Biden increased the debt by a similar amount in his single term.
Obama increased debt by about 6.75% per year. Trump increased by 8.75% per year in his first term. Of course, you can say that 6.75 is better than 8.75, but 6.75 is still a huge problem over a long period of time.
Also, it’s a reality that with this much debt, the interest burden starts to become very large. You need to borrow more to provide the same services because you have to service the existing debt.
The big difference is that, at the current rate, economic collapse of the US will happen in my lifetime, and I’m almost 60. I wasn’t looking forward to that kind of planetary upheaval for my retirement.
The difference is that this administration is running at double the rate of the previous ones, and George Bush oversaw both two wars and the global financial crisis in 2007.
Your argument "since you're already over the speed limit, 200 or 300 miles per hour don't matter". Sounds asinine.
In any case I didn't say anything about democrats, but for sure, this administration with large tax cuts and increased spending is speeding US into very dangerous territory.
Well all the other administrations were driving 200 or 300 miles over, now we are driving 500 over. It doesn't matter really, if we hit anything (like Japan dumping US treasuries) we may be dead.
The democrats thing was what I had originally replied to. My whole point is that it really doesn't matter who is in the White House really, both sides seem determined to rack up as much debt as possible and it'll probably spiral out of control.
Neither side wants to cut costs (not really), in fact many want to spend more.
This is true globally, not just in the US, and that's why global debt keeps spiralling.
But I still find the argument "it doesn't matter if you're going 200 or 300 or 500 mph" completely asinine. It does, and it makes an enormous difference when the debt is so big in absolute terms.
You keep forcing an equality that's not there.
At the end of the day it's one specific administration that brought the largest tax cuts in history since 1981's Reagan (another republican) ones while increasing spending.
Well, the last president to steer the car away from the cliff came from one party, the other is currently mashing the accelerator toward it.
And that is without considering things like invading Iraq and Afghanistan, creating the global financial crisis, or turning on the money printer at the start of covid.
If you look at this information and say, "no difference" I don't think anyone here can help you.
Almost all of Bill Clinton's policies were to the RIGHT of Trump, so I'm not sure what you are saying exactly. Biden created the most debt in 1 term of any president ever.
You can't really compare one party from 27 years ago to today realistically.
I agree the comparison fades the farther back you go, though there are plenty of policymakers around today and in the Clinton days. I can't do much with something as hamfisted as "Clinton was actually right of Trump" other than to say that parties, not ideologies, are what was brought up in the parent comment.
It is dishonest to talk about Biden's four year deficit without acknowledging the 2020/2021 deficit and monetary policy. See also Obama inheriting the gfc and whatever is going to happen in 2029.
Both parties are equally incapable of making any cuts because it's not popular, and it's just a popularity contest on both sides, no real substance. It's been this way for a while.
> Republican presidents added about $1.4 trillion per four-year term, compared to $1.2 trillion added by Democrats since 1913.
> Democratic presidents have added a total of $18 trillion to the national debt since 1913 (adjusted for inflation), while Republicans have added $17.3 trillion
So everyone downvoting and flagging people saying it's a problem with both parties should be ashamed. It is, clearly. Tribalism is stupid.
Sure, but with a reference, you can have an argument about the topic, based on facts, rather than an argument about the delusions (looking at the adjacent comments, that's what this was). I don't think the later is appropriate for HN.
Every single administration since the turn of the century, regardless of party, has run a deficit. It's clear that if we want fiscal responsibility (and I do, very much), we can't look to either of the major parties for it. Unfortunately the chances of that are low at best, and on top of that it's not actually very popular to do what is needed to balance the budget. The cold hard reality is that we will need to both raise taxes and cut spending to balance the budget, but lots of people are ideologically opposed to one or both of those things. And even if they aren't, there's no agreement on how to implement said tax hikes/budget cuts. It's a pretty grim situation.
