Will the National Debt Kill the US Economy? || Peter Zeihan

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The US national debt is so high that it has exceeded 100% of GDP. We’re talking over $35 trillion. Nice little chunk of change there. So, what led us to this point and how do we move forward?

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#nationaldebt #debt #economy #usa

47 Comments

  1. We need to start paying off our debt. Debt is no different for personal finance than for national finance. The US did not have a national debt until the 1980's. Before that, we were the largest creditor nation. Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, coupled with massive increases in military spending was what created our national debt.

    To start paying off this debt, we need to bring back New Deal levels of taxation on corporations, and the upper income tax brackets. Supply side economics caused two recessions, and was leading us into a third one under Trump. Trickle down economics does not work because corporations and the wealthy do not treat money like ordinary people do. They stash money in foreign banks, and buy land that is about to be built/drilled on. In both cases, the government can't tax their revenue.

    Keynesian economics built the most most robust, middle class economy ever seen. We built the most impressive system of highways in the world, and put people on the moon under Keynesian economics. It can do it again in this century.

  2. Note please: In his time as president, Donnie Bonespurs passed a Tax Cut bill. In its original form, it was predicted that it would add $3 trillion a year; the bill was modified until it was predicted it would "only" cost $1.5 trillion a year. Note also that the same Republicans who gleefully passed the cut are the same who are suddenly blaming the national debt increases on Democrats.

  3. So this means the US government should pile on the debt and the taxpayer should be hit with the bill in the form of interest on the debt? Our system breaks down if "take home" pay is not sufficient to drive the US consumer engine.

  4. So much happiness and joy $47k weekly returns has been life changing. AWESOME GOD I now have a house and can now afford anything for my family even with my Retirement..

  5. Not a word on the trillions of $ of taxpayers money burned in various US proxy wars.

    Actually not burned but transferred to the MIC and their politician friends.

    Not to forget upcoming trillions $ to be wasted in the proxy war in Ukraine and next proxy war in Taiwan

    Truelly shamefull

  6. I subscribe to Bloomberg. They evaluated the Trump and Harris tax plans. Extending the TJCA will cost just under $5T in ten years. Bloomberg, attempting to track Trumps promises, has his ideas costing $11T. Harris has a pay fors, but here’s will cost about $5T. 😐

  7. Anyone who stays in Britain or applies for asylum will be required to undertake two years military service.

    Illegal migrants will very soon be offered contracts to rebuild the Ukraine infrastructure with Russian cash. The document of understanding with Sunak outlines planning to rebuild the western Ukraine is in advanced planning stages.
    .

  8. At the US national average hourly wage of $20/hr, based on the 40hr workweek for approximately 161M persons in the workforce: it would take 271 years to pay off the $35T National Debt figure. that doesn't account for fulfilling basic daily human needs of food, clothing and shelter. Nor does it account for continued ongoing expenditures of $4T budgets or compounding INT on the debt. So, even if one were to cut the contribution in half to 50%, now we're talking nearly 550 years. There is not enough expendable labor to produce the amount of value to ever pay off this nut in our lifetime or the lifetimes of the next 10 generations.

  9. The US cannot "go bankrupt" in USD; it's impossible. Where is that $35 trillion anyway.. it's in the economy, right? If US government spends 100 trillion and only taxes back $65 trillion, where's the $35 go? We can have inflation, but we can't be forced to default– only by political choice, like if MTG opens her fat mouth.

  10. Wrong. Us Boomers did not raid these funds. Democrats expanded use of these funds to buy more votes. Medicaid goes to younger people, not Boomers.

  11. Actually it "ballooned" in 2020 recently – because of the pandemic. Since then it went down in comparison to the US GDP (it peaked at 132% in 2020 and went down to 120% in 2022 and is up to 123% in 2023).
    Before that it was at about 100-110% from 2012-2019. It also "ballooned" from 2007 to 2010 from 65% to 95%.
    The "ballooning" has VERY LITTLE to do with "medicate" ore "social benefits". Quite the opposite. It have been special programs for corporations – especially huge ones. And of course especially in USA: Military spending.
    Your social systems are actually quite bad for the national debt and wealth you have – because the amount of debt you have is mostly put into the pockets of the rich people class or their supporter class(es).

