| Why do debt and deficit spending matter? The US government gets a big pool of money, which includes your taxes. That pool of money pays for a huge variety of things like roads, air traffic control, research grants, the military, NASA, justice system, and the list goes on and on. A portion of the money services debts — just like in your personal budget. Those debts paid for things in the past — perhaps an infrastructure upgrade in your area. If the pool of money isn’t big enough to cover every expense, it goes into debt to get the money — just like you would to buy a house. None of this means the government has a huge amount of credit card debt with 20% APR. It’s not irresponsible thing to spend more than you have if it will propel growth, resulting in more future income. Businesses do it all the time. Debt is used as a useful tool at this scale — which is very different from how debt works (or how people use debt) for individuals. Regardless of deficit or debt, your tax money is still funding many things directly. Whether or not you agree with those things is one thing — but your comment didn’t really touch on that. Personally, I’d like to see less defense spending and nationalized healthcare. But I’m still “happy” to pay taxes which allow me to live in a very stable country. |