• WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    This is actually great news. The national debt went down last year. I mean, just based on those headline numbers, the national debt is smaller than it was before.

    The nominal debt grew by 5% according to those numbers. Meanwhile, in that same period, US GDP nominal GDP grew at about 6% over the last year.

    The raw number for national debt is meaningless. Only brain-dead morons care give a single fuck about the raw number. The raw number is for illiterate yokels who are scared of big maths in the way a caveman is scared of “fire! hot!”

    For those who aren’t brain-dead hicks, the only figure that matters is national debt as a share of GDP. That shows whether our debt load is increasing or decreasing in proportion to our economy. And over the last year, the value of the debt as a share of GDP went DOWN. We could sustain a $1.8 trillion deficit literally forever.