Carla Javier

But let's break it down and kind of zoom in on kind of both the pessimist side as well as the optimist.

So from the pessimist side, debt can't rise forever.

And so when we see these public debts rising, that's a concern if we don't see a clear pattern of future stabilization.

But it's also the case that when people are looking at where public debt is today, really the question is, what is that money being spent on?

And is it crowding out private sector spending that could otherwise be a better outcome for global society?

Yeah, well, I think the guy in Sheboygan might be really concerned about this because it may explain some of the rise in interest rates that people have seen and the affordability of various large ticket items where they might be

borrowing from banks.

And, you know, one way to think about this is just, you know, we've got these two big players, US and China, and they're both looking to borrow heavily and they're competing for that same pool of global savings.

And that's going to affect interest rates around the world, even in Sheboygan.

Well, so I think this is where things get a little more interesting because on the one hand, we are facing massive demographic shifts.

And that does point to some concerning patterns and a potential tipping point because we're looking at a world where we're going to be trying to support a larger global population of a smaller workforce.

And that's going to be difficult to do.

But on the other hand, we may also be at a point

Where, you know, AI and other sources of productivity may help us and may be able to offset that.

Yes, the classic economist problem.

But I think it's important to really keep in mind that we're looking at a world where we tend to have these really big doomsayers.

At any moment, we're going to have this giant fiscal crisis.

Whereas on the other side, then there are people who are like, oh, okay, it's actually fine if we look at it from the perspective of

for example, of global wealth rather than as debt to wealth as compared to debt to GDP, things maybe don't look so bad.

Right.