Megan McArdle warns about the national debt in her latest op-ed for the Washington Post, and, given the subject, she figures most people will check out before reading it. "The national debt is so big and so incredibly boring!" she writes. "At best, reading about the debt feels like eating some highly nutritious vegetable you don't care for. At worst, it feels overwhelming." Which is precisely the problem, she argues. Everyone, from ordinary Americans to lawmakers, keeps ignoring the problem, and she sees a "hellscape" on the horizon if that continues.
- "The debt held by the public is roughly $31.6 trillion, and it recently surpassed 100 percent of the gross domestic product. In other words, if we wanted to pay it off next year, we'd have to stop consuming anything and turn everything we produce, from apples to zippers, over to our creditors. Sure hope you remembered to stock up the chest freezer, or it's going to be a very hungry year."
The good news is that we don't have to pay it off in a year, and a health economy is fine with some debt, just not the gargantuan current amount and its resulting interest payments. McArdle dismisses partisan blame, saying both parties piled on debt during the financial crisis and pandemic—and neither wants to touch the popular entitlement programs now driving the red ink. A fiscal reckoning is coming, she writes. The only question is whether it's a controlled slowdown or a crash. Read the full piece.
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