Discussion

US national debt surges past $39 trillion just weeks into war in Iran

outside2344: Trump has added $4T to the debt in one year:From https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/d...3/19/2025 $36,214,467,819,348.16. --> 3/17/2026 $31,379,706,593,178.71Yet strangely all Republicans are silent

mc32: Are those numbers backwards or am I seeing things?

christophilus: Compounding working the way it always does. This won’t stop until it breaks.

cj: The Democratic party would do well if they rebranded as socially progressive and fiscally conservative.

trgn: that electorate doesnt exist in two party system.

kylehotchkiss: What's $200 billion more gonna hurt :')

croes: But only for war not for social benefits, that would be irresponsible spending

jawns: Economists often say that the national debt isn't analogous to consumer debt, because the US has a number of means to address it that the average consumer does not have, including the ability to print money.And while that's true ... perhaps we as citizens and taxpayers would be better off ignoring that technicality and treating this debt as more like consumer debt.Eventually, it's going to come back to bite us or our children, and we need to be willing to make some hard choices now to avoid having to make even harder choices later.

wagwang: Ah yes, the "we can cure debt by going into hyperinflation" argument

baal80spam: It's just a number.

throwawaysleep: Fiscal conservatism only exists as an ideology when paired with hurting brown people. It does not exist as a meaningful political camp otherwise.There is a reason that fiscal conservatives spend all their time on food stamps, environmental regulations, and a few random research projects and not even examining any of the top four costs that make up the overwhelming bulk of US spending.

projektfu: To be fair they usually want to reduce the benefit of Social Security and Medicare, because they're "unsustainable", while tax cuts and defecit spending is apparently sustainable.

triceratops: Isn't that what it already is?

CodingJeebus: This is basically how the Democratic party is trying to operate now and it's not working. They've been trying to cater to moderate Republicans who became disillusioned with Trump and it's gotten them very little in the last decade.

tines: I know gp said that they would "do well," but maybe the party should do what's right regardless of how much it's gotten them in the last decade.

throwawaysleep: In politics, power is everything. You do not matter without power.

babypuncher: Republicans are only deficit hawks when it comes to spending money on things every day people benefit from. If they actually gave even a single shit about the deficit, they wouldn't hand billionaires massive tax breaks every single time they take power.

westmeal: In war you don't have immigrants lining up for FREE HAND OUTS etc etc

phatfish: Well, as long as you bomb countries on the other side of the world. Someone else (the long suffering US allies) can deal with all the displaced peoples then.

krapp: Uh oh. Looks like we're gonna have to cut spending on science, regulation, infrastructure and social programs even more.

pestatije: thats roughly $100 grand per head

kevmo: That's basically Bernie Sanders modus operandus. Burlington was running budget surpluses when he was in charge.It's not hard, you just have to make rich people pay taxes. This is an enormously popular idea.

cogman10: Enormously popular for the electorate, not so much for the people that count, donors.

jerlam: It would be an easy strategy to defeat - the two biggest Democratic states, California and New York, are close to the top in terms of cost of living. I know fiscally conservative doesn't mean "cheap to live" but most people seem them as the same.

Macha: Is this not theoretically the libertarian party? (Of course in reality it’s often the Republican-lite party). It hasn’t proven to be a winning strategy

InitialLastName: One might argue that this war is a free hand-out to foreign interests.

_DeadFred_: The Republican policy has been to starve the beast for 40 years. They are willing to bury the country in unsustainable levels of debt in order to force their agenda for government because they can't reach their goal electorally. They care more about that goal than the financial health of the nation or what the impacts of destroying the financial health is on all of us. They would rather intentionally make us too broke to function so that we can't afford government than have us rich but with a functional government. This has been their publicly stated policy for 40 years.

SimianSci: The Republican party is wholly a party for the Rich and wealthy. All other claims to the contrary are attempts to deceive people that this is not the case.

bawolff: So at what point does us bond ratings go down and cost of borrowing becomes problematic?I know us is buyoed by the petrodollar, but surely that only goes so far.

tantalor: > Pearkes said the price of oil might have to hit $200 a barrel to push the U.S. economy into a recession.https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/03/16/when-will-highe...

rconti: > The Government Accountability Office outlines some of the impact of rising government debt on AmericansWell, we found another agency that won't last much longer in this administration...