Financially engineered ledger is just a social construct; the IOUs of the past are never paid off as they never mattered.
Finance shit just keeps innumerates and those ignorant of physics believing wild end of the universe theories.
For more look up Debt jubilee's; humans wiped the debt of the dead off the books and no black holes opened within the sun, no gods descended from Olympus and slaughtered the children
Fucking mesmerizing how its not just MAGA nutters obsessed with old spoken and written finance traditions; different semantics than religion but same goal of kowtowing the proletariat.
This site helps propagate such paranoias with the tilt it has towards startup funding and yada yada.
Even the startup geniuses are easily duped by social hacks.
It's helpful to avoid "both sides"-ing, or abandoning all hope.
Clinton through 2001 - ended with a 1.2% GDP surplus
Bush through 2009 - ended with a 9.8% GDP deficit
Obama through 2017 - ended with a 3.4% GDP deficit
Trump through 2021 - ended with a 12.3% GDP deficit
Biden through 2025 - ended with a 5.9% GDP deficit
Trump now - running even higher, though final data isn't yet available.
There's a clear pattern available, where one party reliably leaves makes the situation worse, and the other party reliably makes the situation better. The fact that Democrats cannot undo all of the massive damage done by each Republican administration does not mean both sides are the same.
If you want third parties to win, they realistically need to start with local elections, so they can gain momentum and take the spot of one of the majors. (also helpful to get rid of FTTP voting in as many elections as possible).
We're seeing great success with local democratic socialists, who keep showing that government can be a force for good, it can be improved, and it can be done without blowing budgets. It's a promising start, and it's clearly threatening Dems and the GOP alike.
"Abandoning" all hope implies a choice. I never chose to have every last shred of hope and optimism I had forcibly ripped from me and stomped into the dirt by these scumbags we call "leaders" (and their idiot cultists). When will humanity learn that the types of people who become billionaires and trillionaires literally want us all dead? At this point they appear to also want themselves dead too, but it's all gonna be okay in the end, because one of them gets to die last with all the money, thereby "winning" the game.
A country that controls its currency can always bail itself out of all debt by printing all that money. Now they would destroy their whole economy in the process because of inflation and countries being mad about a country doing that. If they don't pay and default they kind of also piss everyone off and that makes the curency rates fall as well. In that case they would repay as much as they want really, the price for not doing that is economy strengt. The dollar could lose the global currency status either way, fun!
But wouldn't it make sense to believe those debts are in gold or other sort of exchange coin?
I heard many Asian countries as selling US and buying Yen and Wuan as countermeasures for the possible devaluation of the USD and to guarantee trade.
I understood that the threat of doing so slowed down things but it seems inevitable at this point that it accelerates.
I am not sure on what I am talking about. This is what I understood from the news. I would like to be corrected if I'm wrong though
Regardless of what the debt is in you have to get that resource somehow, so if your debt is in euro, you'd have to print dollars to buy euro if all your economy provides is dollars. I don't know what US' debts are in, but dollar being the lingua franca of finance, it is probably their home currency. But if you have a debt in a currency that you don't own, then your acquisition of said currency with your home currency is kind of limited, because the market will react with fx rate so dollar yields less and less euro per unit the more dollars you print. In that case, the country would probably just not pay which annihilates trade relationships ergo economy. I don't know if I understand your first sentence correctly though, maybe that's not an answer you were searching for lmk :)
As for selling dollar for other currencies, I am sure it makes sense to dump some of it because it seems to be a bit more volatile, holding another country's currency is exposing you more to their economy after all. I am not sure what that has to do with guaranteeing trade, maybe someone smarter can answer that, my understanding is that you hold a currency buffer so that if you need to trade in some currency you already have some of it so it flows nicely, but I can be completely wrong.
If you are American, then it is you, for the most part.
Most of the US government debt is owed to institution and people in the US. All these retirement funds, social security, health insurance, etc... that own part of the government debt... well, you won't get what you paid for.
