Comment by adventured
9 hours ago
The US can safely reduce its deficit spending by $1 trillion and absolutely nothing big will happen.
The US typically adds that much annual GDP every 16-24 months at this point. The notion that somehow the gigantic ~$31 trillion economy will fall apart if the outsized deficits don't continue, is very absurd.
The exact same things were said of the Bush deficits. The US economy was supposedly dead in 2009-2010. Here in 2026 the economy is 50% larger inflation adjusted and it has left most of Europe in the dust. The housing bubble contagion was much worse than anything we're sitting on now with AI spend.
Why do I say $1 trillion instead of $2 trillion? There are plausible scenarios where increased taxes bring down the deficits (the Dems will take the House + Senate + Presidency, we'll see how much taxes go up), there's no plausible scenario where the deficits go away completely.
I disagree. The massive divergence between US household income and European household income since 2009 tracks almost perfectly Fed interest-rate policy and government deficit spending.
The federal government has spent the time since 2009 lighting the furniture and the house on fire to support unsustainable increases in domestic standard of living by effectively mortgaging the future. The problem we have dwarfs anything that was happening during the Bush era.
Likely the difference between you and me is this: I'm 50 years old, already wealthy from tech, and planning to leave the US. You're probably still trying to earn your way. Sadly, I'm pretty sure we've pulled the ladder up, and folks like you are going to reap the whirlwind, as they say.