So in the UK the tories and media keep saying the national debt is the highest its been since the ww2 (which is true of pretty much any year since the 80s). And that we need to raise taxes, tighten our belts etc to pay back what we borrowed to get us thru the pandemic.
Now I know this kind of treating a countries finances like household finances and talking about national debt like its credit card debt is disingenuous and just used as a way to justify squeezing people more than they are already.
But what I don't know with enough authority to be able to talk to people about it is why this is the case? How is national debt different and wtf is it? Who do we owe it to and do we even need to pay it back etc?
Ofc I know the whole thing is bullshit anyway any only exists to preserve the current power structure but let's leave that for now.
Be good to hear thoughts from someone who knows things.
To tack onto this, people talk about "stocks and bonds" in financial portfolios. A bond is vaguely like getting dividends from a country.
Anyone can buy bonds, but it typically ends up being people who have lots of money and trust/alignment with the government. Some of the national debt is foreign-owned, but a lot of it is owned by the nation's own bourgeoisie. With national debt around 100-150% of GDP, it's common for over 10% of the government's budget to just go to paying interest on the debt- using public coffers to exclusively pay rich people. Unless the rich are disproportionately taxed, it's a wealth transfer from poor to rich. And you can't easily tax foreign nationals, so taxing the rich to pay the debt looks like a handout to other countries. This is why "just not paying the debt" is not an acceptable policy to the mainstream.