I think many Americans do not realize how much is spent on debt interest payments, which are a tidy source of income for rich people.

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tomwheeler 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I think many Americans do not realize how much is spent on debt interest payments, which are a tidy source of income for rich people.

Not to mention insurance companies and pension funds, plus local, state, and foreign governments

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vslira 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t think Americans would enjoy the alternative of defaulting on that debt, or the counterfactual of not having raised that debt in the first place

But yeah, having to pay your debts do suck

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atmavatar 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> or the counterfactual of not having raised that debt in the first place

I'm pretty sure most of us would enjoy a different timeline where we didn't sink over $1 trillion in the Iraq war or another $2 trillion on the F-35, where we didn't mindlessly increase the military budget every cycle, where Republican administrations didn't cut taxes on the wealthy every time they won the presidency in the last half century, or where the TSA and DHS weren't created.

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Rekindle8090 an hour ago | parent [-]

What do you think debt actually means? You talked about it in your first sentence, and then talked about something entirely irrelevant right after.

	▲	alsetmusic 10 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If you don't count the quote (which I never do because it's not the words of the commenter), they only wrote one long sentence.
	▲	atmavatar 37 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What do you think debt means? Every item I mentioned either increased government spending or reduced its income, both of which contribute to increased deficits and debt. You're welcome to argue whether I'm correct that americans would be better off without any of them, but it's simple math that every single one of them contributed to our current debt.

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browningstreet 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But they didn’t scream when that debt ballooned very recently.

Debt payments and defense budget increases add up.