Noah Smith

So that's one thing we can do is to simply lower the deficit and let growth erode the debt over time.

That's the most important and best thing we can do is fiscal austerity, by which I mean a combination of tax increases and spending cuts, and then allowing growth to take its course over time.

That will take a decade, two decades of that, but that will definitely fix a lot of this problem.

And so, in fact, our debt-to-GDP ratio fell during Biden's presidency for exactly this reason, because inflation was higher.

So actually, we did inflate away a little bit of the debt, but it took, you know, despite all the lack of fiscal restraint, despite all the money we were spending, despite all the taxes that we cut,

we did inflate away a little tiny bit of the debt, but it, you remember how mad people were, you know, people suddenly got much poorer.

They couldn't buy gas.

They couldn't buy food.

They couldn't buy, you know, rent went up and all these things went up.

People were just, you know, it resulted in people electing Trump who didn't help the problem, but

It resulted, even though that inflation lasted mainly for about a year and a half, two years, it got people really mad in an enduring way.

And people are still saying the cost of living is way too high.

They still vividly remember that experience of inflation that we had.

If you're going to meaningfully inflate the debt away, you're going to need that sort of inflation for years and years and years.

And I don't think you're going to have people revolting in the street.

So you can inflate it away.

You can do that.

But it's going to make people really, really, really, really mad.

More mad than fiscal austerity.

What about the risk of hyperinflation under those conditions?