The national debt is complicated, but a slightly inaccurate way to simplify it is that this is money owed by the United States to the United States. Yeah China owns a chunk of it and so do other countries, but the majority of it doesn’t matter when it comes to economics. The US is far from bankrupt financially. Morally though…
It’s also worth expanding on this by noting that 35% of the debt is debt from one government agency to another. Another 34% is held by various financial institutions who use it as a protection against financial risk as even if the market crashes they’ll still have a basically guaranteed (and now very valuable) asset to cash out to keep their customers safe, while only 24% is held by people, institutions, and governments outside the United States.
Together we’ve just gone over 93% of the national debt.
Also, they way we paid off this debt last time was that 50% effective corporate tax rate and a 91% top income tax rate during the 40s, 50s, and 60s, which as we all know was a really terrible time for the American economy./s
It’s more than that. This level of debt simply isn’t actually that big of a problem (to a nation run by responsible adults).
America is proportionately at roughly the current level of debt as it was at the end of WW2, which sounds pretty fucking bad but is hardly a death knell and honestly kind of expected when you’ve been fighting a forever war on credit.
The problem is actually that the oligarchy has offloaded the burden of paying for it to the peasants and there’s literally no hope of that changing without a revolution.
Tl;Dr it’d be relatively easy to pay off the debt, if Boomer Americans grew the fuck up and paid for it the way their parents did instead of making it everyone else’s problem.
The national debt is complicated, but a slightly inaccurate way to simplify it is that this is money owed by the United States to the United States. Yeah China owns a chunk of it and so do other countries, but the majority of it doesn’t matter when it comes to economics. The US is far from bankrupt financially. Morally though…
It’s also worth expanding on this by noting that 35% of the debt is debt from one government agency to another. Another 34% is held by various financial institutions who use it as a protection against financial risk as even if the market crashes they’ll still have a basically guaranteed (and now very valuable) asset to cash out to keep their customers safe, while only 24% is held by people, institutions, and governments outside the United States.
Together we’ve just gone over 93% of the national debt.
Also, they way we paid off this debt last time was that 50% effective corporate tax rate and a 91% top income tax rate during the 40s, 50s, and 60s, which as we all know was a really terrible time for the American economy./s
My bad. Misunderstood figure.
It’s more than that. This level of debt simply isn’t actually that big of a problem (to a nation run by responsible adults).
America is proportionately at roughly the current level of debt as it was at the end of WW2, which sounds pretty fucking bad but is hardly a death knell and honestly kind of expected when you’ve been fighting a forever war on credit.
The problem is actually that the oligarchy has offloaded the burden of paying for it to the peasants and there’s literally no hope of that changing without a revolution.
Tl;Dr it’d be relatively easy to pay off the debt, if Boomer Americans grew the fuck up and paid for it the way their parents did instead of making it everyone else’s problem.