now but is poised to pop and the national debt has been ballooned by two to three generations of political leadership failing to properly address underlying issues and instead printing money. Maybe we shouldn't have spent five decades giving the wealthy tax break after tax break while hollowing out the middle class and suppressing wages with union busting and globalization. Productivity is up ~90% over this time frame, and most of the gains have gone to the top 1%. But here we are. The bill has come due for strip mining the country economically, and taxes will go up to pay down this debt (because only the top ~40% of income earners have enough income to have a federal tax liability). We will fix this eventually through demographic compression (economic growth comes, broadly speaking, from population growth and the US has reached peak population; forward growth will be substantially lower than the past when the population was growing rapidly), politics, and the bond market forcing the US government to raise taxes (“bond vigilantes”).
- chasd00 2mo ago> forcing the US government to raise taxes. it won't be the wealthy or cash-under-the-table classes paying these taxes, the increases will be in the income brackets. Which means paycheck receiving working stiffs ( middle and upper-middle class ) and retierees drawing from a 401k/IRA are the ones who will pay just like always.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- quickthrowman 2mo ago> Bailing out workers is okay. Bailing out the wealthy, or tax cuts for them is not. Hell, between PPP and the OBBB tax cuts, rich people are getting $2T over from the YS Governemnt from 2020-2030. It’ll keep happening too, this country is an oligarchy now. Wish it wouldn’t but I don’t see a sea change coming, just further concentration of wealth and power.
- throwawaypath 2mo ago[flagged]
- beej71 2mo agoI'm so glad we rearranged those deck chairs.
- throwawaypath 2mo agoI'm so glad we have "main" instead of "master", "blocklist" instead of "blacklist", math is racist now, and we systemically discriminated against entire classes of people in the name of DEI. Those deck chairs have had a lot of rearranging.
- rayiner 2mo agoI don't want to waste money bombing Iran either, but the total cost of the operation has been $37.5 billion. Meanwhile, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security each grew around $100 billion in the last year.
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoDirect costs are ~$113B as of June 16th, 2026 (per the Pentagon's briefing to Congress, counter stopped on that date): https://iran-cost-ticker.com/ https://iran-cost-ticker.com/ Iran War Cost Tracker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47237080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47237080 - March 2026 (446 comments) Pentagon Tells Congress First Week of Iran War Cost More Than $11.3 Billion - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/world/middleeast/iran-war-costs-pentagon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/world/middleeast/iran-war... | https://archive.today/Q4oDX https://archive.today/Q4oDX - March 11th, 2026 Consumer energy excess cost burden is ~$76B as of this comment (indirect regressive consumer tax): https://iranwarcost.watson.brown.edu/ https://iranwarcost.watson.brown.edu/ > Meanwhile, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security each grew around $100 billion in the last year. While we should be efficient with these programs, that's what government is for, and what I pay US federal taxes for: to take care of my fellow citizens. Not to bomb innocent people with overpriced military industrial complex hardware on the other side of the world for illegitimate reasons (F-35 program costs now exceed $2T, for example). https://usafacts.org/government-spending/ https://usafacts.org/government-spending/ Pentagon Fails Eighth Audit, Eyes 2028 Turnaround - https://www.military.com/feature/2025/12/24/pentagon-fails-eighth-audit-eyes-2028-turnaround.html https://www.military.com/feature/2025/12/24/pentagon-fails-e... - December 24th, 2025 Annual net interest on debt is ~$900B/year, as of this comment; we could replace Medicare and Medicaid with Medicare for All for ~$2T/year, which would contribute to constraining healthcare spending increases: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48666290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48666290. It is an active choice to continue to operate the entire system inefficiently; we could make other, better choices. The inefficiency and debt growth is a result of operating the system for entrenched interests to profit off of the dysfunction.
- rayiner 2mo ago[flagged]
- jmpman 2mo agoAs much as people may dislike Regan, his goal for reducing taxes on the wealthy was based upon the laffer curve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve The hypothesis is that lowering taxes rates will actually increase government revenues. The Trump cuts don't feel like they're laffer optimal. Instead they feel like political capture by the wealthy class. A cumulative of left of laffer optimal tax strategies over the past years have resulted in a deficit growing at rates which now exceed what a laffer peak rate would now support. - the rich got their tax breaks, and have contributed to deficits for decades. Now they complain that social security entitlements must be cut to keep within our means.
