The national debt has exploded in recent years. We have gotten away with it so far because interest rates for financing the debt have been abnormally low. But interest rates have to go up now to slow inflation, and as bonds are rolled over, they will be reissued at much higher rates.
No matter who is sworn in Jan 2025, within a year, debt service will consume all of our revenues.
There is no way out I can see. Printing money will only increase inflation and all the entitlements linked to the rate of inflation.
So, let the Democrats win and let the collapse of the United States government and national bankruptcy fall on their watch.
I suspect they know this and that’s why they are throwing the 2024 election with an unelectable candidate.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
“The national debt has exploded in recent years.”
Just one more Republican mess the Democrats will have to try to clean up. Almost ALL of it is directly attributable to their borrow and spend extravagance.
As far as electable candidates for 2024 goes (1) the Democrats have not made a choice, and (2) is there a Republican who can survive the MAGAts to get the nomination and remain electable? I cannot think of any.
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Simply not so.
National debt by year
The national debt doubled under Obama, continued to increase at a slightly lower rate under Trump, until the COVID black swan, and since has increased at a faster rate under Biden than any other time except the COVID event. Faster even than under Obama.
And, of course, many parts of the off budget entitlements grow automatically no matter who is in charge.
But of course you deflect from the real problem, and that is debt service consuming everything, leaving us with the very small Federal Government I have always wanted but with high taxes to pay the debt and nothing to show for it.
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The Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts which produced almost nothing of value for the economy are the primary drivers of our exploding national debt. Republicans NEVER cut spending to match their tax largess even when they had full control. Your attributing locked-in debt increases to Obama when he inherited a disastrous economy and massive federal deficits is simply not honest. And your drunk history of Trump’s fiscal management is even more dishonest. His massive tax cuts were not matched by ANY meaningful cuts in spending and the federal deficit was exploding BEFORE Covid hit.
Funny, how the National Debt always becomes a problem when a Democrat is President even though it has ONLY been Democrats who have managed to cut federal deficits. Clinton did so. Obama did so. And now Biden has done so.
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I note you are only interested in partisan advantage but have nothing to say about the issue.
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“I note you are only interested in partisan advantage but have nothing to say about the issue.”
Like falsely attributing the blame to Democrats is saying something about the issue? You are a real piece of work.
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The automatic entitlements that are funded through the general fund but are outside the budget process are the primary cause of the problem and were exclusively passed by Democrats, so….
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“The automatic entitlements that are funded through the general fund but are outside the budget process are the primary cause of the problem and were exclusively passed by Democrats, so….”
Primary cause? Really? I don’t think so. The primary entitlement spending by the government are Social Security and Medicare. Both have been FULLY funded entirely out of the separate taxes that those Tax and Spend Democrats put in place to pay for them. The undeniable FACT is that Republican tax cuts for the wealthy have been funded by borrowing from the Social Security Trust funds.
If we had maintained the income tax rates in effect when Clinton left office we would not have a problem. But Bush cut them and Trump cut them again. With very little if any positive effect on the economy but lots of capital flowing to the top tiny percent of people.
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Social Security and Medicare are self-funding, paid for by FICA taxes.
Medicaid comes from the General Fund at $448Billion,
Other General Fund mandatory programs like Food Stamps and non-SSI government pensions total $645Billion.
Interest on the debt is about$400Billion, and will skyrocket over the next few years
That’s $1.5Trillion a year that is automatic that Congress and the President do not vote on or approve.
That is as much as all discretionary spending.
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-spending-3305763
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“That is as much as all discretionary spending.”
And without the pointless Bush and Trump tax cuts would be either less (interest) or paid for.
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Nope. As much as you would like to deny it, the general principle of the Lafer Curve still applies.
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“Nope. As much as you would like to deny it, the general principle of the Lafer Curve still applies.”
I am not surprised that you cite “Voodoo economics” – the most discredited theory in the history of macroeconomics. Essentially a joke.
https://ctmirror.org/2018/01/18/why-the-laffer-curve-is-garbage/
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You can argue the shape of the Lafer curve(and it is really several overlapping curves) but you can’t rationally argue it does not exist.
At tax rates of zero, no taxes are collected. At tax rates of 100%, no commerce takes place to tax, so again no taxes are collected. Between those end points, there is taxable commerce, and thus the curve.
In reality, there is an investing class and a working class curve, and even a dependent class curve.
Argue if you want whether we have passed the peak on those curves but claiming they don’t exist is a battle with reality.
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Apparently you do not understand the criticism of the Laffer Curve.
Let me try. In a nutshell, it is so trite, trivial and simplistic as to be useless. There is no evidence to support the shape nor the slopes depicted and no way to know where we are on the curve. Totally useless in the real world. It is at heart a tautology. Of course there is SOME tax rate in the oversimplified model that would optimize revenue but Laffer offers no hint as to where that is. And, we do know that the repeated policy decisions based on its “logic” have never turned out as predicted.
