I feel like the United States is always meddling in other countries affairs and yet still climbing further into debt. Kind of like someone giving you advice on a golf course who is terrible themself. Is it the military presence? Economic relationships?
In: Economics
Debt for countries works a lot different than for people. Debt in and of itself is *not* a bad thing for countries. It only really becomes an issue if the interest payments become so high that they impact day to day business or if potential lenders lose confidence.
One reason for this is, that countries don’t “die”. If a person dies with a lot of debt that means creditors lose that money. That is not the case for countries. If you lend the US money for 30, 40, 50 years you will get it back (with interest).
So, what it really comes down to is, what the country does with the money and what does it cost in interest rates. If the US borrow say a billion dollars at 2% interest rate for 10 years to invest in something (streets, infrastructure, schools, what have you) and the value of that is higher than the interest rate (I.E. the value is higher than ~220 million), then it does make sense to take that credit even if it means more debt.
One example would be, you could borrow some money now to repair small potholes. That means more debt for now. The alternative is you save the money and wait until the street is completely broken and remake it completely. The latter is very likely going to cost a lot more in the long run. So, taking on more debt in the short run will save money in the long run.
An interesting sidenote: During the last financial crisis the trust in the financial market was so low, that some countries (I know it of Germany) could borrow money at negative interest rates. People would literally pay Germany to take their money.
TLDR: The amount of debt a country has isn’t that important. Interest load is the more relevant metric.
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