> the US is catastrophically indebted

Debt service costs as a percent of GDP are in fact lower than they were in the 1980's, when things came out fine. Is this the best way to run the budget? Likely no. Should we make policy changes? Certainly yes.

Is the best way to drive that policy argument flinging around adjectives like "catastrophically indebted". No. If you have a suggestion make a suggestion. Screaming about "The Problem" without discussing policy is echo chamber logic.

Buffett claimed you could solve the deficit problem instantly by firing congress when they run deficits. Obviously, untenable (they'll cheat, admin overhead, etc).

You could very easily force congress to balance the budget (both parties and the media have complained endlessly about this for exactly no good reason). You could also freeze spending at current levels and force congress to do it's job: allocate our limited resources most productively.

Hard to get re elected doing the right thing, but maybe we just need a throw away set of leaders to do the hard work?

There are really just two ways to avoid the inflationary spiral. You can either increase income (i.e. grow gdp) or you can decrease spending (i.e. cut entitlements).

This is as close as it can be to clearly explain. The problem is that most of our politicians are not explaining it and instead ignoring it. As an individual the only thing you can do is vote for candidates who are willing to have that hard conversation with the public. Unfortunately it looks like that would require voting for a third party candidate and a vanishingly small minority of the electorate is willing to do that. So given all of that context I'm not really sure that the term "Catastrophically indebted" is wrong.

> Debt service costs as a percent of GDP are in fact lower than they were in the 1980's

This is an amazing use of the "in fact" trope, in exactly the same misleading way[1]. I talked about debt, and you casually shifted to servicing costs which presumes that rates stay historically low...when they're actually rapidly rising. Comical.

In the 1980s, the debt to GDP ratio was less than half what it currently is. Rates were higher, making the debt a crisis level then, but maybe you haven't noticed...rates are going up. Indeed, right now the rates were historically low, and anyone with functioning grey matter saw what was coming.

The US has an absolutely solidified, structural deficit -- utterly zero chance of paying down the debt, and a desperate need to constantly be borrowing more -- and an enormous debt. The trajectory of rates say this is crisis levels.

It's actually kind of funny reading your ridiculous comment -- "screaming", "echo chamber", etc -- when you sound completely in denial.

Your argument is basically the guy that used the "0% interest for six months" checks he just got with his 28% credit card, telling everyone that it's free money, so there's no problem if he goes wild. ROFL.

Sounds like it's time for a $1.5T military budget and a $1.3T bribe! Free money!

Sidenote: When asked about the bond market, Trump seriously offered up the "military solution". Utter insanity.

[1] - It's also simply a lie, making this extra funny. The highest historic servicing cost was 3.2% of GDP. It is currently projected at 3.3%, and that presumes rates don't keep spiralling up. So your "in fact" was simple bullshit, even as you tried the narrative shift by changing from debt to servicing costs.