The U.S. is in the Hole. Will We Stop Digging?

Optimist Economy

Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi

Public Policy, Economics, Government, Economy

4.9 • 829 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The national debt is $36 trillion — a panic-inducing big number. So maybe it will help to understand how the U.S. ran up that debt. We’ve blown 37% of it on tax cuts, with precious little to show for that. But 28% went to stabilize the economy during two major crises (in ’08-’09 and during the COVID pandemic), which is when you do want the federal government to pull out its credit card. Good news is we don’t have to get the debt to zero. We just need to get pointed in that direction. And for listeners who’ve been waiting for Kathryn Edwards to discuss MMT (Modern Monetary Theory), your moment has come.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Catherine. I'm Robin. On this show, we believe the
0:09.8	U.S. economy can be better, and we talk about how to get there one problem and solution at a time.
0:31.9	For our newer listeners to Optimist Economy, we welcome you to the show and start by saying that you can support us, join us, be part of us at Optimisteconomy.com.
0:38.8	We have a newsletter that you can subscribe to. We absolutely take donations. We also have a Buy Me a coffee account where you can do the same. Information on all of this at optimisteconomy.com. Optimisteconomy.com. Just a quick sidebar for
0:46.3	our long-term listeners. Doesn't it feel like we're getting more natural at that part?
0:50.1	Like new listeners, we've been good at this the whole time. Old listeners, what about the journey
0:54.5	you're witnessing here? You'll notice when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes I speak incredibly quickly.
0:59.5	Like, hey, by the way, give us money. We really needed to do the show. Okay, so go by.
1:02.9	Robin, what's your retcon?
1:09.5	The only retcon that I had listened, when I listened to our last episode was the question about discharge of debt in bankruptcy.
1:15.9	And we had said, for instance, that student loans were among the things that you could not get rid of by declaring bankruptcy, along with other, some certain things, like apparently the injuries you cause in drunk driving accidents
1:29.3	and alimony and child support tax debt so you can appeal you have to have a special hearing
1:37.5	yes yeah i mean it's not easy it's not easy it's not it's not Right. If you go into bankruptcy, you have to file a
1:46.1	separate hearing to get permission to discharge your student loan debt. And if you do, they take into
1:52.1	account like how hard you tried to pay it back. So it's not just you go into bankruptcy and you
1:58.0	have debt and it goes away. Like's it's it still comes down to
2:01.8	their behavior and they can say no got it okay red cons for you i have i have like a whole host
2:09.1	i know you got like a list i see i have like yeah i have a list going well so just to kind of go
2:12.6	backward in time for past episodes we had a listener write in about the fertility episode saying that we weren't
2:21.0	right in how we talked about maternal mortality rates. And I think we were using different measures.
2:26.9	So maternal mortality has measures where, like, you can look how far out you look, whether or not
2:33.6	you look at any cause of death or
	...

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