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Lafer tried to oversimplify the theory for general consumption.
There is not one optimum.
The point at which investment taxes peak is not the same as the peak for very high wage earners, like athletes and celebrities even if their incomes are similar.
The peak for hign income wage earners is not the same as the peak for middle class wage earners.
But in every case, there is a peak, and we can determine it by observation of revenues under differnent economic conditions.
For investors, the peak in a bull market is different from the peak in a bear market.
But IN NO CASE is the peak determined by how much you want the money.
Further, peak revenues for that class is not the only factor to consider. For example, maximizing revenue from the investing class might very well harm the future economy by stifling the investment that would lead to new products and new jobs.
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“Lafer tried to oversimplify the theory for general consumption.”
You think by postulating multiple Laffer curves you have helped?
Uh, no. You have not.
Each of your multiple curves has the same flaws as the original. No way to know the shape of each curve or where we are on it. It amounts to nothing more than saying there exists a rate that will maximize tax revenue. Will increasing (or decreasing) the rate move us closer to that point or further away?
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Once again you completely miss the point.
HYPOCRISY is your middle name, or so it seems.
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RE: “There is no way out I can see.”
We can repudiate our debts and issue new currency, preferably based on precious metals. It is a radical approach, but the choice is between pain with no upside and pain with an upside that is only slightly probable.
I suspect, however, that the Democrats would prefer to see the country dissolve rather than solve our economic problems.
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Problem is that a substantial part of that debt is to the SS Trust Fund.
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That’s unfortunate, but it is only a paper obligation. The material question going forward is how the government would acquire the precious metals needed to continue paying current SS recipients their benefits. Apart from that, we’d have to confront the question of whether any form of government social insurance program can function on a long-term basis.
I have doubts about that, since the recipients of social insurance benefits are by definition non-productive.
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It doesn’t have to be precious metals.
The government owns much of the West and Alaska. They can pay me my SS in coal or oil backed currency
Or grazing land.
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RE: ‘It doesn’t have to be precious metals.”
True. The only thing currency cannot be after repudiating the national debt is debt-based fiat money.
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…”the recipients of social insurance benefits are by definition non-productive.”
That includes you and Don. Possibly Paul and Len. I am not yet at retirement age, so I guess I’m good to go.
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Well, my investments remain productive.
Those who rely entirely on social insurance are non-productive, but those who invested are just productive in a different way.
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My dearly departed mother just flipped you off.
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“I suspect, however, that the Democrats would prefer to see the country dissolve rather than solve our economic problems.”
It is not Democrats trying to overturn our Constitutional order with violence. Duh!
We do not need to dissolve the country. We need to tax the rich and cut military spending to a level needed to at least balance the books annually. Then we could implement Medicare-for-all which, according to CBO, will reduce the federal deficit while providing access to health care for all Americans without the current waste and inefficiencies.
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If you taxed the rich at 100% it would not be enough.
Medicare for all is pretty vague. Funded by what?
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“If you taxed the rich at 100% it would not be enough.”
Baloney. The solution is to slow and then stop the growth of the National Debt. Not to pay it off.
“Medicare for all is pretty vague. Funded by what?”
Ending the current dog’s breakfast of Healthcare support programs and by new taxes that would be significantly less than what people now pay for for-profit health insurance.
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Funded by what taxes?
A payroll tax like current Medicare? How large a tax?
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A payroll tax like current Medicare?
Sure.
How large?
Depends on the details but less than what people and employers now pay for health insurance.
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Good luck trying to get that passed.
People who have been taught to think of healthcare as “free” are going to balk at paying for it, even if it is really cheaper than the current true cost.
And I doubt it will really be cheaper in any case.
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“Good luck trying to get that passed.”
Well, thanks for that but I think you underestimate how much people hate our current broken system.
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Kaiser polled thousands of their members asking them how much they would be willing to pay out of their own pockets monthly for health care,
The average was $150, and 90% would not pay more than $250.
You know full well that won’t cover more than a fraction.
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Well, we can always throw more free money around to whomever to buy votes since that has worked so well thus far. Since Biden has already committed almost 2 trillion in executive orders alone in less than 2 years, what is the problem? For some reason a mental picture of someone pushing a wheelbarrow full of money to the store for a loaf of bread keeps coming to mind and the wheelbarrow got stolen because it had worth.
https://positivenegativeimpact.com/german-hyperinflation
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Yeah, the Weimar inflation. Fun times.
The Billion Mark note was printed on one side because if they printed both sides it cost more to print than it was worth.
In desperation, the Germans sought a strong leader to bring order.
Bad monetary policy has onsequences
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