- joquarky 2mo ago> Now they complain that social security entitlements must be cut to keep within our means. That's the Starve the Beast strategy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
- tstrimple 2mo ago> As much as people may dislike Regan, his goal for reducing taxes on the wealthy was based upon the laffer curve. If this were the case, revenue would have gone up after the tax cuts. They didn't. Receipts as share of GDP fell and the deficit tripled. The debt went from 25% of GDP to 40% of GDP during Reagan. We've never meaningfully been on the wrong side of the Laffer curve. It's basically just conservative propaganda at this point. As the other post mentioned, the strategy is and was Starve the Beast. We know this because that's what Reagan actually campaigned on. > "John Anderson tells us that first we've got to reduce spending before we can reduce taxes. Well, if you've got a kid that's extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker."
- ElevenLathe 2mo agoIt's really more that the (narrow, academic, theoretical) Laffer curve provided cover for the Reagan admin to cut taxes in the ways their backers wanted, but this is admittedly unproven AFAIK. But then there's the observable fact that the Reagan cuts weren't Laffer-optimal either (revenues went down, not up). It's not clear that there is a Laffer-optimal tax cut that can currently be made, but instead of making a case for that it has just become "centrist" dogma that lower taxes always increase growth and revenues, and are always optimal no matter the actual fiscal or economic situation.
- _DeadFred_ 2mo agoThe Republicans have ran on 'starve the beast' and intentional breaking of our government/programs/etc in order to meet their philosophical aims for 40 years. Republicans actively try to damage our country and do bad fiscal policy because they put their agenda over the the health of the nation. It's not surprising they don't care because they literally have policy to do damage like this and their explicit goal has been this exact outcome.
- Taikonerd 2mo agoIt always gives me an ominous feeling to see these headlines. It's like we're walking out further and further on a frozen lake. "Hey, it's OK, the ice hasn't cracked yet! Let's keep going!"
- danesparza 2mo agoI think that's a pretty solid (pun intended) metaphor. Past performance is not a predictor of future returns.
- kingleopold 2mo agoend is probably ww btw. so are you all ready? last time it did work and lost of war debt was paid
- sph 2mo agoThat only works if you are on the winning side.
- kingleopold 2mo agodoes not matter, world would lose big in a new ww. Supply chains now make billions rely on food and others today.
- pydry 2mo agoTotal debt / GDP is the wrong metric for that. There's no limit to the serviceability of debt in a currency you print. It makes more sense to conceptualise it as the total size of a giant savings account run by the government. We are walking further out on the ice but that is measured more in other ways - with harder metrics like inflation, access to cheap energy, resources, industrial density and capabilities and access to technology - not this headline number.
- somenameforme 2mo agoEven if we just ignore inflation and other issues, there's still a hard limit because governments don't literally just print money, but sells bonds at market rates. As confidence in the economic stability declines the interest rates the government is required to offer on those bonds trends upward. So right now even 10 year treasuries are selling with just under 5% interest. As a result we're now paying $1.4 trillion per year in interest alone, and that number is going up far faster than the economy is growing. This [1] graph looks quite disconcerting. And it's a vicious cycle. The less confidence there is in the stability of this game, the more the government will have to pay to sell that debt. And the more they have to pay, the more debt they end up needing. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A180RC1A027NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A180RC1A027NBEA
- deadbabe 2mo agoThis still isn’t too bad compared to other countries, also, most of the AI industry profits are still yet to be fully realized.
- faefox 2mo agoAI industry profits have and will continue to be privatized while the enormous costs of job displacement (to name just one of many negative externalities) will be gleefully socialized. We've seen this film before.
- doctorwho42 2mo agoAssuming it doesn't mirror the dotcom bubble
- somenameforme 2mo agoI think you're being sarcastic, but can't quite tell. If you're not - this is the 10th worst ratio in the world. The only countries worse are: Venezuela, Japan, Sudan, Singapore, Eritrea, Bahrain, Greece, Lebanon, and Italy. The difference has historically been that we've been able to exploit the dollar, export our inflation, and so on - but those times are fading.
- drnick1 2mo agoNo, those times are not fading. We are constantly opening up new revenue streams, like Venezuela, and maybe soon Iran too.
- deadbabe 2mo agoWhy would anybody be sarcastic on hackernews??? Is this reddit
- somenameforme 2mo agoBecause sarcasm well done, in other words with some reasonable degree of subtlety and without straw-manning, can be a good way of demonstrating the irrationality of certain positions, or the severity of an issue (as in this case). Unless I'm getting whoofed again lol.
