this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024

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Feds end 2024 with $1.8 trillion deficit; national debt nears $36 trillion. (www.thecentersquare.com)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/news

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 4 weeks ago

a sobering milestone for both the next Congress and whoever wins the presidency in November."

yeah except whenever a conservative wins the office, talk of the debt goes out the fucking window so they can lower corporate taxes.

the debt only seems to matter if we want to help human beings by raising taxes and lowering production of human killing devices/services

[–] [email protected] 54 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

OBVIOUSLY if we spend LESS on US and more on Billionaires we can Balance that Budget!

[–] MrVilliam 8 points 4 weeks ago

If we make sure that billionaires can keep more of their billions, then surely some of their billions will trickle down to the very same destination that taxing them in the first place would have ensured that it would end up at. It's actually smarter that way because it's an investment that accrues interest and they will also employ people who otherwise would've been suckling on the teat of big government social programs. Billionaires actually are paying more money into our systems by being job creators than if they were taxed like the middle class are.

Just kidding. Can you imagine actually believing bullshit like that? Fuck, that kinda made my stomach churn to even pretend to believe in.

[–] FlyingSquid 21 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

The Center Square, formerly Watchdog.org, is a conservative American news website that features reporting on state and local governments.[1][2] It is a project of the Franklin News Foundation, a conservative online news organization.[1][3] The Center Square distributes its content through a newswire service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Center_Square

Remember when Dick Cheney said deficits don't matter? I sure do.

[–] athairmor 10 points 4 weeks ago

Deficits only matter to Republicans when there’s an election. They know it’s not a problem. They also know that the average working and middle-class voter here’s “debt” and gets scared. Scared people are more likely to vote Republican.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (3 children)

In fiscal year 2024, the U.S. government spent nearly $900 billion on interest on the debt alone.

"That's more than we spent on national defense, Medicare, and children at the federal level – just a truly astounding figure," MacGuineas said. "The national debt is on track to reach a record share of the economy in just two years, a sobering milestone for both the next Congress and whoever wins the presidency in November."

Insanity

[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Sounds like it's time to elect some Democrats. They always bring the budget in line, and are the only party in a quarter century to run a surplus.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

That was one of the theories around the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire ..... towards the end, wealth became so concentrated to just a few wealthy families, empire kept expanding and having to pay for stuff but nothing was left to pay for anything else and every other non-wealthy citizen had to fend for themselves. The machine got to be so top heavy that nothing was left to support it so it just slowly dissolved and crashed.

I wouldn't worry about it though .... just give it a few hundred years and we'll probably do it all again.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I can't say that I really buy that. Wealth was always concentrated in Rome. I'm going to assume that you mean the Western Roman Empire because the whole Roman Empire lasted until 1453 although there was a brief time that Crusaders took it over. If it were true, both sides of the empire would have fallen since they both operated the same.

The Empire definitely had quite a few issues. The debasement of the coinage led to some pretty significant inflation. It got so bad that Diocletian basically got rid of the mint and went with a very complex goods conversion system. But that was in the 3rd century. The Western Roman Empire had a hell of a lot more tribes bordering them to contend with while the East largely just had the Sassanids. The rules of succession were pretty lax too and many emperors avoided making successors until their death bed. That is fine if the emperor has a slow and predictable death but when they didn't, people (often military leaders) would simply claim they were emperor and take their armies and take over. That gave an opening for outside tribes to take advantage of the chaos.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

Wealth was always concentrated in Rome.

Yes it was ... the trouble was that in the early part of the empire, there were many wealthy individuals and a fairly large wealthy middle class citizenry ... wealth was concentrated but at least there were many, many wealthy people.

But generally speaking (I'm no historian, I've just read lots about it so this is my own interpretation) ... as the empire grew, conquered more and stretched itself further, more wealth went to the wealthiest, and the military needed more soldiers, being a soldier meant you had to be citizen but you had to leave your land - leave your land, you made no money, so you sold your land - now you are a full time soldier with no land and your only life is the military - meanwhile your land gets bought for cheap by wealthy land owners - multiply all this for about a hundred years and now you have a few wealthy families with all the land (and all the say in where to fight) and a landless middle class who have no option but the military .... the wealthy don't want to give up control so they free up citizenship to more and more non-Romans ... now you have a situation where all of mainland Rome is owned by a few people with all the money (but do no actual fighting), the rest of the people there are either slaves or don't own anything and the army is becoming filled with people who have never been to mainland Rome and have allegiance to it.

