[jfengel]

It is rather astonishing that rational people continue to believe that there is enough future tax revenue to justify this. It's entering dotcom-boom territory, where even the most optimistic future profitability can't justify this level of backing.

Part of it, I imagine, is that the US government is likely to benefit from future tech booms, as it has in the past (despite tax shenanigans from the tech companies themselves). It gets a piece of stock market profits -- a stock market whose own levels are also currently out of keeping with rational revenue expectation.

[throwaway_jobs]

It’s never getting paid back, there is so much number fudging to hide the reality of debt and guaranteed payments for future liabilities...we pretend we are $26T in debt (but when you add in the future liabilities We are over $148T in debt).

To your point being rational doesn’t really give insights into these issues, but talk to any government budget officer and the can give you a sobering reality of the situation.

[jfengel]

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.

[catsdanxe]

So what would a rational person do? Stockpile guns and food? Invest in gold?

[inetknght]

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.

[atemerev]

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.

[jessaustin]

The assholes keep telling us this. If they believed it, one suspects they'd change their behavior.