Camus134

Cyberpunk may have had a bad launch, but in 2026 it is a great game, and worth playing. One of the best games I've played in years.

For decades, the U.S government has been spending much more than it takes in from taxes. To make up for the shortfall, it uses debt in the form of U.S. treasury bonds. They currently pay about 5% a year.

They have long been considered risk free. Boring, safe, low return investments. Companies or people who need absolutely reliability in their investments buy them - the elderly, pensions, insurance companies, banks the world over.

The U.S. has issued so many of these bonds that the total amount outstanding right now is $40T. This amount is so staggering that to simply pay that 5% in interest payments costs us more than it takes to fund our very large, expensive military.

If they don't pay it back, and declare all those bonds worthless - well all of those people who were relying on what they thought was a rock solid, safe investment go bust. Banks fail worldwide, pensions run dry, retirement funds suddenly are empty, all kinds of businesses collapse. It would make the financial crisis of 08 look like a joke, and it would be a true catastrophe.

That is almost surely not going to happen.

What could happen is that we enter a debt spiral - investors get worried we won't be able to pay it back, and view bonds as less than perfectly safe. They now want 6%. The U.S. has to pay even more in interest every year, so they issue more debt to roll it over, which makes it worse and we get to 7%, etc.

Typically in this situation, a country either quickly gets its act together and commits to reducing spending and raises taxes, or they just turn on the money printers, and use inflation to make that debt smaller in real terms. I have little faith in the U.S. to commit to fiscal austerity and expect them to try to inflate the debt away.

In all seriousness - this level of debt will probably require somewhat high rates of inflation to reduce. I'd expect the inflation baseline to be relatively high over the next few decades.

High inflation helps those who borrow with fixed terms. If you have a mortgage, don't pay it off. Don't pay off low interest rate debt. Consider acquiring a responsible amount of low-medium interest rate debt. Put your money into stocks and other assets that will appreciate with inflation.

I live near there. Carmel is now a very nice place to live, easily the nicest place to live in the State. It has very impressive walkable areas, tons of new restaurants and shops, the best schools in the state. It has become easily the most desirable place to live in the region, and good jobs have followed that.

>Things typically become labeled "medicine" when they've been work and have been tested

Eh, sometimes. But often things labeled "medicine" are things that companies can get FDA approval for, patent, manufacture, ensure shelf stability, label with a brand, and sell to customers at a high margin. There are lots of plants that are proven to work but aren't sold to customers because they can't meet some of those criteria. They aren't necessarily worse, just can't be be sold at scale profitably.

"If this were true, it would be trivial to stop and reverse inflation (i.e. deflate) with any increase in interest rates"

Well, that is the strategy of the Fed. Raise interest rates when we experience too much inflation.

More importantly, the Bay Area has Stanford and Berkley pouring out new grads each year, a lot of them stick around.