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.
if you don't see how the national debt of the most imperialistic country relates to the defense budget of the most imperialistic country of the earth and it's relation to the most impoverished countries on earth, then you're missing a very large part of the entire idea of imperialism.
you seem to be under the belief that the debt is completely unrelated to the arsenal a country has.
Oh I see, you don't see it because you don't understand what national debt is. Yes, debt is almost entirely unrelated to the arsenal a country has. The only relation is that the US can borrow with very low interest rates because of how financially trustworthy it is seen, and how much of the world uses the dollar as a reserve currency, which are all things that hinge upon the US being the global hegemon and very powerful financially, which in turn are because of imperialism. But it is not because the US doesn't have to service its debts. It's the opposite. You think the US doesn't have to service the debts because of imperialism, where actually the US is ABLE to service the debts because of imperialism (mostly, there's also other reasons). Japan and Singapore have no issues servicing debts either despite having much higher debts compared to GDP than the US, it isn't because they are threatening anyone to write off their debts either. There is much more to debt than that.
it's seen as financially trustworthy because it can raise it's debt ceiling whenever the fuck it wants because of it's military capabilities.
Simply not the case. This was explained. The US services all debt. It's not threatening anyone into writing off debts. Ever. It can service the debt because it has a robust economy, very low interest rates, and national debt isn't as big a deal as people pretend anyways. The aforementioned do mostly hinge on imperialism but not the way you think. I'm not sure you know what a debt ceiling is.