SHOULD YOU BE CONCERNED ABOUT OUR GROWING NATIONAL DEBT?

The New York Times yesterday showed the following.

It was 14 years ago when I published in the Huffington Post:  THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION FOR OUR NATIONAL DEBT...

• And I said, this simplest solution was to INCREASE it.
• Note, find 2014 on the above graph, and when you do, our national debt seems to be on an exponential rise, and projected to zoom up even faster if the Trump Beautiful Bill passes.
• Does it really matter?
• Maybe not.
• In my article, I intimated that most of you (the readers) equate our national debt to your personal debt.  We all want to minimize what we owe.
• Further, to quote from that article.

You feel that our government has irresponsibly built up a $14.3 trillion burden and can't any more tolerate this travesty, for just the interest in this loan is crippling our economy. Wrong! Or, at least, suboptimal.

• 14 years ago, our national debt was $14.3 trillion.  Now?  $36.2 trillion.
• How has the USA done financially?
• By any measure of comparison, great, although the irrational manner President Trump is handling the economy with those crazy tariffs does seriously worry me.
• Nevertheless, note how we've grown since 2014.  And this occurred as our national debt increased from $14.3 trillion to  $36.2 trillion!

• We've also performed a lot better during the past decade than all our competitors.

• In productivity growth, only South Korea is up there with us.

In my HuffPo of a decade ago, I also said:

The global society is essentially a free enterprise economy. If you owned a very large company, you borrow at low interest to make a profit. This is exactly what the USA is doing.

I ended with:

Let us return to this enterprise called the USA. Our debt as a percentage of the Gross National Product is around 60 percent, very similar to Germany. Japan is at 190 percent, but this is mostly owed to their citizenry, for which the government has always paid out at less than one percent. Worry about Fukushima, but that debt percentage is not Japan's problem. For the past decade, the USA has borrowed at an almost constant 3 percent. A terrific rate, if you're a company. As long as this interest remains at this relatively low level, surely, this "borrowed" sum must be accruing a higher percentage of "benefits."

It really doesn't matter what interest rate you use, for they all follow the same pattern.  Take the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

While the pandemic brought up interest rates, they largely still remained below the historical average red line.  As long as this particular interest rate remains below that red line, owing money does not hurt our economic competitive position.  If this rate zooms up above that line, other countries will borrow our money, so we would then reduce our national debt, while taking advantage of lending at high interest rates.  We can't lose either way.  Think about this and if you never get it, you're normal.

Thus, should you be concerned about our national debt?  As long as our Federal government borrows when interest rates are low, and lends when they are high, our country should do fine.

But then again, who am I?  What do I really know about financing?  From Time:

Updated: MAY 28, 2025 7:22 AM HAST

Elon Musk Says Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful’ Bill ‘Undermines’ DOGE by Raising National Debt

Also, Musk summarized his “personal opinion” in the CBS interview clip, saying: “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it can be both.”  He's the richest man in the world.  He's around 500,000 times wealthier than me.  Makes more sense to listen to him.  But I still think there is something to my theory about the national debt.

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