This is a simplistic and partial view, but I think that's the most personal way of thinking about it.
That’s about it. You’re paying for roads and education and war with your retirement savings. There’s not really anyone else there to pick up the bill. There’d better be some kind of return on that investment so you can actually retire.
Printing more money devalues the currency your retirement is priced in, so that’s not an escape either.
Because it is politically much easier to just spend on medicare, social security and military than it is to raise taxes to cover that spending?
Interest on debt is already a double-digit percentage of spending, so the problem gets worse by itself.
And honestly: How many people in the US would actually change party only because of irresponsible spending? In my view, this is like priority number 4 at best for most people, and many at most moan about it instead of letting it drive their political choices. Political representatives also basically only ever throw it around as accusation against opponents, without ever actually doing better themselves (just consider the Trump-1 promise of getting rid of the debt during his first term: not even an attempt was made).
And yet more meaningful than that is what the debt increase is spent on. If it's infrastructure/education/etc, productivity/population welfare will rise over time. If it's debt through tax cuts, temporary productivity might be argued (the GDP here), but the nation will be in decline.
And who's going to hold the US responsible for repayment? Way I see it, US has the power to just tell any creditor that they won't be repaying, whether through structuring it as some economic package or just straight up saying go suck it. The former's been done before (1933); maybe eventually we'll see the latter, if a nation has the balls to ask. And talking about it is pretty pointless, like talking about how wet you'll get swimming in a pool.
> Approximately three-quarters of the United States national debt is held domestically. This means American individuals, banks, businesses, and government agencies own the majority of the roughly $40 trillion total debt.
Defaulting on the debt would mostly hurt all the US persons who own it and rely on the income it generates: individual retirement funds, banks and their customers, government agencies, pension funds, etc.
Are we living in the same reality? The US can't even keep a single strait safe right now against a fairly "weak" state. We don't have the political willpower for American servicemen to die in defensive wars like Ukraine or to hold back ISIS in Afghanistan.
How, exactly, are we going to demand sovereignties like China or the EU give us trillions of dollars?
foreign gov treasury holdings are only some 9% (mostly Japan, UK, China, Belgium and Canada)
As a serious country you can just keep servicing the bonds with bonds. If the government is... well.... it starts to look more like one of those poker websites where you cant cash out?
The world is full of similar but poorly organized ..., trump is doing one hell of a job uniting them. It seems a lot like that outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond.
I combine some "hallucinated" numbers into a table here
Yes, some sort of technical default is likely in a few decades. I expect that when debt payments become unsustainable the government will force bondholders to exchange their holdings with new bonds that have the same nominal face value but longer maturity and artificially low interest rates. The next step will be legislation that forces all retirement accounts such as 401(k) to purchase Treasury bonds for "safety".
> US has the power to just tell any creditor that they won't be repaying
Sure, and what happens then? Nobody buys new gov bonds; non-gov debt rating stops making sense. For the financial system it's a shock so huge it's better to only do this if no other solution is possible, at which point the gov is bankrupt anyway.
> Nobody buys new gov bonds; non-gov debt rating stops making sense.
Sanctions, black-listing and potentially more for anyone trying to play cute and do anything that "disadvantages the US". The rest of the world is forced to comply in enforcing it all, because nobody has backing power to stand against the US in any way.
Doesn't really matter whether domestic or international, company or country. Anthropic got black-listed for not giving unrestricted access to their AI tech. India was slapped with an extra 25% tariff just for trading with Russia. Venezuela was invaded and its president snatched for not playing nice for US interests for too long. The list goes on and on throughout history. What the US wants, the US gets.
From across the pond, the USA looks like a has been who relies a lot on old merits. The world got bombed to pieces 80 years ago, but has step by step rebuilt itself.
The advantage the US had has been squandered by ineffective leadership.
