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Ok, so let me try to make sense of this:
Around the year 2010-2020, i and many other vehemently warned against the issue of rising national debt. Yet "experts" said "it's fine, we can make as much debt as we want to, nothing bad is going to happen because of it lol".
Starting in the last 5 years or so, lots of experts say "oh no, the national debt is way to high, that's a disaster, that's a catastrophe, we can't let that happen, who put us into this situation?" Just let me appreciate the irony for a bit. I fucking called it. I said this was going to happen. I was called insane. This feels really validating to me.
Anyways, since now lots of people, including economists, are angry that the debt is too high, people want it lowered. The obvious and straightforward solution would of course be to introduce a wealth tax (i.e. a tax on millionaires and billionaires).
In the beginning of 2025, Musk and Trump both agreed (at least in public) that the debt has to be lowered. Musk's attempt was to cut the federal government. Well, the federal government spends money for two things, mostly: subsidies (social security, medical bill assistance, ...) and data-processing (i.e., enforcing regulations, tax collection agency, ...). The first one costs most of the money, but reducing it gets the public angry (understandably) and is therefore a political suicide. The second one doesn't really cost that much, yet that is the one that Musk attempted to reduce to the point of dysfunctionality. Since it didn't cost much to begin with, reducing it didn't save a lot of money. In May 2025, Trump says "was Musk's DOGE all a hoax?" and the feud begins. Musk realizes that Trump is against increasing taxes for the rich and publicly accuses Trump of having no actual intention of lowering the national debt. This is where we are now.
You may already know about this, but increasing the national debt has been the point. For five decades.
https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santas-strategy-gop-used-economic-scam-manipulate-americans-40-years/
The rethuglicans have literally used false concern about the debt for decades now? They then get into office and blow it up, but the next time a dem is in office, the debt is once again the worst problem ever and is out of control. Rinse>repeat, again, for decades now.
Edit: oh, the article posted by SoleInvictus lays it out much better than I tried
The ultimate irony being that the "national debt" is simply the tally of all interest bearing and non interest bearing dollars created by the government that haven't been taxed out of existence.
There's no scenario where we can't pay debt denominated in our own currency, unless the government chooses not to pay.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_balances
Well, yeah, but having an exponentially inflating debt leads to hyperinflation which makes the dollar worthless, and that has real-world consequences.
I think if the dollar loses its value, society will jump to another alternative payment method, maybe crypto or sth else entirely, and that would be worse because it means you end up without state control. I.e., it is like having no state regulations anymore, and then who protects the citizens from corpo's overreach? A lot of regulations are tied to things-being-measured-in-dollars. Like corporate taxes, or social security.
Was anybody else around for the BBA in the 90s? We literally fixed this once and then Dubya fucked it up immediately.
70% of the country can't stand him, but Rand Paul has been saying this too, and sometimes voting against the Republicans on spending.