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Comment by layman51 | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible for the US to take on bigger and bigger debt because it has a huge national defense budget?

I have often heard that household/consumer debt cannot and should not be treated the same way as the debt a government holds. But it is still something to be concerned about because Argentina printed a lot of money to pay off debts I believe and that devalued their currency a lot.

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No, the economy must decide between guns and butter. Military expenditures are destructive and wasteful. The US can afford its disproportionate and non-productive military expenses because it is subsidized by the rest of the world buying US treasuries and the dollar as the world reserve currency since the end of Bretton-Woods combined with sovereign fiat.

This is a world historical anomaly that is underappreciated. When the world dollar regime goes, so too will our unbounded budget and ability to impose global sanctions unilaterally.

Defense spending is not the biggest part of government expenses. It's about 12%.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

And that doesn't even include state and local government spending.

yes thats basically, going along the lines of the Chartalist / Modern Monetary Theory view of money, and combining it with the Petrodollar theory of money.

sorry - edit - tried to keep this short, keep messing up. Theres a lot of deep rabbit holes if you want to dig into those theories online.

just keep in mind a lot of economists disagree with MMT / Chartalism and some even disagree with what a Petrodollar is.

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