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Can someone explain to me the negative consequences of running a deficit? Countries aren’t people. They don’t die. As long as countries are willing to lend us money and the US can service the debt, what does it really matter if the national debt is multiples of the GDP?

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There are no real negative consequences. Fiscally conservative people want people to think there are because it's a way to counter government spending with an argument that makes sense on the surface, despite the fact that the argument is completely wrong if you spend a few minutes thinking about it.

We will spend $479 Billion in interest on the national debt in 2020.

That's >22 NASAs-worth of money, if you care about space exploration. It could be roads or high speed trains or education or healthcare or whatever you care most about.

Instead it's going towards paying interest on debt incurred for cheap political wins in the past...

That doesn’t matter, because it’s not a binary choice — that is, we don’t not spend money on NASA because of the deficit.

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