> US still has a significant chunk of WWII debt after one of the greatest sustained economic booms of all time.
Let's pretend this is true. (I doubt it.)
Let's keep in mind that US debt is owed in bonds, redeemable in US dollars.
If I get a 30 year mortgage in 1945 and simply rollover the debt whenever it comes due, but my wealth has increased dramatically, my mortgage does not matter. If I take out a 100k mortgage and then go on to found Apple and become a multibillionaire, then yes, growth was the answer. My debt may not have changed, but it is completely and utterly irrelevant when considering my financial situation.
> Inflation sounds great, just default without technically defaulting, until you actually see what it does to the economy.
Which is why the 50s and 60s were known as horrific economic times, right?
Assuming by "inflation" you just mean an increase in the money supply - quintupling the money supply since 2009 doesn't seem to have led to the sky falling.
> The real solution is to simply spend vastly less money accepting that pain now is better than letting the US become a failed state.
No, the real solution is to spend more money now, taking advantage of historically low interest rates that at times have been negative in real terms, to do whatever you can to kickstart economic growth, and let the debt inflate away 'naturally'. Preferably you do this by investing in infrastructure projects, education, and science, and other things that produce real benefit, but if you want to fill mines with hundred dollar bills and fill them in so others can mine them out, that's fine too. In this case there is no pain.
Spending less money now isn't accepting necessary pain, it's causing unnecessary pain.
The US will not become a failed state because of mild inflation. Hyperinflation will never be a problem in the US barring a world war or huge resource or natural catastrophe. People have been preaching the doom-and-gloom inflation story for probably a century now. Every year, it's just around the corner.
Well, it isn't. I can only speculate why the story is so popular. I can only assume that people have been taught to internalize all debt as a moral issue: less debt is Good, more debt is Bad, and there must therefore be dire consequences visited upon the guilty nations that don't treat debt as it must be treated. But the debt of sovereign, money-printing governments bears no resemblance to the debt of individuals, and there really are no consequences to a government being in debt forever. (Actually there's no consequences to individuals being in debt forever either - I am in perpetual debt to my credit card company, and spend the majority of my paycheck on it...but I pay it off every month.) It would in fact be a bad thing if there were no US bonds to purchase; you've suddenly eliminated a huge source of safe investment from the market.
