[hvb2]

> It's Finance 101 that if you manage to borrow below inflation rate

And when was the last time that happened? Pretty much only during inflation spikes. The vast majority of time, inflation is around 2% or maybe 3 or 4 recently, 10 year Treasury yields is well above 4.5%.

So maybe you have 40T USD lying around, and you're willing to lend it all to uncle Sam for inflation -.1%. if that's not the case then it's finance 101, and wishful thinking

[eigenspace]

While I also disagree with the person you're responding to, there's more leeway than just borrowing below inflation.

Roughly, so long as a government can borrow cheaper than nominal GDP growth (assuming a relatively constant ability to tax that growth), then the debt burden doesn't really grow, because your ability to finance the debt grows faster than the debt.

But the problem is that the USA hasn't even cleared this bar, and its debt burden is growing, and there's also the additional risk that if borrowing costs go up due to a lack of confidence in the US government or global instability, even the current debt pile could be unmanageable.