Memes

"Bankers hate him! Get an 850 credit score and dictate the terms and interest rate of your own debt using this one simple trick."

The US govt basically has a perfect credit score. They have almost infinite payment history and almost infinite available credit.

Credit rating also depends on credit to debt ratio. You want to keep it below 35%, so you would need a credit line of $100T or more to have a great rating.

Yeah, this is just people not understanding how credit scores work, part #57294, lol

Do not forget that you are also the very entity that hands out the currency you hold your debt in.

That's a lot of zeros, when written like that

I strongly encourage people who still think like OP to look up what happened the last time we paid off the national debt.

No, if anything it shows capitalism is working. When you can increase or tighten money supply (ie when you can print and shred money) debt isn’t what you think it is. A state with money issuance powers is not a household.

I can thoroughly recommend “The Deficit Myth” book by Stephanie Kelton, if you wish to understand modern monetary policy better.

Or watch the film Finding the Money: https://youtu.be/3HRgsYSLOYw?si=g_CgqMWtC7oBCkGn

And to answer your specific question, there are countries with very low debt, but that’s usually due to either not being able to “borrow” money (again, borrowing doesn’t always mean what we would think as borrowing when you can issue your own money), being locked to another currency (Denmark is a great example - amazing economy and locked to the euro) or having a large generation of wealth (typically oil). Larger countries can issue debt more easily.

I'm not the biggest fan of capitalism myself but the existence of debt does not mean it is broken. Debt is a mechanism to allow for solid investments, e.g. building infrastructure or schools that will create a net positive in the (far) future.
Germany for example has enacted a Schuldenbremse (debt-break) in 2009 and forbids our states to take on new debt and limits the debt taken on the federal level to a minisule percentage of the GDP. Our infrastructure is currently slowly but noticeably crumbling away, bridges are getting closed for heavy traffic and experts say many of them have become irreparable due to missing maintenance and need to be fully rebuild in a few years. The local military barracks are in such a desolate condition that the soldiers need to drive two towns over to shower. We might not take on financial debt, but an infrastructure debt that will demand an even bigger toll on us.

...except that it used to be that your ability to secure a loan was based on where you went to school, how firm your handshake was, and if you happened to have the right skin color and sex organs.

The current system certainly isn't perfect; and if you're denied a loan you have a legal right (in the US) to know the reason.

There are systemic issues, to be sure. But the nominal goal is absolutely better than what we used to have.

This.

More people need to understand that the debt of a sovereign nation isn't analogous to that of a household.

Public sector debt is private sector surplus.

Wait a bank is a Ponzi scheme

And what's sad are the number of people that act like credit scores are a force of nature we just have to accept