One of my favorite authors as a younger pup was Earnest Hemingway. My mother bought me a hard cover series of his books, and after reading the first one I was hooked.
Anyway, in the Sun also rises, he states:
“How did you go bankrupt?"
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
This is also frequently the fate of nations and empires, where the economic and other rot is at first ignored, first small. That can go on for a long time, until all of a sudden it doesn't.
The issue isn't whether we have debt, or even if it is ever paid off. The fundamental issue is our system is built where the risks of that debt are ignored compared to the call of the voters and special interests desires to have the goverment spend ever more, "fix" ever more, do ever more.
So the debt will never be paid off, and I doubt (and am bettting more and more) that it (the need for government to pay more in debt service and/or print more money) won't be fixed...until something catestrophic forces it to be "fixed".
Unlike us peons, the US Government doesn't ever have to default. After all, we have a printing press that can print an infinate amount of money (especially it just being bits in a computer). So in that sense, no worry. But in the sense of what that money will buy, yes worry.
Maybe for some here on the forum (including myself), the gradually part will be long enough that it won't matter (for us). But it will eventually matter for our decendants, and ya never know, that "suddenly" part might be sooner than we think.
