The govt can debase the currency by printing money. That only impoverishes people , except for the wealthy, causing greater wealth gap.
Only if your economy doesn't grow.
> The govt can debase the currency by printing money. That only impoverishes people , except for the wealthy, causing greater wealth gap.
It impoverishes lenders and savers, but not borrowers. It's not as simple as wealthy or poor, as any can be any.
You can afford it, it's fairly close to a neutral thing, for a government to have debt.
Right now, the US gets to set the terms for those loans.
> How is cutting costs a bad thing?
Consider weight as an analogy: Most people can do with loosing weight, losing weight by getting enthusiastic amateurs to perform a quadruple amputation is not advisable.
Musk's target can only be met by deleting your entire armed forces.
And then you have to find another $1.2 trillion.
So the military and the entire CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS, NASA, Federal Highway Administration, FAA, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, Department of Justice, the Treasury, …
… all that plus the military still doesn't add up to Musk's target.
Unless you want to cut stuff that's considered "mandatory" (like military pensions), or the interest repayments on the very loans you wish you didn't have.
The country prints its own money; and right now it's the world reserve currency, giving the US a huge advantage when it comes to borrowing whatever it wants — the biggest threat to continuing to be the world reserve currency right now, is that the scale of cuts being talked about can only be met by cutting at least one of interest payments on government loans or things the US government considers to be "mandatory" such as pensions, social security, etc.