5 ms·

US debt is rising by about $90k every second, or $7.8B a day

5 points by CircuitSeuss 1mo ago

ColdStream 1mo ago
Not surprised, the US is backed into a lifestyle that is hard to maintain. They are struggling to grow their productivity and thus it is easier to spend big on the credit card and just hope that folks don't move away from the petrodollar. I said it yesterday on here, Trump was right when he said "So long as oil is bought in US dollars, the debt doesn't matter." But when that comes down, it is going to hurt. That will be any time between next Tuesday and 50 years from now.
- montyanne 1mo ago
  Based on current events in the US 10y and 30y bonds, the end is coming quicker than people think or are prepared for. I really don’t see a way out of this that isn’t high inflation (about 15%), lower dollar valuation, bonds taking a huge hit, unemployment moving up, etc. I mean, just look at AI capex. It’s directly competing for US debt - and if the AI bet works out - results in even less taxable income for the government as human capital is replaced by AI. For something like 40 states, the biggest employer is healthcare/insurance intermediaries, which are absolutely ripe for replacement. /remindme! I’d bet gold price doubles in the next 2 years.
al_borland 1mo ago
I will never understand how this isn't the #1 issue being addressed. It seems like no one who can do anything about it cares at all. I'm basically a single-issue voter at this point, this is all I care about. It's going to swallow everything.
- remusrm 1mo ago
  [dead]
- no-name-here 1mo ago
  > It seems like no one who can do anything about it cares at all. There is talk about it, but the views are wildly diverging. Republicans' 'One Big Beautiful Bill' last year added $4.7 trillion dollars to the debt. [1] But even before last year's OBBB, the US already had by far the lowest taxes (fed + state + local) among the major advanced economies in the world; in fact, the US could have raised taxes by more than 15% and still been lowest. [2] The US also has the lowest spending (fed + state + local) among them as well. [3] But even though US spending is the lowest among them, its tax rates are so very low they still are not enough to cover even its lower spending. (Of course, all of the above is dependent on someone believing that the US is capable of standing up to comparison with other major advanced economies in the world.) If our spending is far lower than peer countries, and our taxes are far lower than peer countries, to me it seems like the obvious place to start would be getting tax rates closer to (even if still lower than) our peers, but 1 of the 2 big US political parties vehemently objects whenever Dems propose tax increases. So the can ends up getting kicked down the road if an agreement can't be reached. The GOP will talk about cutting spending, but A) won't identify exactly what programs they'd cut and what % of US spending it'd save, and B) Republicans actually increase spending, not cut it, when they hold all branches of government - their actions are the opposite of their talk. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us-debt-crosses-40-trillion-threshold-after-doubling-under-trump-biden-2026-08-19/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us-debt-crosses-40-trillion-th... [2] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/april/weo-report?c=156,132,134,136,158,112,111,&s=GGR_NGDP,&sy=2025&ey=2025&ssd=1 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/ap... [3] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/April/weo-report?c=156,132,134,136,158,112,111,&s=GGX_NGDP,&sy=2025&ey=2025&ssd=1 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/Ap...
  - al_borland 1mo ago
    I think tax increases are a hard sell when they are $40T in debt. The government has proven themselves to be poor stewards of this money. People don’t like giving money to people who spend recklessly with no sign of stopping. If they can’t figure out a budget today, I have no expectation they’ll be able to handle even more money. Now, if there was no debt and things were generally good, and they said, “if you want universal healthcare we will need to raises taxes by n%, here is the proposed plan that we will put to a vote in the fall.” That would a transparent and justifiable way to go about it. Taxes would go up, but people would get a vote, get something in return, and know that the government isn’t spending wildly without any plan to ever pay it back.
- jfengel 1mo ago
  The debt is a very abstract problem. It's difficult to trace any particular kitchen-table issue to it. The stock market is booming; unemployment is at regular levels. Inflation is higher than economists or consumers want, but it's not off the charts. The merits of those numbers is certainly debatable, but they've at least been consistently calculated. They're the numbers we have to work with, and they do justify the idea that things are unpleasant, but not a crisis. The low price of US Treasury bonds is worrying, and definitely hint at a crisis on the horizon, but it's only partly due to the debt and more due to a generalized worry about the state of the US. I don't know what to advise you as a single-issue voters. The solution is obvious and unacceptable: raise tax rates, close methods of tax avoidance, reduce spending on large discretionary budget items. Neither party is going to propose that, and no third party is going to get off the ground by suggesting it. Republicans present themselves as the debt-avoiding party, and I think the best you can do is look for ways to tell them that you know that they've failed massively on that. They were handed immense levels of power to cut anything they wanted, and they wasted it on culture wars. You can try to shift their focus to actually the deficit, but that's a very big ship to turn. Their base isn't thrilled right now, but certainly isn't going to tolerate the other party gaining power, even if they did promise better governance. Democrats would at least in theory like to raise taxes and reduce military spending, but it's damn near impossible. Republicans oppose both of those things, and the checks-and-balances system favors the status quo. It takes overwhelming agreement to achieve anything, and there remain many Democrats in right-leaning districts who are easily scared off of supporting the party on those issues. I suppose you could go really off the rails and support the far-left approach of Modern Monetary Theory, which basically scraps the debt by conflating it with the currency. You pay off the debt with printed money, and then separately compensate for inflation by collecting taxes (and then just burning the money you collect).

