THIS IS FINE: U.S. Government Debt Grows by $275 Billion in One Day. “For macro analyst Lyn Alden, the aforementioned numbers haven’t been seen in nearly 80 years. ‘Most developed countries including the United States face public debt levels relative to GDP that haven’t been seen since the 1940s,’ she told Decrypt, explaining the link between these levels and interest rates.”

The difference is that in the ’40s, we were fighting a war that we were determined to win as quickly as possible. After doing that, we began to pay down the debt incurred by wartime spending.

Now? There’s no excuse and no plan for getting back to sane levels of spending and borrowing.