genthree: GAO and CBO are under Congress directly, fortunately.They're both awesome. Anyone who starts talking about all kinds of obvious ways to cut waste in government and isn't dropping references to GAO and CBO reports all over the place, is almost certainly bullshitting you (glares at Elon Musk).The GOP has hated them for quite a while because they consistently tell them that no, of fucking course cutting taxes won't "pay for itself", but they haven't yet had the votes to get rid of them. Trump can't, they're some of the few government functions that fall under Congress (possible because they don't really administer government, they just issue reports, largely on request, so they're more like research librarians than administrators)

dmitrygr: Would that not require them to ... support fiscally conservative actions, which would lose them a large part of their voting bloc?

genthree: In recent history (last few decades) the scoreboard shows them already being more fiscally conservative than the only viable alternative.

dmitrygr: I understand that claim. I will not even argue against it. But, as you pointed out - there are two options only, so they must be evaluated against each other. Ds would need to go quite a bit further in the direction of being fiscally conservative to justify overlooking their other issues (in the eyes of R voters) in order to capture significant voter counts from the R side.

ceejayoz: The GAO is part of the legislative branch, not the executive. Makes that quite a bit harder.

Alupis: Agreed, unfortunately. The amount of people that actually care about the national debt is near zero in reality, despite many stating otherwise.When their party of choice comes into power, it's always "spend, spend, spend" - how else do you do all the things you want to do while in power? Then the table turns and they pretend to care while the other party takes a turn.Round and round we go, deeper and deeper in debt, spending like a there's no tomorrow.

mothballed: This is only possible because the taxation is obfuscated through debt or inflation, both of which effectively are a tax but a less obvious one allowing duping of the populace.We don't need a new party necessarily, just a constitutional amendment that the government can only spend money from direct tax proceeds, with no pre-emptive with-holding.

dijit: Enormously popular doesn’t mean right.You should tax behaviours you want to disincentivise.Taxing smoking, cars and sugar are great (but not always popular) ideas.Taxing second homes, property ownership for companies, foreign owned property, and so on is much more important than taxing unrealised wealth, inheritance or capital gains and income.Wealthy people find loopholes, and so you end up taxing the middle class and limiting social mobility with those initiatives.

SimianSci: I want to disincentivise people with wealth using it to corrupt systems of power into doing what they want.> Wealthy people find loopholes, and so you end up taxing the middle class and limiting social mobility with those initiatives.Sounds like we should get rid of these wealthy people then...

spankalee: This is a good time to share this article again:Isn’t it Time to Stop Calling it “The National Debt”? - https://evonomics.com/isnt-time-stop-calling-national-debt/

daveguy: Surprised they didn't axe them first just based on the name.

Ekaros: Basically yes. Well apart when it comes to our wages and credit we get. At least if we are responsible and try to pay it back.But everything else is just numbers. Stock markets, commodities, gambling, collectibles. real estate... Everything...

throwawaysleep: I think we should want to disincentivize any person from having too much power and wealth is power.

jghn: Kinda funny how in some 4 year periods these sorts of headlines are treated as existential crises, whereas in other 4 year periods they are not.

dijit: Let me know when you find a way that makes sense.I’m a socialist, but I have a brain.Anything you can think of to make wealthy people cease to exist is easily bypassed, so the best way is to find ways to tax behaviour instead.The point of money is how you use it, if you have a 50,000x tax on super yacts and private aircraft, then the ultra rich are forced to pay your tax or try skirting around it by using smaller boats or coalescing their private jets into a private airline.But if you tax stocks, then people will invest in other ways. If you tax individuals owning large property then they’ll move their property ownership into a company, if you tax inheritance then they’ll put the money into a fund instead which has debts that will be written off in time. All kinds of fancy tricky accounting.The other solution is to tax everyone on unrealised gains, which makes every home owner (including pensioners) suddenly liable for huge ongoing bills.Elon himself for example is pretty cash poor, but owns a lot of stock in a “high value” company meaning his wealth on paper is pretty extreme. He takes on debt (which has no income tax) and then pays it off with stocks, where it also avoids being taxed as its never realised.I think its a harder problem than you give it credit.

myrmidon: As GDP percentage, only two countries are higher: Italy and Greece.Public debt is a significant political talking point in both cases (and even in Germany, with a much lower debt percentage).The current US administration (and the last republicans in general) did an excellent job in pretending to be the ones fighting public debt when they are actually exacerbating it; I'm curious if there is gonna be a reckoning at some point.

legitster: That can't be right as Japan's Debt-To-GDP Ratio is almost double the US's.

