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 see it differently than some of the comments here. Our 30 trillion dollar debt is a time bomb ticking away because of the connection between debt, debt payment, deficit spending, money supply and inflation.
Inflation is what will be your undoing because your income will never keep pace with the rise in prices and if the US enters an inflationary spiral your dollars will buy less and less and less.
On another tangent, if you have a mortgage, you don’t own your home. The bank owns it. Investments? Unless they are grounded in something that won’t lose much value like gold or other precious metals, your investments could wind up not being worth the paper they’re written on.
Stagflation is another serious concern that results from a weak, inflated dollar. It takes more dollars to buy the resources that are needed to keep the economy moving and growing (like oil, gas, electricity, micro chips, computers, food etc etc) so less is made or produced. Production across the economy lessens and lessens because inflated dollars buy less and less.
Additionally, when the dollar ceases to be the world’s fiat currency (“when,” not “if”) it will not be able to just print dollars to cover its debts. The threat that BRICS poses to the US has never been explained to the American people.
And remember: if you ask one question to 3 economists in a room, you’ll get 6 different answers. Economics is a social science with no more validity than psychology, sociology or political science. That being said, a huge national debt is a ticking time bomb.
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