- sentrysapper 2mo agoSlaps the hood of a cybertruck This bad boy can hold a LOT of debt.
- nekusar 2mo agoThis country is a cybertruck.
- windexh8er 2mo ago...stuck in a half inch of snow on a public road.
- selimthegrim 2mo agoWait, I thought we were a gun.
- blipvert 2mo agoYou are Brian Bilston, and I claim my £5
- Aboutplants 2mo ago[flagged]
- notfromhere 2mo agoNo they wouldn’t. A balanced budget would be incredibly unpopular with everyone as you’d have to raise taxes and cut spending.
- liuliu 2mo agoWell, it is a "platform of Balancing Budget", you don't need to actually work on that or do anything. The harder part is just letting people believing in miracles. Look no further than the current administration. Lying has no consequences so far.
- thesuitonym 2mo agoIf only there were some minority with an overabundance of wealth we could use.
- ceejayoz 2mo agoNo, they wouldn't. They've moved on from that, as clearly evidenced by this administration. Minion memes, though...
- jawiggins 2mo agoWouldn't that require cuts to boomer handout programs?
- mkw5053 2mo agoI'd argue boomers are the main reason we're in this mess. Boomers spent decades voting for politicians who promised low taxes, protected retirement benefits, and high government spending, then shifted the bill to younger generations.
- jgbuddy 2mo agotime to buy bitcoin
- hypeatei 2mo agoHaha, so you can bribe the President? I hope this comment is satire. The "masses" are well aware of crypto at this point and BTC is down 47% over this past year. It's just not that useful unless you're trying to skirt laws/regulations[1] or LARPing as a sovereign citizen. 1: Yes, I know, BTC is not even good pick for financial crimes either.
- Helloworldboy 2mo ago[dead]
- kevin_thibedeau 2mo agoPardons go for $3M these days.
- jgbuddy 2mo agoSounds like you should short it then!
- hypeatei 2mo agoNo, I don't participate in crypto nonsense. Especially such a speculative and volatile "asset" like Bitcoin.
- thesuitonym 2mo agoIf you think bitcoin will hold value as economies are collapsing, I have some beachfront property to sell you. ...Actually I have an NFT of some beachfront property.
- sigilsack 2mo ago[dead]
- sumanthvepa 2mo agoNot an American, but I would argue that this level while little bit of a concern is not a huge issue for a superpower that borrows in its own currency and has the military and economic might to crush any party (sovereign or corporate) attempting move away from that system. You guys are too powerful.
- wobblyasp 2mo agoSome things feel impossible until they happen.
- itsyonas 2mo agoBingo! Any country borrowing in its own sovereign currency cannot default on debt in that currency, unless it actively decides to do so for political reasons.
- branko_d 2mo agoSure, but it can still have hyperinflation.
- eigenspace 2mo agoThis is a fantasy. Do you really think lenders would just not notice if America inflated its currency away to get rid of its debts, and they'd just say "aw shucks you got us. Anyways, here's a new loan at the same terms as last time." ? And what about the American public? Look at how much Americans freaked out over a year or two of 6% yearly inflation. How do you think Americans would respond to 30% monthly inflation like in Argentina or Turkey?
- itsyonas 2mo ago> This is a fantasy. How so. > Do you really think lenders A government with its own sovereign currency doesn't need lenders. In fact, it is the government that allows lenders to lend money - not the other way around. > Anyways, here's a new loan at the same terms as last time." ? Why would they need to get a loan for from a lender? > How do you think Americans would respond to 30% monthly inflation like in Argentina or Turkey? Do you think that printing money automatically causes inflation? How does that work? Do people have some kind of magical device, or is it a physical phenomenon that can be measured? Of course not. Printing money only causes inflation if it is spend in a way exceeds the capacity of the market.
- adolph 2mo agoOn the bright side it isn't growing and is down from the pandemic-era 132% of GDP. (Although maybe that was because GDP shrank rather than any change in fundamental debt.)
- danesparza 2mo agoAre we looking at the same graph? It appeared to drop from the 2020 highs, yes. But it's definitely trending upward.
- _trampeltier 2mo agoThe GDP was a little smaler during Covid. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP/ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP/
- Zsfe510asG 2mo agoThe wisdom was that the US dollar due to its exorbitant privilege (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege#Origin) can afford these debts. Countries put up with it because the US "provided protection" and insured maritime freedom of navigation. Oh wait ...
