I wouldn't expect to pay it back in the sense of reducing the debt to zero. A government is (nominally) eternal, and can continue to revolve its debt indefinitely. It doesn't retire or die the way a person does. As long as it pays its interest, it can just borrow again every time a debt comes due.

But it's not reasonable for that debt to grow without limit. It has to be able to pay the interest on the debt, for which it requires revenue. We take in only around $3T a year in total. That's still a large fraction of that $26T debt, but we're also supposed to pay our actual obligations out of that -- which at the moment are over $4T. Eventually the debt service is going to be larger than our revenue, and I just don't see investors being willing to just let that amount ride as new debt.

And yet people will loan us money for 10 years at well under 1% interest. That keeps the interest burden down -- and yet with the debt growing at over $1T per year it can't last forever.

Those seem like something someone with wealth might want to do. But for those without wealth... protests are pretty much the top of the short list of options they can take.

Brace for impact. If and when the shit hits the fan, there will be no strategy _at all_ to keep the same economic levels. Everybody will suffer.