What's really interesting is where exactly the debt is going.
If the US were funneling money into long-term programs designed to improve the country and its residents' lives and/or earn some return on investment, that would be one thing.
Instead, it seems focused on continually increasing military spending (to little effect - see: Straight of Hormuz) and reducing the proportion of the tax revenues coming from its wealthiest individuals while taking a chainsaw to programs helping the poorest without any significant savings to show for it.
You couldn't do a worse job if you were following step-by-step instructions by an adversary for sabotaging the country from within.
It’s going to paying for an aging demographic and medical care. The same as literally every western country. Which is why I don’t view this as a particularly American issue.
America is doing a bad job of addressing this, but it also has more leeway.
Because the US does not control other countries fiscal policy which is where government debt rates come from. Germany and the UK have entirely different ways to determine fiscal and currency policy from each other, not to mention from the US.
If there is correlation between those things it’s either by choice (the German people tieing their government to the US) or it’s demographic.
"The secretary of state effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government. His grip on the country is a vivid manifestation of American power in the Trump era."
This is but one of many examples of the broad reach of American control over other countries' policies.
The UK bonds are the highest since the 90s and Japanese debt has never been higher.
There is a fiscal problem but it’s not an _American_ one unless you just assume all international finance is a US issue.