Alupis: The accounting for the current conflict is far from straight forward. The money was largely already allocated to military things, and there's fixed constants of payroll, food, fuel, munitions etc that would be spent regardless on training, operations, readiness, and just existing.The media doesn't differentiate these things to deliberately inflate the figures.

spacemark: So what do you think the cost of the war is, then? $50bn? Seems like splitting hairs or missing the point. Even $50bn is too much for a war that congress nor the American people approved.

croes: Those immigrants who do all those low paid jobs and who paid billions of taxes without the benefits?Schrödinger‘s immigrant, doesn’t work and takes American jobs

mcphage: > socially progressive and fiscally conservativeHow about “socially progressive and fiscally effective”?

xnx: For some context: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188SThat chart doesn't include WWII, which might be the only time that comes close.

mothballed: Bill Clinton v2 was the best small government Republican president we had in awhile.

myrmidon: You are absolutely right. I did not realize that my dataset was missing most of Asia/Africa. Japan ist at ~230%, but interestingly decreasing pretty quickly (decreased their debth from almost 260% GDP in 2020).I have sadly no idea how much focus this gets in japanese politics, would be very curious if anyone knows.

CalChris: [delayed]

impure: Apparently the debt is keeping the Fed from raising interest rates as much as they did in 1979 when a similar crisis happened. Raising interest rates would increase the debt servicing costs pushing the US into a debt crisis.

mattmaroon: It can.

trgn: how so? Alupis explains the mechanism why not. In two party system, new electives are incentivized to achieve their program. Reducing spending hinders that, and loss of those voters who care about that betrayal doesn't really matter because they're a tiny group anyway, and realistically, where are they going to go, the other party? They have the same incentive, just for different program. That's the cycle.

mattmaroon: [delayed]

legitster: Government debt gets resolved eventually through inflation. There's never a point where we have to "pay it all back" and get the debt down to zero. We just end up paying of a $1 loan with a dollar that's worth only 50c.So there's never a particular point that it "comes back to bite us" - if anything, the "bite" is happening already right now for all of us. Inflation is a form of taxation on currency. It's less like credit card debt and more like wage garnishing.It's also worth pointing out that young people are less affected by inflation than old - retirees and people with savings. Inflation is good for people in debt. So it's not so much your children you have to worry about with today's debt level so much as it is yourself.

myrmidon: > Government debt gets resolved through inflation.This is misleading.US debt as GDP percentage is higher than for any other nation except Italy and Greece, and was much lower historically, too (<50%ish for basically the last century instead of >100% now).So the status quo is not how government spending gets typically resolved.Racking up public debt risks runaway inflation, which is unpleasant for everyone.

neilwilson: Comparing a currency issuer like the US to currency users like Italy and Greece is a category error. You can compare Alaska to Greece or California to Italy. But you should compare the US to other currency issuers - like the Eurozone, Japan or the UK.

drcongo: It's a good job Elon Musk and his friends sacked all those governement workers, otherwise it would have been $39.0000001 trillion.

impure: If Elon Musk hadn't sacked those government workers it would probably be less than 39 trillion as he had to pay termination packages and hire back people he accidentally fired.

CalChris: Reagan campaigned against Carter’s profligate spending.

babypuncher: And then proceeded to blow up the deficit even more himself. What they campaign on and what they actually do are different things.

croes: Them why has Hegseth ask for another $200 billions?https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;03&#x2F;19&#x2F;hegseth-iran-war-budget.html

Alupis: > House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., responding to a CNBC question Thursday, said he has “not heard anything official from anybody” on the $200 billion number. But he said the figure could also include things that would otherwise be sought in the fiscal 2027 spending bill.> Hassett, speaking on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” said at that time that he did not think the U.S. needed to ask Congress for more money for the war effort “right now.”> The massive figure would increase production of the critical munitions that the U.S. and Israel have used to strike thousands of targets since the conflict began, three other people familiar with the matter told the Post.> U.S. military operations against Iran, which began Feb. 28, have already cost $12 billion as of Sunday, according to Kevin Hassett, director of the White House’s National Economic Council.And a reminder, the $12B figure includes all of the normal things that would be spent regardless if we are in a conflict or not.

1718627440: That represents the amount of work (part of the GDP) the state has promised to perform for outside entities.

1718627440: I already don't understand the beginning of the article:> Imagine you’re the queen or king of a sovereign country. You decide to mint and issue a bunch of tin coins that your people will find useful. You use those coins to buy stuff from people in the private sector, and pay them to do work. Voilà, the people have money.This describes how you create money. People give work and the government gives money. But that isn't what national debt is? That would be when the people give money to the government and don't get work in return, but the promise to pay more money back. This then means that some amount of taxes can't go back to things the government wants to give back to the people, but needs to go to the interest holders instead.Given that I already don't understand the intro, the whole article sounds like nonsense to me. What am I missing?