No one seems to understand this. You always have republicans (today) complaining about the national debt, and when republicans are in office, we have democrats complaining about the national debt. The reality? Neither party really cares, and they don't really have a valid reason to. That probably made you shake your head, after all, we're all going to die once china decides to cash in, right? Yeah, no. Funny thing about debt.. no one seems to understand it. Krugman talks about this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/opinion/paul-krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html?_r=0
This brings me to talk about both parties. Democrats want to raise taxes and spending, while republicans want to cut taxes AND raise spending. (Don't let them fool you, the military, social security, you really think they're going to decimate medicaid and medicare? Not even the republicans will go that far if elected and holding a majority.) So we have democrats wanting to raise taxes and increase spending, which will increase the debt, and we have republicans wanting to cut taxes and increase spending AS WELL. If either party gave a shit about the debt, they would raise taxes AND cut spending. But this will not go over with the population, nor will it go over well with the morons who scream 'HOLD THE LINE!'
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/opinion/paul-krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html?_r=0
You see, policy makers have been basing their actions on a false view of what debt is all about, and their attempts to reduce the problem have actually made it worse.
You might think our failure to reduce debt ratios shows that we aren’t trying hard enough — that families and governments haven’t been making a serious effort to tighten their belts, and that what the world needs is, yes, more austerity. But we have, in fact, had unprecedented austerity. As the International Monetary Fund has pointed out, real government spending excluding interest has fallen across wealthy nations — there have been deep cuts by the troubled debtors of Southern Europe, but there have also been cuts in countries, like Germany and the United States, that can borrow at some of the lowest interest rates in history.
You can see that misunderstanding at work every time someone rails against deficits with slogans like “Stop stealing from our kids.” It sounds right, if you don’t think about it: Families who run up debts make themselves poorer, so isn’t that true when we look at overall national debt?
No, it isn’t. An indebted family owes money to other people; the world economy as a whole owes money to itself. And while it’s true that countries can borrow from other countries, America has actually been borrowing less from abroad since 2008 than it did before, and Europe is a net lender to the rest of the world.
Because debt is money we owe to ourselves, it does not directly make the economy poorer (and paying it off doesn’t make us richer). True, debt can pose a threat to financial stability — but the situation is not improved if efforts to reduce debt end up pushing the economy into deflation and depression.
This brings me to talk about both parties. Democrats want to raise taxes and spending, while republicans want to cut taxes AND raise spending. (Don't let them fool you, the military, social security, you really think they're going to decimate medicaid and medicare? Not even the republicans will go that far if elected and holding a majority.) So we have democrats wanting to raise taxes and increase spending, which will increase the debt, and we have republicans wanting to cut taxes and increase spending AS WELL. If either party gave a shit about the debt, they would raise taxes AND cut spending. But this will not go over with the population, nor will it go over well with the morons who scream 'HOLD THE LINE!'