What does debt have to do with the calculation of inflation?

It may impact inflation but you seem to be claiming debt is a component of inflation calculation, when inflation is little more than the change in prices.

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mark_l_watson 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Thanks for pointing out something: I didn’t mean that debt is a component of CPI.

Interest on 37 trillion in US government debt as well as huge consumer debt certainly is a long (and short term?) drag on the economy, but I accept your point that I don’t understand the correlation.

I have a simplistic way of thinking about the economy: I tend to view things as being healthy or unhealthy to the economic well being of all people in my country. In general, hiding information from the public is not healthy. Look, this is just my opinion, but I believe that our government is in the business of hiding information from the public; the government (both political parties) exists in its present form to protect and nurture the special interests who pay them off one way or another.

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phkahler 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>> What does debt have to do with the calculation of inflation?

Debt isn't a component of inflation calculation but they are related. During Covid the US government increased the deficit (not debt, the derivative of debt) by a trillion dollars (no partisan stuff here, Trump did it first and then Biden). The infusion of money into the economy was one of the drivers of inflation between 2021 and 2025. You may ask, where did the money come from? I don't know. The government "borrowed" it, but from whom I don't know. Money "invested" does not necessarily get into the economy, but money invested in treasury bond gets spend by the government and definitely ends up in the economy.

I would love to have time (get paid?) to sit around and develop useful economic models. All I ever see is people offering simple cause and effect relationships (like I did above) without showing anything close to what I would consider a reasonable model of the economy.

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seanmcdirmid 6 days ago | parent [-]

Technically speaking, the deficit peaked in 2020, fell a hit in 2021, and then fell a lot more in 2022, and then rose a bit in 2023 and 2024. The deficit on 2025 Inauguration Day was way smaller than on 2021 in Inauguration Day, so I’m not sure it would be fair to claim that Biden increased the deficit. See the graph at https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio...

Downvotes on this are weird, it’s just basic math (the deficit bar in 2025 is way lower than the deficit bar in 2021). I get FoxNews thinking math is a liberal conspiracy, but not HN.

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RobAtticus 6 days ago | parent [-]

While true, there is another nuance missing here. The deficit was higher in 2020 & 2021 due to the Covid stimulus spending. Looking at 2017-2019 for Trump and 2022-2024 for Biden probably gives a fairer picture of what happened during both presidencies. It's basically been an upward trend since 2015, excluding the Covid outliers.

	▲	seanmcdirmid 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, that’s why I prefaced my comment with “technically.” To claim Biden grew the deficit, you would have to explain that COVID was some sort of exception and then argue that it still grew in spirit (rather than technically). Although without COVID Trump was definitely still on track to have significantly raised the deficit since it was falling in most years under Obama compared to 2008/2009 (before COVID he grew the deficit significantly with his first round of tax cuts, just like he just did with the big beautiful bill), and it isn’t clear that Biden would have diverged from Obama without COVID around.