The US debt is now projected to be larger than the US economy

davfor

And, it will undoubtedly go up more from here....for better or worse...

The Treasury Department won't put out final numbers for fiscal year 2020 until later this month. But if the CBO's estimates are on the mark, the country's total debt owed to investors -- which is essentially the sum of annual deficits that have accrued over the years -- will have outpaced the size of the economy, coming in at nearly 102% of GDP, according to calculations from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The debt hasn't been that high since 1946, when the federal debt was 106.1% of GDP.

https://cnn.com/2020/10/08/economy/deficit-debt-pandemic-cbo/index.html

Gary1952

All the information I have read is the debt will only be managed, never paid off. COVID was certainly no help requiring the first $2t and then another $2t coming up.

davidrmoran

it is never 'paid off', just grown out of, with luck and such

this has been covered

what chiefly matters, though surely there is a bad tipping point possible, everyone agrees, is what the debt is invested in: infrastructure, disaster relief, HC, social services, and so on, or further transfers to the already rich

Old_Joe

< sarc: But surely the already rich are the most deserving, because they have demonstrated their ability to manage money well, and thus are the best custodians of it. The poorest are that way simply because they just spend everything they get, so there's not much use of giving them any more, because they'll just spend that too. /sarc <