ten trillion is a little bit of a nutty estimate (where’d you get that number?)
Those nuts in the Treasury Department at over $9.5 trillion. $4.2T of that is intragovernmental debt (the “trust fund”), but somebody’s going to have to pay that too.
I don’t understand your contention that $10 trillion in debt can’t cause bankruptcy given GNP of $13 trillion. The debt is the government’s responsibility; GNP is for the nation. The government’s revenue is hovering around 20% of GNP, or $2.5 trillion. Using your 10-year time period, that’s $13 trillion in debt vs $25 trillion in revenue. So the government can easily pay the debt, assuming it cuts every other aspect of its budget, or increases its tax base, by more than 50% every year for the next 10. Or it could debase the currency.
If the 10 year time period you chose is a bad one, that would help. But debt is growing faster than GNP, which means the government’s obligations are growing faster than the ultimate source of its income. That can’t go on forever.
