Debt is not “accumulating” in the way you imagine it is. Debt load remains fairly stable, and old debt is paid off as new debt is taken on in roughly equal rates as a percentage of GDP.
If the world would give you trillions of dollars at 2% and your return in that money exceeds 2% it would be pretty stupid to pass it up.
The viewpoint of bemoaning debt because just think of what we could have paid for with that interest is wrong because it completely discounts the immediate and long-term value of the things which the debt financed to begin with.
Bemoan whatever you perceive as wasteful government spending, but just like companies won’t achieve the highest returns by being debt free, neither do households and especially not governments.
> After Japan's savings rate hit near zero, and the people of Japan could no longer finance their government's reckless spending, they had to turn to Yen debasement to manage their debt interest problems
What? Japan is notorious for struggling with deflation, not inflation.
> Japan inflation
https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/inflation-cpi
"Japan Inflation Rate at 34-Month High of 1.4% in January" - wow, feel that debasement.
https://www.ft.com/content/e26d36e6-918b-11e7-a9e6-11d2f0ebb... "The fears about Japan’s debt are overblown": "The real interest rate Japan pays on its debt has fallen steadily. With short-term interest rates now negative, the country gets paid to borrow for short periods."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35436187 : Japan's rate went negative. The government can "afford" people paying it to take their money off their hands all day long.
The trick to all this is to remember how much of that debt is ultimately owed to pensioners - not all of it but a surprisingly large amount; paying about 1/3 of tax revenue to pensions in a country where 40% of people are over 65 suddenly doesn't look so unreasonable.
One problem with this narrative is that the vast majority of US government debt is owed to US citizens.
That's assuming the market complies with 3% rates. And that the dollar doesn't do a nose dive (as it did when Bush & Co. went wild with spending), debasing the US standard of living, setting off a nasty chain reaction of consequences.
Who is going to buy $1 trillion of new US debt every year? Sooner rather than later, nobody. That's nearly equivalent to the sum that Japan and China are each holding. There's nobody left on earth that can absorb another $10 trillion in US debt in the next ten years, while continuing to maintain the existing $21 trillion pile. What will happen, is perpetual QE, debt monetization. The Federal Reserve fiscal death spiral begins and they have to forcibly maintain hyper low rates forever.
Already the $15 trillion those clowns have added to our national debt over just ~16 years, is going to steal the money we need annually for infrastructure spending. The interest cost on $15 trillion at just 2% is enough to not only rebuild all US infrastructure over ten years, it'd build us bullet trains out the wazoo. All because they couldn't maintain basic fiscal discipline after 9/11.
Or, alternatively, taxes have to go up a lot.
The US has spare taxing capacity that most developed nations do not, however the rich are likely to be inclined to absorbing inflation rather than seeing their taxes go up a lot, they'll fight that. They can adjust assets, to a reasonable degree, to respond to inflation.
After Japan's savings rate hit near zero, and the people of Japan could no longer finance their government's reckless spending, they had to turn to Yen debasement to manage their debt interest problems (attempt to inflate the problem away by destroying the currency), the consequences of that are extremely ugly over time unless you slash spending, growing a lot faster, or massively raise taxes (or a combination). Today their debt interest cost is over 1/3 of tax revenue. At those levels, you stop being able to maintain things you need to maintain, and the debt robs you of being able to make large investments for the future. That's where the US is heading over the next 10 or 15 years, and it already can't afford to deal with its existing spending needs.