- epolanski 2mo agoThe entire world is super leveraged at levels generally seen during major recessions or wars. And that's excluding the huge amount of multi tiered private credit. While this is not an indication of anything bad on its own it definitely creates the conditions for cataclysms. It's like being on a very very dry hay field, it does not mean that you're bound to die on fire, it just means that the risks of a fire being extremely destructive are high.
- sampton 2mo agoI wonder what the exit plan is. One time conversion of social security into Trump accounts and call it a day?
- malux85 2mo agoLoad all of your debt onto another enormous country. Go to war with them, make debt elimination one of the terms of peace
- _trampeltier 2mo agoI remember something, like gold taken from Iraq.
- rawgabbit 2mo agoAn executive order declaring a newly created legal entity is now the holder of all previous debt. The new entity has no assets or revenues, other than Trumpcoin.
- chasd00 2mo agojust want to say, whether you like the name/admin or not those accounts are a very good deal. Setting up one for a new born is a get-out-financial-mistakes (cc/student loan debt etc) free card when they grow up and get access to the money. If you're smart and can make some decent deposits in the first year or two that could easily become a buy-a-house-for-free card which would be an absolute treasure for kickstarting a young person's financial life. It's too late for my kids but if i'm ever lucky enough to have grandkids part of their bday and Christmas gifts will be deposits.
- tchalla 2mo agoLet the market decide Applies only if you are the reserve currency, label everyone else who don't use your currency the way you want it as currency manipulators and you can take whatever debt you want because well the printer can pay everything back in the future.
- FergusArgyll 2mo agoEveryone hates regulations until they realize every regulation actually does something. Everyone hates spending until they realize the money goes towards something. None of this will get solved until a crisis
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoThis Is Probably Fine! by Patrick Boyle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvsDmwZWdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvsDmwZWdM - May 29th, 2026 > US 30-year Treasury yields just hit 5.2% — the highest level since July 2007. UK gilt yields are at levels not seen since 1998. Japanese bond yields are at record highs. Something is happening in global bond markets, and it's not just about inflation. In this video I explain what's driving the global rise in long-term borrowing costs, why the era of free money is probably over, and what fiscal dominance means for central bank independence. I cover the history of US presidents fighting with the Federal Reserve — including LBJ shoving his Fed Chair against a wall — the 1970s UK economic collapse, the Liz Truss mini-budget crisis, the role of private credit and off-balance-sheet SPVs in financing the AI boom, and what all of this means for the new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh.
- hnx0rqy49u 2mo ago[dead]
- bbayles 2mo agoDebt-to-GDP ratio is useful for comparing the debt loads of two countries, but not terribly useful in assessing the serviceability of debt for a single country. That is, suppose two countries both have $100B in debt. One of them is a small island nation; the other is a global superpower. Obviously the global superpower will be better able to handle that - dividing by GDP helps make that clear. However, this simple division doesn't tell you some important things. How much of the debt comes due very soon? It's worse if the answer is "most of it." How was it incurred? "Winning a war" is much better than "losing a war." The United States has lots of debt, and personally I'm worried about the long term serviceability of it. But the ratio to GDP isn't why!
- hirako2000 2mo agoBut the doesn't come due. So long as you can cough up the interests.
- bbayles 2mo agoThere are short term and long term bonds.
- hirako2000 2mo agoEffectively the debt does not mature, as bonds get refinanced. The problem is if nobody wants to buy new bonds, of course.
- harmmonica 2mo agoThe stock and real estate market, huge sources of wealth for the us population, are still near all-time highs and many people, tens of millions at least, have way more real money than they’ve ever had in their lives, and yet a massive number of those people would rather not take a hit to their wealth when it’s easiest to absorb the hit and instead prefer cutting things that even they like the government providing (medicare this week the latest example in an endless number of examples these past months). It really is crazy how wealth-obsessed many Americans are. And I say that as an absolute hater of how the pols run the place (yes both sides. One for having no sense of how to manage money and the other having some sense but ignoring it; one of these is objectively worse than the other (yep, I said it, objectively!)). Seems like the end goal is not to have a country left but instead a bunch of factions more likely to be at war fighting over cash, resources and culture issues. Depressing as fuck for those of us not excited about that end goal.
- torginus 2mo agoWhy is this a meaningful figure? It's not debt that matters its how much it costs to finance it. It's Finance 101 that if you manage to borrow below inflation rate, and you have the luck that what you paid for appreciates, then your debt will disappear over time. On the contrary, trivial amounts of money with usury can ruin you financially.