Why do you say "no matter what"? It's pretty clear things are going pretty badly for the USA? Last time they went into the Middle East, they steamrolled their enemy in weeks.
Now they're running low on ammo, without having accomplished anything of strategic value...
> Sanctions, black-listing and potentially more for anyone trying to play cute and do anything that "disadvantages the US". The rest of the world is forced to comply in enforcing it all, because nobody has backing power to stand against the US in any way.
You mean like the compliance of weak, sanctioned state of Iran with US demands?
I'd say if the trend continues: all the above and full federal governmental collapse.
Compound interest is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Currently interest on the debt is ~19% and is growing at a CAGR of 11.2% per year. At the current growth rate, how long until interest on the debt consumes 100% of all tax revenue?
A ray of sunshine & hope: Many state governments who are both low-debt and fiscally conservative will be fine. We also experience small amounts of this with each governmental shutdown.
Start planting fruit trees so the next generation can eat.
Social security is entirely funded through FICA taxes on payroll. Take a look at your paycheck. Legally money for social security cannot come from debt.
80% of bonds are held domestically, and it's what US banks use to back deposits. If the US government stops paying its debt, your money in the bank will vaporize. And no, the FDIC won't be able to restore it. That's among the least bad things that will happen.
US is running a more than a Trillion dollar trade deficit, what do you think happens when other countries will demand something real, like Gold, instead of freshly printed dollar?
does US have a trillion dollar worth of Gold reserves every year?
You’re confusing trade deficits with budget deficits. These are not the same thing. Bond sales pay for budget deficits. They have no bearing (heh) whatsoever on trade deficits.
You can end a budget deficit by simply not spending as much from the public purse. You cannot end a trade deficit without restricting freedom of trade.
Not so. We don’t have the capital investment or labor pool needed to replace China as a source of many goods, especially high tech goods, and it would take a very, very long time to catch up at this point, if we ever could.
If you look at the debt-to-GDP ratios and identify the spikes, you will see there were two recent(ish) events that overwhelmingly inflated the debt. 1) 2008 housing crash. Bailing out Wall Street was expensive. 2) Covid-related spending (2020-2022). The interesting thing is that both occurred during transitions in the party of the president, with unchanged policies no matter who gained power. Contrary to the my side did it, no your side did it, blame game that always accompanies these sort of stories.
As usual, George Carlin was right. "It's a big club and you ain't in it."
109 comments
[ 0.36 ms ] story [ 20.9 ms ] threadUnfortunately, I don’t think that will happen this time.
That's more or less the same number of Obama and Bush, but they served two terms each.
In his second term, he's already added 11% in a record 19 months.
Obama increased debt by about 6.75% per year. Trump increased by 8.75% per year in his first term. Of course, you can say that 6.75 is better than 8.75, but 6.75 is still a huge problem over a long period of time.
Also, it’s a reality that with this much debt, the interest burden starts to become very large. You need to borrow more to provide the same services because you have to service the existing debt.
I've tried to tell her that we're all going down. Workers will be laid off, markets will crash, real estate will collapse, money will inflate…
Best look instead for ways to try and enjoy life regardless.
Your argument "since you're already over the speed limit, 200 or 300 miles per hour don't matter". Sounds asinine.
In any case I didn't say anything about democrats, but for sure, this administration with large tax cuts and increased spending is speeding US into very dangerous territory.
The democrats thing was what I had originally replied to. My whole point is that it really doesn't matter who is in the White House really, both sides seem determined to rack up as much debt as possible and it'll probably spiral out of control.
Neither side wants to cut costs (not really), in fact many want to spend more.
But I still find the argument "it doesn't matter if you're going 200 or 300 or 500 mph" completely asinine. It does, and it makes an enormous difference when the debt is so big in absolute terms.
You keep forcing an equality that's not there.
At the end of the day it's one specific administration that brought the largest tax cuts in history since 1981's Reagan (another republican) ones while increasing spending.
