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Comment by eppsilon | Hacker News Reader

The US' national debt was 89% of GDP in 1950. Now it is 104%. [1] I somewhat agree with you (there was a long period in between when the debt-GDP % was much lower), but the current situation isn't as dire as you suggest.

1. https://www.thebalance.com/national-debt-by-year-compared-to...

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Weren't there some expensive wars around that time? I think I'm recalling that correctly.

Seriously, though, a fairer point of comparison might be the late '60s and early '70s - right when Boomers were entering adulthood. National debt as a percentage of GDP was in the 30s around then.

Still, your response to the parent comment is still somewhat justified - yes, national debt is higher now, but it's not like it's orders of magnitude higher, right?

Yeah, it's not an unprecedented situation. What's concerning is that we have this level of debt after a period of relative peace and stability. (Though I vaguely recall there being some expensive wars recently too.)

To a first approximation, only foreign-held debt matters

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HBFIGDQ188S

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Composition_of_U.S._Long-...

>but the current situation isn't as dire as you suggest.

But I didn’t say it was dire, that’s you reading “dire” into facts and numbers, which should be telling.

You implied that millennials are screwed because boomers incurred too much debt. Sounds pretty dire to me.

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