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
One thing is that a big part of the US’s debt is to it’s own people. This doesn’t sound like it makes sense, but if you break it down into how the US Treasury Department sells bonds, and should pay them back, it starts to become clearer.
As in, if you buy a bond today for $1,000, you’d wait the 5 or 10 or 20 years (however long it ends up being), and get paid back $1,000 plus whatever interest rate is on it. Lets say you’d get back $1,250. Technically, the government “loses” $250 here, but there’s a decent enough chance that they’ll make that up with further bond sales, they could use tax revenue to cover the gap, and so on.
Another big hole, as far as debt is concerned, comes down to retirement accounts for government personnel & military, along with social security payouts. Again, this is money that the US government owes it’s own people.
In terms of other debt to other countries or similar non-US entities, the US *typically* pays that off in full and on time. I’m sure there’s been some exceptions and hang-ups, but a few billion owed to a random country is next to nothing compared to the trillions the US owes to it’s own people.
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