    From 2001 to 2004 actually the US debt increased from 53% to 66% and stayed almost constant the next 3 years. I know you guys love to look on the total numbers cause than you can fearmonger the most. And also deviate from whats actually really happaning in your country.
    Which is quite disturbing cause your countrys DNA is intensely based on "winner-takes-it-all"-mentality. So why do you deviate from this? I dont understand.

    The debt of a country is VERY MUCH linked to the GDP that is created. So its more important to see these two numbers in comparison than only stare at the plain numbers. Global economy is about relative numbers. A country is not a corporation and also not a private houshold.
    Especially when a lot of the debt is held by national reserve banks worldwide who dont do any real business the usual understanding of economics focused on companies is rather unimportant or simply doesnt work.
    Every country with a currency that is working HAS to make debt cause otherwise you cant create more wealth. You need debt for economical growth. Our system is BUILT this way. Of course you could want to change this… but probably you never even talk about it or want ta face these simple facts. Which is quite sad.
    That especially "economical advisors" dont want to understand basic global economics is a bit disturbing.

    So governments of course will have the possibility to raise money in future… WHEN the economy is still working – which is the reason why many countries make debt in the first place. If they do it. Here in germany we are completely gone crazy. Our national debt is only at about 64% – we dont invest in our economy and infrastructure enough. THIS is a huge problem, but we created a law in 2009 that forbids to make more debt than 0,35% anually… and a lot politicians are really deranged in the economisal ideology that just claims "debt are bad". Which is just absurd as our system is built on debt and needs it.

    The question is who really benefits by state expenses most… and this is clearly NOT the poor but the rich people. Which is even one of the problems. Cause "social programs" (or better: give poor people more money) DOES HELP the economy very much. Reason is easy: Almost 100% of the money of poor people is directly spent within the economy – so goes directly to support the GDP. While rich people often put their money in systems that dont count to the GDP.

    But of course after the three huge crisis of the USA in the last 25 years (11/9, 2008-crisis and covid pandemic) you should try to lower your debt in comparison to GDP again in direction to 100%. Which like I mentioned in the beginning already is happening. And if no crazy war or any other BS is coming it is really likely that you can manage to do this.

    Our economical system is rather stable when you dont have any external crisis. Unfortunately we have a lot of them. And some of them are even created by the so called "free market" (but… there is no free market like there is no free lunch).
    Of course the system supports rich people most and fu**s up poor people although they can tribute to GDP growth very easy. But your whole indoctrination about how your economy works (which is wrong on so many level) is well established… and therefor even many educated americans like you totally miss the point when you talk about your country.
    But of course you probably will reject all the data (statistical data was taken from statista dot com but can be found almost anywhere) and go on with your ideology. Like most people we would rather lie to ourselves instead of question our ideology.
    But I tried… and probably never ever will see your channel again.

  12. So one way to save the US economy is to do it like Patreon, only give services those who contribute.(Lets call those people Citizens)
    Of course like Peter says about his Patreon channel, those governments organizations would have to be responsive to the Citizens.

  13. Sorry Peter, but I'm not buying your explanation on how problematic the debt will be: saying that others are even more broke than you won't make your creditors give you even more money, especially considering the wasteful way you spent the money your already borrowed!

  14. Charlatan Zeihan, The US has far more government debt than the Eurozone or China, the structure of the US government debt is much worse, with a weighted average maturity of around 5 years, the shortest one among major economies, which means as much of a third of the entire US national debt will be rolled over over the next 12 months at higher rates which will continue to make interest payments explode until the US faces either a sovereign debt crisis or a currency crisis. The US is DONZO!!!

