Notes on National Debt
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about debt as it spans generations. A lot of these are my (incomplete) thoughts and notes which I’ll probably write about more later
Taking debt and then dying is a good hack to push pain down to your children while taking more for yourself
In the US, between social security, the national debt, and committed healthcare burden for our elders - we’re in ~100-120T in debt for the upcoming generations. For those generations this is 10-15 years of nominal GDP owed by the younger people to the older people who aren’t around to pay it
The younger people have chosen to take different paths - we don’t have the skills or technology (at least right now) to outgrow that debt
The symptoms of debt are hard to spot, but once you see them you can’t unsee them = societal violence and unrest, which regardless of the situation only seem to be increasing
Every young person in the united states today is bound to a global tax to pay off this debt (and the interest)
I see a lot of things in the world today and can trace it back to this root - and it’s hard as a young person to look at it objectively and get the motivation to stand up to fix it - it wasn’t our problem to begin with.