Part of the problem is some debt is necessary for large or expensive projects. Think of it as similar to your home mortgage: most of us could not buy a home without it. Similarly governments have large or multi year projects that can be difficult to pay as you go and make sense to take out debt.
But everyone likes being Santa Clause , everyone likes bringing home the pork, and it’s a simple matter of writing a little more debt. No big deal.
A traditional Republican position is that thinking is insane, it’s not fiscally responsible. We can’t afford that. It makes a lot of sense until you see what republicans actually tend to do. In today’s world I imagine some republicans still have some twisted concept of fiscal responsibility for kicking millions off healthcare, but it boggles the mind to use that plus take on additional debt to give tax cuts to the wealthy. That is very much NOT fiscally responsible. If there is anyone out there who still believes in traditional Republican positions, they should be ashamed of what it’s become
A traditional Democrat position is we have human services and infrastructure that are important enough to write more debt. That sounds expensive, but again, think of it like that home mortgage: some things are important enough.
Realistically, the cost of debt rises and falls with a country’s economy, so you can have unexpected results where additional debt causes business to increase, making debt cheaper
Government debt and household debt are not the same thing. The politicians know better but they know people don’t. So they really lay it on thick to equate the two things.
Your debt isn’t creating jobs or industries. Government debt does. You’re not able to sell your debt. Government can.
I think technically, there isn’t a ceiling for how much debt a country can take on as long as it’s growing. It’s not great, but also I don’t think it’s as bad as people think
Technically there’s no ceiling and as the reserve currency the us used to have special place, but there are consequences, there is “too high”, there can be a spectacular crash when other countries and currency traders get worried about whether you can pay it back. It’s just not clear where that will be.
US debt is now at proportions that has caused economic crashes in other countries. More importantly, payments toward that debt are now one of the biggest parts of the annual budget, making it tougher to afford other things.
Bringing the analogy back to personal finance, we are “house poor”. We haven’t always spent prudently, but now our house needs paint, the roof is leaking, and the furnace may not light this winter.
Edit: one party decided it was worth going into a little more debt to replace the furnace because winter will be cold and heat is necessary, while the other cancelled that, losing the deposit and took yet more debt to day trade and collect Labubu’s, cancelling “fraud, waste and abuse”, like having the internet
the government is made up of some of the greediest fucks alive who’re upset when that money is in the hands of someone that isn’t them
Government spending is private savings.
Worrying that the government will run out of money is like worrying a basketball referee will run out of points to give for baskets.
Personal, business and government spending are all entirely different things.
Using one to think about the other makes very little sense.
I’ve noticed that a number of politicians show signs of sociopathy.
I think that’s a key difference.
Their spending is someone else’s income that is then taxed that is then spent that is then taxed.
Responsibly used some government debt is good. It helps growing the wealth of it’s people both now and in the future.
Irresponsibly used it’s a headache for the next generation.
You’re trying to use logic to understand it but you also have to understand that the only actual logic about it is the logic we’ve intentionally applied to it, by choice. Money only has the meaning we give it.
It makes more sense when you realize it’s all fiction. It’s just a game we play our whole lives because so many of us are very competitive and the ones who aren’t still have to compete against the ones who are, and at the highest levels of national policy they’re not even playing the same game anyway. They’re using it to metagame against other countries.
This comes at it from a slightly different angle but explains the difference between us and the government in how money and debt have to be managed: https://youtu.be/sAKr55O7qaU
You have a checkbook‽
Because if you run out of money, there’s a consequence…
Because if you can make the currency you pay back the loan with worth less than what you borrowed, you gain. That’s why they want some inflation.
Problems happen when you keep borrowing more and more each year, and also do stupid shit that shakes the faith of those lending you money in your ability to pay it back
You don’t pay someone else to calculate it all for you?
no because i can add and subtract…and sometimes if I am in the mood I will multiply…but feeling really slippery when wet I will divide
Because the government doesn’t have a bank account, they have tens of thousands of them all with different rules, and they don’t spend the same money they taxed
Money is just numbers at this point, and so Congress comes up with numbers to fund everything they want to do, they come up with formulas to tax various things, and the two sets of numbers have no real relationship to each other
To add to this, some spending is done in chunks for the year or doled out every month.
Some money may be given back to the government if it isn’t spent.
Some money is purposefully cryptic in its spending for national security reasons.
There are a lot of things that make it difficult to accurately track things against the entire government, which is why auditing individual departments/agencies is how it’s usually done. However, even then it should be better than it is.
