What about student loan debt relief for existing loans?  I thought you guys were all for that one, that's something like $700b +.

The US national debt is already $35t, how much is enough for you guys? You want to push it to $50t with ease.  Keep it up and the USA will go bankrupt one day, and when it does, I will be moving to a long held (and currently unoccupied) family property in New Brunswick, Canada. That is my escape plan, what is yours when the USA goes under and we see Civil War #2 unfold?

Student loan debt has no effect on the US national debt, because it's already part of that number. It's money the federal government has lent out to people. In other words, 1.5 trillion of that 35 trillion is the student debt that people were pushing to forgive. It basically changes nothing for the federal government.,

The exact number doesn't mean anything by itself. Saying things like "50 trillion" means nothing. It's generally considered relative to the GDP. If our GDP continues to grow, it's generally considered fine if the debt number grows. $50 trillion would have been an impossible money 100 years ago, and it will probably be considered not that much in 100 years. 

And again, as has already been talked about, raising revenue is how a lot of these things would get paid, not through more debt.

And as a related note, I'd take these concerns a lot more seriously, if people had any of the same concerns for military spending or anything like that. The US spends over $800 billion every year on the military. It doesn't even know where all that money goes. And yet none of the Republican politicians care about that spending. Spending $50 billion on anything that helps common people? I don't know how we can possibly afford that. Oh yes, we have $100 billion extra available for the military going into some R&D that probably won't go anywhere. 

Raise taxes on the rich. 

And sure, the math doesn't particularly work out, if for some reason you imagine that the economy is static, and Bill Gates's $130 billion is exactly what he has sitting in the bank. 

The US national debt sits at 129% which is higher than you would like to see, but we are not even remotely close to in trouble there.  Japan for instance is at 264% debt to income, USA currently sits at 12th highest debt to income.  Nothing a huge temporary (decade or so) increase in taxes couldn't fix.  From 1944-1963 income tax was up to 93% for the highest income earners and was 70% all the way up to 1965 to pay down debt and pay far wars at that time. A lot of the USA debt is from tax cuts, the last Iraq war, 2008 recession, 2020, covid, and Trumps tax cuts to businesses and top tax earners.

Did you not read the responses or just don’t understand them?

The overall amount of debt doesn’t mean anything, the amount of debt itself isn’t the issue, it’s the debt-to-GDP ratio that you should look at, it’s the equivalent of a country’s debt-to-income ratio.

A person trying to get a loan isn’t just going to be judged on the amount of existing debt they have, it will be weighed against their income to determine their overall financial stability.

For example, person A with $50k of debt and a salary of $70k/year is not in a better financial situation than person B who has $300k of debt and a salary of $500k/year despite having 1/6th the debt because they only gave 1/10th the income.

On top of that, it’s important to look at what the debt is being used for. Increasing debt to cut rich people’s taxes isn’t a good use of debt, whereas increasing debt to invest in things like infrastructure, housing or education is a good use of debt as these things can have positive effects on the economy in the long term.

Increasing debt to cut taxes (revenue) is the equivalent of someone intentionally taking a lower paying job despite already struggling to pay their bills, there is no upside to that and can only lead to further struggles. On the other hand, increasing debt to invest in infrastructure, housing or education is the equivalent of someone getting a loan to pay for a car, a house or go to college.

The massively increasing debt-to-GDP ratio is largely due to decades of tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations. In 1979, the top income tax rate was 70%, the top corporate tax rate was 46%, the top capital gains tax rate was 35%. They have fluctuated since then but have gone as low as income-28%, corporate-21%, capital gains-15%.

Debt-to-GDP was around 119% in 1946 just after WWII ended, high tax rates over the next few decades saw that drop to just under 32% by the time Reagan entered office in 1981. The Reagan tax cuts saw that double to 64% by 1993 when Clinton entered office. His tax increases and balanced budgets saw that go back down 54% by 2001 when Bush entered office.

Debt-to-GDP ratio is now roughly back to where it was at the end of WWII and like the article I posted earlier said, excluding bills addressing the Great Recession & Covid Pandemic, the Bush & Trump tax cuts are responsible for over 90% of that increase in debt-to-GDP.

That means the major investments under Obama & Biden like the Affordable Care Act, Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, Chips & Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act have only contributed a small amount to the increasing debt-to-GDP and if we kept tax rates at the level they were under Clinton then the national debt would not be an issue.

A nation is not a household, it doesn't go bankrupt simply by raking in too much debt lol. Besides, the US national debt is comparable to that of other developed countries and well below Japan's.

Worst-case scenario, say, multiple countries pushing above 200% debt-to-GDP ratios) we would see a global push for national debt write-off at a large scale followed by a decade or two of lower public investments and high interest rates.

No one is going bankrupt, let alone into civil war. As if a 60% obese nation with a >40 median age even could... that's just nonsense talk. Also, it's cute imagining Canada would be economically and politically immune if the US ever got to that absurd level of upheaval.

It's fine to pile on debt from tax cuts to rich from the 1980s to present (Reagan , Bush Jr, Trump upper bracket tax cuts) but people that get screwed with student loans (college used to be affordable 30+ years ago till cuts in education funding started happening) can suck it right?

Go ahead and fuckin leave to Canada now because you don't offer shit to help this country. 

Raising the national debt by lowering tax for the ultra wealthy?
Great

Student loan debt relief?
"how much is enough for you guys?"

The Republican tax cuts are such a scam.
You get to keep 10 dollars. Elon Musk gets to keep 500 Million.

Can you explain how?  This isn't like a regular person with regular bills.  Do you know how our debt is issued?  Are you aware of intragovernmental debt (currently 27% of the total debt).  Do you agree with reducing revenue before reducing spending?

Sometimes you're just so late to the party and everyone else already said what you were going to say, only so much better.

I'll just say that I will never cease to be amazed by people that treat a country's national debt like it's their own personal debt whenever the subject is about programs and policies they don't understand or don't think (the keyword is think; you MFers ain't rich) will benefit them. They act like mafia loan sharks will be beating down their own door if the president they didn't vote for doesn't pay up those trillions in 48 hours.

Yep, I can’t count the times I’ve heard my dad or my boomer coworkers say something like, “what’s gonna happen when the debt comes due?!?!?” Like it’s some kind of gotcha and I’m like is China gonna show up with a baseball bat demanding it’s money back?

I like to compare these things to personal situations to show how dumb their arguments are. As long as you are making your monthly mortgage payments, do you have to worry about the bank taking your house?