Keep in mind the car is not designed to generate lift at that speed.
And that is without considering things like invading Iraq and Afghanistan, creating the global financial crisis, or turning on the money printer at the start of covid.
If you look at this information and say, "no difference" I don't think anyone here can help you.
You can't really compare one party from 27 years ago to today realistically.
It is dishonest to talk about Biden's four year deficit without acknowledging the 2020/2021 deficit and monetary policy. See also Obama inheriting the gfc and whatever is going to happen in 2029.
Ds spend just as much as Rs.
Democrats are shit for other things, but not for fisical stupidity like cutting taxes and rasing spending.
https://www.investopedia.com/democrats-vs-republicans-who-ha...
> Republican presidents added about $1.4 trillion per four-year term, compared to $1.2 trillion added by Democrats since 1913.
> Democratic presidents have added a total of $18 trillion to the national debt since 1913 (adjusted for inflation), while Republicans have added $17.3 trillion
So everyone downvoting and flagging people saying it's a problem with both parties should be ashamed. It is, clearly. Tribalism is stupid.
Finance shit just keeps innumerates and those ignorant of physics believing wild end of the universe theories.
For more look up Debt jubilee's; humans wiped the debt of the dead off the books and no black holes opened within the sun, no gods descended from Olympus and slaughtered the children
Fucking mesmerizing how its not just MAGA nutters obsessed with old spoken and written finance traditions; different semantics than religion but same goal of kowtowing the proletariat.
This site helps propagate such paranoias with the tilt it has towards startup funding and yada yada.
Even the startup geniuses are easily duped by social hacks.
100% fatality rate thus far...
Clinton through 2001 - ended with a 1.2% GDP surplus
Bush through 2009 - ended with a 9.8% GDP deficit
Obama through 2017 - ended with a 3.4% GDP deficit
Trump through 2021 - ended with a 12.3% GDP deficit
Biden through 2025 - ended with a 5.9% GDP deficit
Trump now - running even higher, though final data isn't yet available.
There's a clear pattern available, where one party reliably leaves makes the situation worse, and the other party reliably makes the situation better. The fact that Democrats cannot undo all of the massive damage done by each Republican administration does not mean both sides are the same.
If you want third parties to win, they realistically need to start with local elections, so they can gain momentum and take the spot of one of the majors. (also helpful to get rid of FTTP voting in as many elections as possible).
We're seeing great success with local democratic socialists, who keep showing that government can be a force for good, it can be improved, and it can be done without blowing budgets. It's a promising start, and it's clearly threatening Dems and the GOP alike.
"Abandoning" all hope implies a choice. I never chose to have every last shred of hope and optimism I had forcibly ripped from me and stomped into the dirt by these scumbags we call "leaders" (and their idiot cultists). When will humanity learn that the types of people who become billionaires and trillionaires literally want us all dead? At this point they appear to also want themselves dead too, but it's all gonna be okay in the end, because one of them gets to die last with all the money, thereby "winning" the game.
Debasement is the appropriate term.
I heard many Asian countries as selling US and buying Yen and Wuan as countermeasures for the possible devaluation of the USD and to guarantee trade. I understood that the threat of doing so slowed down things but it seems inevitable at this point that it accelerates.
I am not sure on what I am talking about. This is what I understood from the news. I would like to be corrected if I'm wrong though
As for selling dollar for other currencies, I am sure it makes sense to dump some of it because it seems to be a bit more volatile, holding another country's currency is exposing you more to their economy after all. I am not sure what that has to do with guaranteeing trade, maybe someone smarter can answer that, my understanding is that you hold a currency buffer so that if you need to trade in some currency you already have some of it so it flows nicely, but I can be completely wrong.
Most of the US government debt is owed to institution and people in the US. All these retirement funds, social security, health insurance, etc... that own part of the government debt... well, you won't get what you paid for.
