I suspect our financial system will finally collapse when the United States government is no longer capable of borrowing fast enough to pay off/refinance all our debts and eventually defaults due to lack of available manpower
Likely be a while. Several countries with worse public-debt-to-gdp ratios and their financial systems haven’t collapsed. Wouldn’t be surprised if we see nuclear war before it happens so it kinda becomes moot.
The US money supply is property of the US Treasury. Congress just needs to call those puppies home by increasing taxes and aggressively pursuing illicit and off-shored wealth.
I dont think the US numbers are comprehensive and include state and local tax collection. Different Nations have radically different taxation schemes and reporting.
for example, 2022 federal revenue was 4.4T, states were 3.7T and local was 1.6T
FRED has SALT revenues around 2.038T[1] in 2023. It looks like about 1.5T is State. This seems to be up 25-35% over historic averages when adjusted for inflation. It has spiked in the last 2 years for reasons I'm not clear on.
FRED also had Federal Receipts at about 17% of GDP [2] between the Trump and Biden terms, which seems average. This was preceded by 15 years of below-average receipts (by this metric) during Bush43 and Obama.
Maybe your data source is more accurate than the fed? Otherwise, it seems like there is plenty more room to tax. It also very clearly matters who you tax. The poor and middle class are mostly tapped, but JP Bezos and big private finaceers have way too much and could stand to be taxed much harder.
Thank you for responding. I have to admit I do in general trust the Fed, and retract my point until I can find out what the differences are.
I think you also have to take into account differences in private spending When comparing capacity for taxation. It's one thing to pay 45% taxes when that includes Healthcare and pensions, and another to pay 45% plus another 10-20%.
I think it matters both who you tax and what you do with it. You can outrace continual debt spending with positive Roi Investments but not negative ROI.
And getting people to buy into this Ponzi scheme is getting more and more expensive. Hence the ballooning interest payments. As debt reaches maturity, more and more of it will have to be refinanced at a higher “apr”, since nobody is even contemplating drawing down the principal. This could further drive up the rates.
