I love how leftist put this forward. It sounds so incredibly believable. And, the way it is put, the statements aren't even false. Of course, we're talking about 2 different things. Believe it or not, but economists have in fact split up the "currency creating" debt (balance sheet of the FED, in the US), and "government debt" (issues by the treasury). This got all confused because of one of the QEs, where the FED created a LOT of currency and funded the government deficit with it, but it is still very different. One of the BIG lesson from the 1930s, of course, taught to every economist in the 101 class, was to never let the government finance itself with "currency creating" debt, but ...

This $233T does not include the currency generating debt, nor the double bookings on the banks' balance sheet. None of the debt you're talking about is included in that figure. That's a different figure, generally found under something like "central bank balance sheet".

So congratulations ! You should be in politics. Your comment is entirely accurate, and yet so incredibly misleading, so easily, so effortlessly guiding people to a terribly wrong conclusion.

And yet it is trivial to point out a major inconsistency. If what you say is true, then why would there be any limits on government spending at all ? More currency created by government demand, which we all know is good for the economy ! And yet intuitively ... alarm bells go off. I can clearly see that there are upper limits to government spending where "somehow" this breaks down. There's the extreme examples like Zimbabwe and Venezuela, where inflation destroys the economy itself and it's blatantly obvious the root cause is government overspending. Wouldn't this mean they simply have more economy ? Clearly it doesn't (Assuming you don't follow the lunatic left viewpoint that these are the result of conspiracies). Then there's the cases where government overspending has lead to the currency not being accepted anymore, like Somalia, and to a less extreme extent, Cyprus, Greece, parts of Austria, ... Now of course in those cases it is in fact a conspiracy (by most of the population, central banks, normal banks, ...), and yet they too insist it is because of government overspending. How can this possibly happen ?

And intuitively I have seen what happens with government overspending. It is very visible in European capitals, in some areas where governments or very large companies control all spending and layout of particular areas of the city, in an otherwise capitalist economy. And what you see is always the same : empty, dead "public" spaces that aren't very public at all. Nobody goes there because there is no economy there. There are no cafes, no food, no games, no cinemas, no access to transport, no ... nothing. Nobody goes there (unless the government departments are open, of course).

But the fallacy is mostly in what do we really care about. "Debt" is too abstract. I agree. A name with a big number next to it. Big deal. The distance to proxima centauri is also a name with a disappointingly big number next to it, and yet, I don't see it affecting me.

Ah ! That's a good idea. Big numbers that affect me. Okay, so let's see if this big number would affect the average American ...

Do governments owe interest on government debt ? Yes. Do these interest payments come out of the same pool of money that is used for everything else, say social security or pensions ? Yes. When interest rates go up, does that mean interest payments go up ? Yes. Will that compete/endanger social security spending ? Yes.

Will the government switch to printing money (and therefore "implicitly" and rather massively increase effective tax) to prevent this debt from actually coming due ? (In other words, will there be a point where this debt comes out of YOUR paycheck, whether through continuous interest payments paid through tax, canceled debt, inflation or whatever) ...

Yes. (claiming anything else is equivalent to "this time it's different")

So is this government debt a big number that affects me ?

Without a doubt, YES IT IS.

But I must say: well put. Incredible rhetoric. Simple, short, technically true and yet nothing short of a complete lie. Maybe you're just repeating the lie, of course, because it is so convincing.