Morgan Housel

And what matters is that you can afford the carrying cost of that debt.

You can afford the interest on that debt.

But the U.S.

is never going to have zero debt.

They just keep issuing more to pay off the old stuff.

You know, Ford Motor has been in debt for 100 some odd years, and it'll be in debt 100 years from now if it's still around.

It's a perpetual company.

And so the way that we did it after World War II and the way that we could do it now, whether we will or not, I'm not saying we will, but the way you could do it now, I don't wanna get too technical here, but if the deficit as a percentage of GDP is smaller than the growth rate of the economy, then debt to GDP goes down.

The amount of debt you have goes up every year, but debt to GDP goes down.

So for example, if the economy were growing by 5% per year,

the government could run a deficit of 4% per year and debt to GDP would go down.

So when people talk about paying off the debt and balancing the budget, you don't have to, and we probably never will.

And you can still come to a scenario where it gets much more manageable.

Now, it could also be catastrophe.

And you mentioned there's numerous examples of that.

So that's always the case.

But all of this is like, what are the odds?

Catastrophe is a chance.

Is it the highest?

Is it the most likely outcome?