I remember when i was taking intro to macroeconomics my prof mentioned that people can and do send money to the treasury department to pay down the debt. I just tried looking for it on the treasury dept website and couldn't find anything...
anyway...
Obviously the debt looks unsustainable now and it does seem like it could never be paid off or even be maintained. But the US debt (relative to GDP) was higher after WW2 and it had a serious debt put in it during the postwar boom (due to a mixture of economic growth and negative real interest rates). So, never say never.
I'd rather pay for NASA to complete the Webb Telescope or build another Big Science project. These are the first things they want to cut. The new CERN is a toy compared to what we could have built 20 years ago but Congress wouldn't fund it.
If you pay down the debt, the other problems won't go away because we are spending a lot more than we're receiving in tax revenue.
When the government is running up billions of dollars of additional debt per day, really there is nothing that individuals can do to make a significant fiscal impact.
Honestly, I believe that the best dollar spent to get the debt under control is a dollar spent to get a new senator or congressman elected that will actually do something to change things in Washington.
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[ 511 ms ] story [ 4493 ms ] threadanyway...
Obviously the debt looks unsustainable now and it does seem like it could never be paid off or even be maintained. But the US debt (relative to GDP) was higher after WW2 and it had a serious debt put in it during the postwar boom (due to a mixture of economic growth and negative real interest rates). So, never say never.
If you pay down the debt, the other problems won't go away because we are spending a lot more than we're receiving in tax revenue.
Honestly, I believe that the best dollar spent to get the debt under control is a dollar spent to get a new senator or congressman elected that will actually do something to change things in Washington.