This is a simplistic and partial view, but I think that's the most personal way of thinking about it.
Printing more money devalues the currency your retirement is priced in, so that’s not an escape either.
The US needs the binface party as a credible 3rd choice.
Infinitely more credible than either of our current parties at this point.
Why has the federal state accumulated $40T debt?
Interest on debt is already a double-digit percentage of spending, so the problem gets worse by itself.
And honestly: How many people in the US would actually change party only because of irresponsible spending? In my view, this is like priority number 4 at best for most people, and many at most moan about it instead of letting it drive their political choices. Political representatives also basically only ever throw it around as accusation against opponents, without ever actually doing better themselves (just consider the Trump-1 promise of getting rid of the debt during his first term: not even an attempt was made).
No surprise, they're (we're) humans after all.
When the shit hits the fan with The Great Depression II, we'll reset our priorities then.
At least half of this debt was borrowing money that was worth more.
The last 20T borrowed with money that was worth half as much.
We should apply a factor to this total debt, because it was more expensive in the past.
Likewise, it will be 1/2 as hard to pay back the most recent 20T. Dollars are easier to come by today than they were 10 years ago.
Inflation cures it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...
Defaulting on the debt would mostly hurt all the US persons who own it and rely on the income it generates: individual retirement funds, banks and their customers, government agencies, pension funds, etc.
Until the pool runs out of funding to do to replace the evaporated water.
How, exactly, are we going to demand sovereignties like China or the EU give us trillions of dollars?
As a serious country you can just keep servicing the bonds with bonds. If the government is... well.... it starts to look more like one of those poker websites where you cant cash out?
The world is full of similar but poorly organized ..., trump is doing one hell of a job uniting them. It seems a lot like that outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond.
I combine some "hallucinated" numbers into a table here
https://chat.deepseek.com/share/bzam2y198qps3l2z4x
To think about it, we have the perfect president who has been telling creditors to go pound sand for decades: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/...
Sure, and what happens then? Nobody buys new gov bonds; non-gov debt rating stops making sense. For the financial system it's a shock so huge it's better to only do this if no other solution is possible, at which point the gov is bankrupt anyway.
Sanctions, black-listing and potentially more for anyone trying to play cute and do anything that "disadvantages the US". The rest of the world is forced to comply in enforcing it all, because nobody has backing power to stand against the US in any way.
And anyway, most US bonds are held by US domestic entities.
From across the pond, the USA looks like a has been who relies a lot on old merits. The world got bombed to pieces 80 years ago, but has step by step rebuilt itself.
The advantage the US had has been squandered by ineffective leadership.
Forget those, how well are the vaunted US sanctions working against Iran?
Now they're running low on ammo, without having accomplished anything of strategic value...
You mean like the compliance of weak, sanctioned state of Iran with US demands?
Compound interest is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Currently interest on the debt is ~19% and is growing at a CAGR of 11.2% per year. At the current growth rate, how long until interest on the debt consumes 100% of all tax revenue?
A ray of sunshine & hope: Many state governments who are both low-debt and fiscally conservative will be fine. We also experience small amounts of this with each governmental shutdown.
Start planting fruit trees so the next generation can eat.
untrivial (vast majority) of debt holders are US corps, banks and citizens.
It does not. The Fourteenth Amendment forbids that. Section 4:
"The validity of the public debt of the United States...shall not be questioned."
does US have a trillion dollar worth of Gold reserves every year?
You can end a budget deficit by simply not spending as much from the public purse. You cannot end a trade deficit without restricting freedom of trade.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/apple-iphone-us-manuf...
Fantasies of USA autarky are just that.
What used do seem implausible is now accepted as normal, and tough luck if your income and wealth fell behind / didn’t keep pace.
As usual, George Carlin was right. "It's a big club and you ain't in it."
$80 trillion if it doubles again in 10 years.
the GOP is _still_ proclaiming itself to be the party of fiscal responsibility