How our $31 trillion national debt threatens the economy

The Washington Examiner’s Ryan King writes, “Fueled by the pandemic and years of fiscal splurging, the national debt of the United States blew past a record-shattering $31 trillion in October, and the country is barreling toward a future economic reckoning.

Economists have long debated the precise repercussions of skyrocketing debt, with some downplaying fears of a cataclysmic crisis and most others quibbling about whether its ramifications will take the shape of a slow-moving economic demise or eventually reach a breaking point.

Fiscal doom: Five ways the $31 trillion national debt threatens the economy https://t.co/ROLtq3L24N

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 25, 2022

‘This is totally uncharted territory. These are debt levels that have not been seen before. This is going to exceed even Japan's debt, which is the largest debt as a share of the economy in the entire industrialized world,’ Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told the Washington Examiner.

Already, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio has ballooned to the highest levels since the end of World War II. The latest annual deficit for fiscal 2022 was $1.38 trillion, per the Treasury. As trillion-dollar annual deficits become the norm in Washington, the U.S. is already hovering around a 120% debt-to-GDP ratio, all while the population begins to age rapidly…

To avert a future reckoning on the debt, economists believe that Congress should take steps to reduce the deficit so that the size of the debt falls over time in relation to the economy.”

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