- eigenspace 2mo agoThis Finance 101 perspective is too clever by half. Sounds like a great idea, right? But what if something out of your control[1] happens, and average interest rates on the debt burden go up from 2% to 14%? The USA can't afford to just pay off all of its debts. It must continuallly roll over it's old debts to new debts, and could easily find itself in a situation where debt servicing costs go up by an order of magnitude if the fiscal situation changes for long enough. [1] Or in the case of the United States, you do something very stupid and very inside of your control
- torginus 2mo agoNot a finance person, but my understanding is that the US govt is indebted via bonds which pay according to their issued yields. So the interest rates are the yield rates of said bonds, and if the dollar were undergo hyperinflation, then said debt would inflate away. Sure, that would mean getting future financing would be difficult and expensive for the US, but that's a problem down the line, and goes beyond just the current debt. For the record, I do not agree with current US foreign or domestic policy, but I wouldn't say it doesn't serve current US financial interests.
- eigenspace 2mo agoCopy-pasting my comment from elsewhere in the thread: This is a fantasy. Do you really think lenders would just not notice if America inflated its currency away to get rid of its debts, and they'd just say "aw shucks you got us. Anyways, here's a new loan at the same terms as last time." ? And what about the American public? Look at how much Americans freaked out over a year or two of 6% yearly inflation. How do you think Americans would respond to 30% monthly inflation like in Argentina or Turkey? In almost all cases, you're better off just defaulting on loans than pursuing hyperinflation. The reason to go for hyperinflation is if you're worried about your creditors invading you for defaulting.
- freediddy 2mo agoJapan is at well over 200%, and has a very real population crisis. Italy is 138%, France is at 117%, Canada is at 110%. UK and China are around 100%. 123% comparatively speaking isn't great, but it's not shockingly terrible.
- trixn86 2mo agoThe US Dollar is chronically over-valued because of its reserve currency status. The US wanted it that way, opposing Keynes proposal of an international clearing union using a clearing currency (which he called the Bancor) that is independent of any specific country. This automatically means that US companies suffer a huge competitive disadvantage which results in an external deficit. The foreign sector accumulates dollar savings. Now the US household sector naturally also runs a surplus. This only leaves the companies and the government which must by logic of sectoral balances run a deficit for the economy not to shrink. The companies are in aggregate also running a surplus since the neoliberal shift and that leaves only one sector that must have a matching deficit if you want to at least keep up economic activity. If the government sector wants to run a surplus that automatically and necessarily must mean that one of the other sectors must run a deficit by logic of accounting. Which one should that be and how do you want to force it to run a deficit? The foreign sector is not an option as long as the US Dollar is the dominant reserve currency because it is overvalued. The households are a natural saver almost always running a surplus. That leaves only the companies to run a deficit. Now how do you get the companies to run a deficit (in aggregate of course, we are not talking about a single company)? You need to make them invest more than they earn. This used to be the role the company sector had until the 70s. Since then we got Thatcher and Reagan with financialization, deregulation, pressure on wages (they fell from about 70% of GDP to about 60%). The government will have to run massive deficits just to keep the economy going unless we roll that back.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- marcusverus 2mo agoIt's hard to imagine a political solution to this problem. Both parties are playing chicken, each daring the other to fall on their sword for the good of the country, with neither willing to commit political suicide. Republicans don't have the stomach for the (unpopular) spending cuts that would be required to reduce the deficit, and of course they don't want to raise taxes. They reasonably fear that, even if they gutted the core programs to balance the budget, the next Democrat administration (whose election would be essentially guaranteed by massive cuts) would turn around and use the savings to fund new and exciting ways to buy votes. On the flip side, Democrats shriek in horror at the slightest spending cuts and even advocate for massive increases in spending ("Medicare for all" alone would cost another $1.5 Trillion per year) yet they are afraid to acknowledge, let alone levy, the (unpopular) broad-based taxes required to cover the current deficit, let alone pay for new programs. It is the ultimate tragedy of the commons.
- user00005 2mo agoThe Federal Budget in Fiscal Year 2025: An Infographic https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61950 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61950
- r721 2mo ago>Relative to the size of the economy, interest costs would reach 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year — eclipsing the previous high set in 1991. >As a share of federal revenues, federal interest payments rose to 18.5 percent by the end of last year, exceeding the previous high set in 1991. https://www.pgpf.org/programs-and-projects/fiscal-policy/monthly-interest-tracker-national-debt/ https://www.pgpf.org/programs-and-projects/fiscal-policy/mon...