US national debt surges past $39 Trillion (opens in new tab)

In the current world a rock would do fine in an election,

- Won't start a war

- Won't speak like a 5yo kid

- Won't run around and desert you

The Republican policy has been to starve the beast for 40 years. They are willing to bury the country in unsustainable levels of debt in order to force their agenda for government because they can't reach their goal electorally. They care more about that goal than the financial health of the nation or what the impacts of destroying the financial health is on all of us. They would rather intentionally make us too broke to function so that we can't afford government than have us rich but with a functional government. This has been their publicly stated policy for 40 years.

Fiscal conservatism is a lie, Republicans have consistently contributed far more to the debt than Democrats, at least during my lifetime.

If you look at national debt, the Democratic Party is the fiscally conservative party. Yet you believe the opposite. Propaganda works!

> socially progressive and fiscally conservative

How about “socially progressive and fiscally effective”?

that electorate doesnt exist in two party system.

It would be an easy strategy to defeat - the two biggest Democratic states, California and New York, are close to the top in terms of cost of living. I know fiscally conservative doesn't mean "cheap to live" but most people see them as the same.

Would that not require them to ... support fiscally conservative actions, which would lose them a large part of their voting bloc?

The media environment is so right wing (yes really) that Democrats don't get the credit for that kind of thing while Republicans don't get the blame for absolute ransacking of the country.

Isn't that what it already is?

Fiscal conservatism only exists as an ideology when paired with hurting brown people. It does not exist as a meaningful political camp otherwise.

There is a reason that fiscal conservatives spend all their time on food stamps, environmental regulations, and a few random research projects and not even examining any of the top four costs that make up the overwhelming bulk of US spending.

This is basically how the Democratic party is trying to operate now and it's not working. They've been trying to cater to moderate Republicans who became disillusioned with Trump and it's gotten them very little in the last decade.

Rebranding does not fix rot.

See also: X, Meta, Blackwater…

Is this not theoretically the libertarian party? (Of course in reality it’s often the Republican-lite party). It hasn’t proven to be a winning strategy

> So there's never a particular point that it "comes back to bite us" - if anything, the "bite" is happening already right now for all of us.

This is magical thinking. The bonds are actually held by investors, and when investors see them as a losing bet, they will stop buying them. Unless you think American taxpayers will suddenly be willing to live within our means, it’s a real problem.

The current reserve currency status means that people often use the bonds for reasons other than returns, but we need to not fool ourselves into assuming this paradigm is permanent. Once real inflation gets going, it’s just a coordination problem to change the reserve instrument. After that, the intersection between what the US can feasibly return and what investors require can quickly evaporate.

We are currently on a Japanese trajectory, but that could easily become Argentina.

This sounds like pretty dangerous thinking to me. A government financial crisis is something that happens slowly and then very quickly. The US currently enjoys extremely low borrowing rates and still spends a significant portion of its tax receipts servicing debt. If the country starts to appear much less stable and reliable in the long term those rates can increase sharply, which would put gigantic strain on the country's finances, which would cause rates to jump even more. It's a bad cycle that we very much want to avoid.

Even without any disaster scenarios we spend an immense amount of money every year on debt payments. That money could instead be spent on any number of other use cases that actually produce something useful.

> Government debt gets resolved through inflation.

This is misleading.

US debt as GDP percentage is higher than for any other nation except Italy and Greece, and was much lower historically, too (<50%ish for basically the last century instead of >100% now).

So the status quo is not how government spending gets typically resolved.

Racking up public debt risks runaway inflation, which is unpleasant for everyone.

It’s rather more simple than that. In a floating exchange rate world, which is the one we live in a dollar is just a 0% bearer bond.

So when a government bond matures it is replaced automatically with a simple bank deposit. It’s nothing more than an asset swap.

“People with savings” are precisely why there is a “debt” in the first place. When they spend those savings they pass tax points which then creates the tax that retires the “debt”.

To put it in simple terms the “grandchildren” will “service the debt” using the counterparty “savings assets”inherited from their “grandparents”.

Don’t fall for the standard narrative. It’s not true.

We won't be able to inflate our way out of the debt because government spending is tied to inflation.

That can't be right as Japan's Debt-To-GDP Ratio is almost double the US's.

There's a LOT of nuance in any answer to this but the short of it is: we've already been downgraded by all the major agencies over the last 15 years, despite this - the market doesn't really seem to care. Partly because while our actual debt # is high - we're also giga rich, leaving us around #10 for debt-to-GDP right next to Italy, Canada, and France. Furthermore, the gap between places to ~#8-#20 is pretty small so its even less severe in practice. These numbers will shift a little bit based on which estimates you look at, but the spirit shouldn't change. So, its not a major issue today but it could become one if spending continues to accelerate.

> Pearkes said the price of oil might have to hit $200 a barrel to push the U.S. economy into a recession.

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/03/16/when-will-highe...

