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Someone framed debt to gdp ratio like this: if your debt is 150% of your GDP. It would take a year and a half to pay off your debt if all the national income (gdp) was allocated to payments.

No obviously this isn’t a realistic policy - but if we can have “war-time” economies as proven in the past it reasons that we can have an economy solely focused on the repayment of debt (idk, high taxes for a decade?). Am I tripping?



Maybe a better comparison is to a post war economy? The US paid off the WW2 debt in about 17 years through ordinary taxation, but US taxes today are much lower than they were after WW2, at least for the very rich.


If one looks at the national debt clock I think we each owe just $300k.

In these terms it seems quite manageable. My guess is that if it was an actual problem we would solve it. My guess is that it is mostly a talking point.


You're tripping if you think everyone is going to give all their output for a year to pay for debt without a revolution.

Almost half of households have less than $1000 in savings. How are they making it through the whole year without income?

How are all the old people who live off social security making it without 5% of GDP set aside to finance their lives?




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