  15. Professor Bill Mitchell: The whole MMT journey to date has been to caution readers about the actual nature of constraints on government spending rather than the false constraints taught in economics courses around the world and wheeled out continually by self-serving politicians and lobbyists. By showing there are no intrinsic financial constraints on such spending, MMT, in no way, is advocating a carte blanche. Every resource that is currently in productive use cannot be used elsewhere – obviously. Every idle resource has a number of possible uses – obviously. We understand perfectly that once we get to full employment that there are likely to be "trade-offs and the need to prioritize spending programs cannot be avoided.” Trying to suggest that this point is ignored by MMT writers is an absurdity. … The first fact that anyone should grasp when trying to work out what MMT is, is to aprpeciate that MMT is not a regime that you ‘apply’ or ‘switch to’ or ‘introduce’. Rather, it is a lens which allows us to see the true (intrinsic) workings of the fiat monetary system. It helps us better understand the choices available to a currency-issuing government and the consequences of surrendering that currency-issuing capacity (as in the Eurozone). It lifts the veil imposed by neoliberal ideology and forces the real questions and political choices out in the open. An MMT understanding means that statements such as the ‘government cannot provide better services because it will run out of money’ are immediately known to be false. Such an understanding will change the questions we ask of our politicians and the range of acceptable answers that they will be able to give. In this sense, an MMT understanding enhances the quality of our democracies. In this sense, MMT is agnostic about policy, bar its preference for an employment buffer rather than an unemployment buffer to discipline inflation. In general, it makes no sense to talk about an “MMT-type prescription” or an “MMT solution”. To make that MMT understanding operational in a policy context, a value system or ideology must be introduced. MMT is not intrinsically ‘Left-leaning’. A Right-leaning person would advocate quite different policy prescriptions to a Left-leaning person even though they both shared the understanding of how the monetary system operates. In the simplest possible terms, MMT describes and analyses the way in which ‘fiat monetary systems’ operate and the capacities that a government has within that system. Currency sovereignty requires a government to issue its own currency, floats it on international markets, and only issue liabilities in that currency. Such a government has a monopoly over currency issuance. Here it is important to note that MMT distinguishes between ‘currency’ and ‘money’, a nuance that escapes most of these critics. The task of such a government is to provision itself with real resources to deliver its socio-economic program. It creates a demand for its otherwise worthless currency by requiring all tax liabilities to be extinguished in that currency. The government spends its currency into existence through the purchase of goods and services from the non-government sector (so-called government spending) which provides the non-sector with the funds necessary to pay its tax obligations. The consequence of this logical ordering of events (spending to fund taxation) is that currency-issuing governments do not have to ‘fund’ their spending and can never run out of currency. Saying otherwise is as stupid as saying that a football game has to stop 3 minutes into the second-half because the scoreboard has run out of points to post! It also means that a currency-issuing government can purchase whatever is available for sale in that currency, including all idle labour. The appearance of idle labour, for example, is evidence that the government has not spent enough relative to its tax take – so taxes are too high and/or spending is too low. In turn, this means that the unemployment rate is not a ‘market’ phenomenon or a choice of individuals (the mainstream dogma) but a political choice of government. The ideology of mass unemployment is thus exposed by an MMT understanding. Further, a currency-issuing government is not like a household, which uses the currency and faces intrinsic and binding financial constraints on its spending. The household analogy is popular in mainstream macroeconomics but provides us with zero understanding of what the capacities of the issuing government are. Unlike a household, the constraints on government spending are not financial but real – limited by the goods and services that are available for sale. The core MMT developers argue that all currency-issuing governments enjoy monetary sovereignty as outlined above. We should not conflate the capacity to purchase available goods and services with some ability to provision an economy with adequate real resources. Issuing one’s own currency doesn’t make a nation ‘rich’. A nation with limited access to real resources either locally or through trade will still remain materially poor even though it is sovereign in its own currency. Sovereignty means the government can use its currency capacity to ensure the resources that are available are always fully employed in one way or another. — "Governments do not spend by ‘printing money’. They spend by creating deposits in the private banking system usually facilitated through the central bank." "Outstanding public debt is just past fiscal deficits that have not yet been taxed away. The reality is that the government borrows back some of the non-interest bearing currency it previously spent into existence. In return, it provides an interest-bearing financial asset." #LearnMMT Source: https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=43015

  16. I’m American and my fiancé is German. The childcare programs are insanely good and available in Germany due to the demographics crisis. We are going to have three kids. Godspeed my fellow Americans. 🫡

  17. 5:30 The only problem I have with this, is every other country had the US dollar to fall back on, and have used it. If the dollar inflates at a high rate, I'm pretty sure the bond and treasury market would make a bad footing for everybody, and the US would probably get the brunt, because you'd not only have the dollar losing value, but other countries cashing in and putting dollars back into the country, instead of rolling over debt.

  18. Peter just so you know. The modern economic system the US enjoys nowadays, meaning a non-convertible floating currency system, taxing doesnt raise money. The money spent by the government is just marked on computer screens at the FED on the directions of the US treasury. In reality taxing and government spending are two totally different operations that have no connection to one another. In other words to simplify, in the current system the government doesnt work anything like a household that needs to save in order to spend.