The GAO is part of the legislative branch, not the executive. Makes that quite a bit harder.

Surprised they didn't axe them first just based on the name.

GAO and CBO are under Congress directly, fortunately.

They're both awesome. Anyone who starts talking about all kinds of obvious ways to cut waste in government and isn't dropping references to GAO and CBO reports all over the place, is almost certainly bullshitting you (glares at Elon Musk).

The GOP has hated them for quite a while because they consistently tell them that no, of fucking course cutting taxes won't "pay for itself", but they haven't yet had the votes to get rid of them. Trump can't, they're some of the few government functions that fall under Congress (possible because they don't really administer government, they just issue reports, largely on request, so they're more like research librarians than administrators)

I already don't understand the beginning of the article:

> Imagine you’re the queen or king of a sovereign country. You decide to mint and issue a bunch of tin coins that your people will find useful. You use those coins to buy stuff from people in the private sector, and pay them to do work. Voilà, the people have money.

This describes how you create money. People give work and the government gives money. But that isn't what national debt is? That would be when the people give money to the government and don't get work in return, but the promise to pay more money back. This then means that some amount of taxes can't go back to things the government wants to give back to the people, but needs to go to the interest holders instead.

Given that I already don't understand the intro, the whole article sounds like nonsense to me. What am I missing?

Bill Clinton v2 was the best small government Republican president we had in awhile.

Where we are now is nothing like where we were in 1979. Inflation was something like 14%. Interest rates hit 20%. Yeah, I know that the last few years were painful after 15 years of ZIRP, but it's not at all the same.

Republicans are only deficit hawks when it comes to spending money on things every day people benefit from. If they actually gave even a single shit about the deficit, they wouldn't hand billionaires massive tax breaks every single time they take power.

Republicans just play whatever meta will win them power until they get into office. It's a time-honored tradition at this point, so any time they tell you what they believe, what they say their beliefs are and what they actually do, will often be two separate things.

Shhh, you don't shout at the money hose, you just keeeeeeep drinking!!!!!!

Are those numbers backwards or am I seeing things?

They're not allowed to voice criticism.

But only for war not for social benefits, that would be irresponsible spending

If Elon Musk hadn't sacked those government workers it would probably be less than 39 trillion as he had to pay termination packages and hire back people he accidentally fired.

I used to think that way, but now I don't believe that the debt ever needs to be repaid by anyone's children. The public sector debt is basically just a record of net private sector liquid assets, and repaying it would amount to the private sector losing all of its liquidity, or having to replace it with private debt instead. That's basically what happened throughout the roaring '20s preceding the Great Depression, and I don't think it really ends up being a good move.

I don't see such a clear benefit to eliminating the debt, actually I see a lot of downsides that would likely be worse for our children. The way I understand it, the primary concern is whether the debt is growing faster than the economy can support and whether we're using it for productive purposes or not. A government isn't like a household: treasury debt also functions as a safe asset, a tool of monetary policy, and a store of value for pensions, banks, and investors around the world, a majority of the debt is also a domestic asset. Trying to eliminate the debt would likely mean austerity and major tax increases, which can be more damaging the debt itself.

I don't think people realize that a large share of the government's debt is also a domestic asset. It is still something to be wary of and manage carefully but it is not something that I think is wise to eliminate either. The main concern should be making sure it is being used productively and is not exceeding what the growth of the economy can support (which happens when its used unproductively).

not just eventually. Its coming back to bite you now and for the last 10 years and the next 10 years. if you sell a house (and you're past the 500K exemption), or any kind of equities or gold, you're going to be a world of pain. Most of the "capital gains" aren't gains at all, it's just devaluation of the dollar. Let's say dollar devaluation is roughly 7% per year, that means you're paying 2% to 2.5% of your houses value every year in "capital gains" tax. sure, you don't pay it until you sell, but rest assured, it's accumulating. so 2M house means 40K to 50K per year! and if you think i'm overstating the 7%, just look at the case shiller housing index for the last 10 to 15 years!

and if you're holding cash or bonds, you're even worse off. even if the dollar is devaluing at just 7% per year, that's a 50% loss in just 10 years and that compounds to 75% loss after 20 years.

This would not be a good idea. Government "debt" expands the money supply, and if government spending gets us infrastructure and social services.

The only big issue here is the interest, which we force ourselves to pay by requiring the issuing of bonds in the first place, and is a big transfer of tax payer money to the large bond-holders.

At some point it becomes better option just to take the money you get paid back and instead of loaning it out again buy something... Anything else really... And then it gets worse.

Ah yes, the "we can cure debt by going into hyperinflation" argument

Basically yes. Well apart when it comes to our wages and credit we get. At least if we are responsible and try to pay it back.

But everything else is just numbers. Stock markets, commodities, gambling, collectibles. real estate... Everything...

That represents the amount of work (part of the GDP) the state has promised to perform for outside entities.