Wealth got concentrated to a very small group of people ... and nothing was left to support it ... so it collapsed.

We are basically doing the same thing today and the only way we seem to want to sustain it is through perpetual war (which can not be sustained either)

Like I said ... I wouldn't worry about it because we'll probably repeat it again in a few hundred years ... we always have.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

That's worse than my credit card interest rate.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 weeks ago

Federal Reserve Economic Data shows debt:GDP holding at 120% since spiking during the pandemic.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

just get another credit card

[–] pdxfed 4 points 4 weeks ago

If you get the new Air Dubai card and spend $40T within 3 quarters, you get 400,000 miles that you can redeem through their rewards portal for a Casio.

[–] WoodScientist 9 points 4 weeks ago

This is actually great news. The national debt went down last year. I mean, just based on those headline numbers, the national debt is smaller than it was before.

The nominal debt grew by 5% according to those numbers. Meanwhile, in that same period, US GDP nominal GDP grew at about 6% over the last year.

The raw number for national debt is meaningless. Only brain-dead morons care give a single fuck about the raw number. The raw number is for illiterate yokels who are scared of big maths in the way a caveman is scared of "fire! hot!"

For those who aren't brain-dead hicks, the only figure that matters is national debt as a share of GDP. That shows whether our debt load is increasing or decreasing in proportion to our economy. And over the last year, the value of the debt as a share of GDP went DOWN. We could sustain a $1.8 trillion deficit literally forever.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks ago

Deficit spending puts more money in the economy than it takes out, too bad most of it is going to the already wealthy

[–] Gingerlegs 7 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Remember when it was 7 trillion? Pepperidge farm remembers

[–] aeronmelon 9 points 4 weeks ago

All that brouhaha when it was 9 trillion about having to add another digit to the National Debt Clock, and then they casually quadrupled the debt in a couple of decades.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

The way the fed lends money to the US we will mathmatecially always have more debt than we have currency. What happens to this system when growth functionally stops since our planet has a finite number of resourcs? We need something better relatively soon or we're going to chase the dragon off a cliff.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

Growth doesn't matter as long as people still treat the currency like it has value. Most of that debt is owed the the people of the United States, and as long as the US govt continues to pay interest on T bonds and make Social Security payments people will continue to have confidence in the system.

Take a look at Japan as a more advanced example of this, with a larger debt as a percentage of GDP than the US and still maintainjng a sustainable economy despite population shrinkage

[–] workerONE 4 points 4 weeks ago

Every year the Treasury issues bonds in the amount of the trade deficit to balance out the goods and services exported vs imported. Those bonds are debt that the federal government owes. The money received for the bonds is accounted for but is essentially deleted from the economy... The federal government creates money when it spends, it does not need the money it collects from bonds. We could stop creating this debt every year but they believe that balancing out imported vs exported is important for some reason.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Who are they in debt to and who are they paying interest to?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

Everyone. National debt is basically from issuing Treasury bonds. You buy one with a fixed term, and when that time comes, the government pays you back that amount with interest.

For reliable countries like the US, this is great. Historically, the US has been very good at paying its debts, so buying T-bills is a reliable investment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Um... 2024 isn't over yet is it?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Fiscal Year != Calendar year

Not sure when the FY begins/ends, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

Why would they use single notation for a year (2024) if the fiscal year starts in 2023 and ends in 2024? I've always seen organizations that do that write it as 2023/24 or 2023-24

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

When I worked civil service, it was always written as just the current year. So if it was after the end of the fiscal year for the current calendar year (2024) it'd always be referred to simply as FY2025 even though it's October. Not sure why, but probably just shorthand.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Some do those split years, but I suspect you've seen many more that are just listed as the calendar year they end in, and you've just never noticed.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

Nope, I work in finance departments for lots of organizations as a contractor. I've never seen it written as only a single year. I am Canadian though, so maybe it's just a Canada thing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

Maybe. Here at my job we just started FY25, because there's more overlap with that calendar year.

[–] Omegamanthethird 2 points 4 weeks ago

It my old job, it was always the calendar year that the fiscal year ends. So right now would be 2025 on the books.

If I saw 2024/2025, I would assume it's a 2-year stack or a 2-year span.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I also work with Canadian companies, mainly on their taxes where it's almost exclusively Tax Year 2025, Fiscal Year 2025, etc.

[–] FlyingSquid 0 points 4 weeks ago

Because this is a dishonest news outlet with a conservative agenda.