By Bartek @ Adobe Stock
Americans have come to enjoy among the highest standards of living in all of history. As my friend Peter Goettler writes at Cato Institute, “There has never been a better time for human beings to be alive than right now. People across the globe are living longer, healthier, and more prosperous lives, surrounded and supported by the wonders of modernity.” But Americans also have a duty to the future. Right now, the amount of debt the government is accumulating is perilous to future generations’ standards of living. Peter explains:
For this reason, today’s world owes a debt to those who came before—a debt to the gifted thinkers who developed the values of the Enlightenment, to the great men and women who built the conditions for human flourishing on the foundations of these values and to the innovators and entrepreneurs who seized upon these conditions to create our amazing modern era.
We, the beneficiaries of this legacy, have a duty to preserve for future generations the conditions necessary for growth and opportunity. But we instead risk leaving them buried under mountains of debt.
Fiscal policy in the United States has reached new heights of recklessness. This raises crucial practical concerns, both for America and the world. And by posing grave risks not just for the economic well-being of today’s citizens but also for the prospects and opportunities of future generations, the attendant concerns are not only practical but moral.
Continuous warnings with seemingly few consequences have accompanied decades of irresponsible fiscal policy in the US. This has bred complacency, encouraging an ever more imprudent path. In the wake of a world financial crisis and a global pandemic that motivated—and normalized—trillions in spending for bailouts and stimulus, the US is racking up spending and debt at alarming rates even as stable growth and low unemployment have returned.
But unlike years past, the ramifications of this course—and the contours of future crises—have begun to emerge, posing costs and risks for both today and tomorrow. The bout of inflation experienced since 2021 provides a tangible foretaste of the potential consequences of America’s fiscal profligacy.
Meanwhile, the rise in interest rates illustrates a key hazard implicit in the country’s debt burden: An increase in interest rates balloons the interest paid on our high debt balances, fueling further rises in spending, deficits and the national debt. Finally, without action to reform unsustainable entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, a crisis that weakens the country and dims the futures of those who come next cannot be avoided.
Read more here from Peter.
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