5 points by CircuitSeuss 1mo ago

Not surprised, the US is backed into a lifestyle that is hard to maintain. They are struggling to grow their productivity and thus it is easier to spend big on the credit card and just hope that folks don't move away from the petrodollar. I said it yesterday on here, Trump was right when he said "So long as oil is bought in US dollars, the debt doesn't matter." But when that comes down, it is going to hurt. That will be any time between next Tuesday and 50 years from now.

montyanne 1mo ago
Based on current events in the US 10y and 30y bonds, the end is coming quicker than people think or are prepared for. I really don’t see a way out of this that isn’t high inflation (about 15%), lower dollar valuation, bonds taking a huge hit, unemployment moving up, etc. I mean, just look at AI capex. It’s directly competing for US debt - and if the AI bet works out - results in even less taxable income for the government as human capital is replaced by AI. For something like 40 states, the biggest employer is healthcare/insurance intermediaries, which are absolutely ripe for replacement. /remindme! I’d bet gold price doubles in the next 2 years.

al_borland 1mo ago

I will never understand how this isn't the #1 issue being addressed. It seems like no one who can do anything about it cares at all. I'm basically a single-issue voter at this point, this is all I care about. It's going to swallow everything.

remusrm 1mo ago
[dead]
no-name-here 1mo ago
> It seems like no one who can do anything about it cares at all. There is talk about it, but the views are wildly diverging. Republicans' 'One Big Beautiful Bill' last year added $4.7 trillion dollars to the debt. [1] But even before last year's OBBB, the US already had by far the lowest taxes (fed + state + local) among the major advanced economies in the world; in fact, the US could have raised taxes by more than 15% and still been lowest. [2] The US also has the lowest spending (fed + state + local) among them as well. [3] But even though US spending is the lowest among them, its tax rates are so very low they still are not enough to cover even its lower spending. (Of course, all of the above is dependent on someone believing that the US is capable of standing up to comparison with other major advanced economies in the world.) If our spending is far lower than peer countries, and our taxes are far lower than peer countries, to me it seems like the obvious place to start would be getting tax rates closer to (even if still lower than) our peers, but 1 of the 2 big US political parties vehemently objects whenever Dems propose tax increases. So the can ends up getting kicked down the road if an agreement can't be reached. The GOP will talk about cutting spending, but A) won't identify exactly what programs they'd cut and what % of US spending it'd save, and B) Republicans actually increase spending, not cut it, when they hold all branches of government - their actions are the opposite of their talk. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us-debt-crosses-40-trillion-threshold-after-doubling-under-trump-biden-2026-08-19/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us-debt-crosses-40-trillion-th... [2] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/april/weo-report?c=156,132,134,136,158,112,111,&s=GGR_NGDP,&sy=2025&ey=2025&ssd=1 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/ap... [3] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/April/weo-report?c=156,132,134,136,158,112,111,&s=GGX_NGDP,&sy=2025&ey=2025&ssd=1 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/Ap...
- al_borland 1mo ago
  I think tax increases are a hard sell when they are $40T in debt. The government has proven themselves to be poor stewards of this money. People don’t like giving money to people who spend recklessly with no sign of stopping. If they can’t figure out a budget today, I have no expectation they’ll be able to handle even more money. Now, if there was no debt and things were generally good, and they said, “if you want universal healthcare we will need to raises taxes by n%, here is the proposed plan that we will put to a vote in the fall.” That would a transparent and justifiable way to go about it. Taxes would go up, but people would get a vote, get something in return, and know that the government isn’t spending wildly without any plan to ever pay it back.
jfengel 1mo ago
The debt is a very abstract problem. It's difficult to trace any particular kitchen-table issue to it. The stock market is booming; unemployment is at regular levels. Inflation is higher than economists or consumers want, but it's not off the charts. The merits of those numbers is certainly debatable, but they've at least been consistently calculated. They're the numbers we have to work with, and they do justify the idea that things are unpleasant, but not a crisis. The low price of US Treasury bonds is worrying, and definitely hint at a crisis on the horizon, but it's only partly due to the debt and more due to a generalized worry about the state of the US. I don't know what to advise you as a single-issue voters. The solution is obvious and unacceptable: raise tax rates, close methods of tax avoidance, reduce spending on large discretionary budget items. Neither party is going to propose that, and no third party is going to get off the ground by suggesting it. Republicans present themselves as the debt-avoiding party, and I think the best you can do is look for ways to tell them that you know that they've failed massively on that. They were handed immense levels of power to cut anything they wanted, and they wasted it on culture wars. You can try to shift their focus to actually the deficit, but that's a very big ship to turn. Their base isn't thrilled right now, but certainly isn't going to tolerate the other party gaining power, even if they did promise better governance. Democrats would at least in theory like to raise taxes and reduce military spending, but it's damn near impossible. Republicans oppose both of those things, and the checks-and-balances system favors the status quo. It takes overwhelming agreement to achieve anything, and there remain many Democrats in right-leaning districts who are easily scared off of supporting the party on those issues. I suppose you could go really off the rails and support the far-left approach of Modern Monetary Theory, which basically scraps the debt by conflating it with the currency. You pay off the debt with printed money, and then separately compensate for inflation by collecting taxes (and then just burning the money you collect).