Who said that debt doesn't matter. Obviously international debt matters. I'm curious as to why it's being perceived as an existential threat.

well for starters, the US could potentially be leveraged into deals that don't benefit its own citizens

Oh no, not a US political reality that doesn't benefit its own citizens.

yeah it's dumb to want my friends and neighbors to prosper

but seriously, i meant more like environmental stuff.

but also the other thing

Now I'm even more confused--because of international debt, China is going to be able to force an IMF-style structural adjustment policy on the US state (assuming we don't adopt all of these austerity measures ourselves, which seems *way* more likely imo), and this will mean....environmental stuff?

no different

we could be compelled to pull out of the PCA (again!)

or we could be compelled to push our ow fossil fuels onto the market at increased rates

or we could be compelled to cut SS as a way to pay off some debt

it's true i'm no economist, but owing trillions of dollars to someone else probably isn't great, right?

I think what I'm baffled by here is the idea that these things are somehow not going to happen *anyway*.

Doesn't China own less than 5% of the debt? Most is owed to us Americans. Also, Ellis' John Oliver comment wasn't a bad one. It meant don't spend it on stupid shit like tax cuts for the wealthy, spend it on infrastructure projects - something that has been shown to be a good investment that ultimately pays for itself.

Omg this thread is in my wheelhouse rn and I’ve been stuck in meetings and now have to drive home....

i was waiting for you to show up

guy who bitches about masks and an epidemic says what?

This conflates two different issues: (1) taxpayer money can be spent on useful things and it can be spent on stupid things (as an aside, it's always interesting to me when tax cuts are described as a government "cost") and (2) governments can spend money by raising revenue or borrowing.

Of course regardless of the way a government is paying for spending it's better for it to be spent on useful things than on foolish things that help a small group of people at everybody else's expense. But it does not follow that because the spending is on something perceived to be good (putting aside the subjectivity of that) that the accrued debt and consequences of today's spending are irrelevant.

Fuck off Jerry

I'm confused by your last sentence but the administration is claiming that his infrastructure plan will be budget neutral over the next 15 years. (Typically projections are made in 10 year windows, so that's a bit odd but whatever.) Of the massive spending/tax cut bills in the last five years this is, along with the first covid relief bill last year, the most defensible, certainly fiscally. Of course, AoC says it's $7.8 trillion too small and I find that problematic to say the least.

wow, an epidemiologist and an economist

It speaks to Trump's idiocy (and failure to be the dictator he was accused of being) that he didn't spend on infrastructure. He could have Trump written on every bridge in America right now.