The slopes matter less than what the accumulated deficits bought.
If Treasury’s deficits had bought infrastructure, fundamental science, state capacity, and a healthy, educated population sheltered near fruitful work at reasonable costs, the productive asset side of the national balance sheet would dwarf the liability side.
Instead they bought bank bailouts, COVID backstops for every business, a few senseless wars, and endless transfers for consumption, while bailout money leaked to executive comp and buybacks. Corporations saw no reason to invest domestically: arbitraging the gap between U.S. and Asian labor costs and leaking IP to foreign competitors was worth ~$800B a year in excess profits.
This isn’t partisan. Neither party funded real investment. Both parties systematically granted more power to the corporate sector, supported monopoly rents for bad actors, and aided full scale regulatory capture of institutions.
So here we are: profoundly indebted relative to our capital assets, after decades of squandered opportunity, guided by an ideology blind to everything that can’t be easily measured or captured for private profit.