I’m a middle aged dude with a family, own a house, have four kids, investments, all the adulting things.
However, I’m still not sure how a multi-trillion dollar national defecit seeps down to affect my day-to-day life
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I hate doing this on an ELI5, But I always recommend listening to this podcast episode https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/07/158376579/episode-273-when-the-u-s-paid-off-the-entire-national-debt The rest of this is making sure I have enough text in here to keep this from being removed. You’re probably better off listening than reading it
The thing to remember about the US debt is that it is an investment opportunity for the world. The US government borrowing money and paying back reliable interest which it can basically set on its own is a tool to manage the US economy and affect the world. Not only that, but the debt is owed in the money controlled by the government. If the US economy goes down the value of the dollar goes down. In most countries if their government started having trouble and their currency went down the amount that they owed would actually go up because the dollar would remain strong compared to their currency.
It would probably be better to not have as much debt. It shows that the government has been using this tool a little bit more than it should.But the amount of debt the US has compared to the amount of money it has and the production it has is nothing compared to a small country with an unreliable economy owing money in someone else’s currency
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