Why should I care about the national debt?

You shouldn't. But you should care about the amount of spending as it will be financed by either taxes or money printing which will lead to inflation.

JoanBaez wrote:

I don’t.

We will have to pay for the spending we do at some point. We can only do that by more taxing (government taking your money) or the printing of money which will subsequently make your money worth less.

There are theories that the national debt doesn’t matter but I can’t even logically get my head around that. If the national debt really doesn’t matter just give every American 100k every year, pay off all and every kind of personal debt and run up the military budget to the skies.

energeticlotuseater wrote:

We will have to pay for the spending we do at some point. We can only do that by more taxing (government taking your money) or the printing of money which will subsequently make your money worth less.

There are theories that the national debt doesn’t matter but I can’t even logically get my head around that. If the national debt really doesn’t matter just give every American 100k every year, pay off all and every kind of personal debt and run up the military budget to the skies.

The idea is government spending produces future growth and a small amount of that growth pays the debt. So neither cuts nor tax increases are necessary unless you want to pay the debt within a (highly arbitrary and likely politically motivated) timeframe.

A bigger question is whether infinite economic growth is possible and how close we might be to that point. But that would present problems for every economist, not just ones that favor government spending.

As soon as we clear the impeachment trial, this is going to be Issue One with the Republican Party.

They do a fantastic job at creating record national debt levels, then creating record-setting whining about it, until they again hold the presidency and reach new levels yet again. The last president to leave a budget surplus was Clinton, after two terms of Reagan and one of Bush 1 led to, again, record national debt levels.

This is Jim Kiler wrote:

As soon as we clear the impeachment trial, this is going to be Issue One with the Republican Party.

They do a fantastic job at creating record national debt levels, then creating record-setting whining about it, until they again hold the presidency and reach new levels yet again. The last president to leave a budget surplus was Clinton, after two terms of Reagan and one of Bush 1 led to, again, record national debt levels.

The Republican Party is absolutely guilty of racking up the national debt. Their hypocrisy does not mean the increasing national debt isn’t a real problem though.

I think it's been proven that the U.S. national debt is completely irrelevant to anything America does as a nation. We can increase it as much as we want, and send out as much free money and/or cancel as much debt owed, as we feel the need to. There are no repercussions.

Invisible Hand wrote:

I think it's been proven that the U.S. national debt is completely irrelevant to anything America does as a nation. We can increase it as much as we want, and send out as much free money and/or cancel as much debt owed, as we feel the need to. There are no repercussions.

U r either a far leftists supporting fringe economics or just plain stupid for all of you that say that the debt doesn’t matter and there isn’t any consequences. First debt as a number is useless a much better metric is debt as a percentage of most recent years’ gdp. Yes so far us debt to gdp is around 100% which is historically high for the US and interest rates and thus interest costs are still low but you cannot seriously expect the US to spend Willy Nilly and still maintain good credit ratings and low interest rates. Anyone who believes this crap is retar—- this is coming from a guy who considers himself to be generally liberal and voted for Biden. Also to this poster what debt has the US canceled???? If the US defaulted on its debt it almost certainly would be a restructuring of debt not just a canceling and it would shake and even likely crash the global economy due to nearly every major country owning US debt.

People care about way too many things they can’t control and really doesn’t affect their lives - like the national debt.

You don’t care?

That’s probably healthier for you than those that do care.

X1

Not true. There GDP grew much more before government was running deficits and when the government spending was a much smaller part of the economy. Government spending takes productive money out of the economy and uses it inefficiently by the government. The US cannot pay back the debt and it will crush the dollar as we monetize the debt.

The increase in GDP due to deficit spending is non existent. We used to get 4 to 5 % growth with small government. Now we can't even get 3%. We may get more this year because of the pandemic but it will probably be years before we get to pre pandemic levels when you account for a weaker dollar.

energeticlotuseater wrote:

This is Jim Kiler wrote:

As soon as we clear the impeachment trial, this is going to be Issue One with the Republican Party.

They do a fantastic job at creating record national debt levels, then creating record-setting whining about it, until they again hold the presidency and reach new levels yet again. The last president to leave a budget surplus was Clinton, after two terms of Reagan and one of Bush 1 led to, again, record national debt levels.

The Republican Party is absolutely guilty of racking up the national debt. Their hypocrisy does not mean the increasing national debt isn’t a real problem though.

Very true in both regards.

Stop with your nonsense. Republicans never care about national debt when Republicans run executive branch since Reagan except for HW Bush and look how those on the right treated HW Bush.