The public debt to GDP ratio in Japan is over 260% and they still haven’t defaulted (it somewhat boggles my mind that they can sustain such high debt levels even though it seems that there are reasonable explanations for it). There are ostensibly some differences between the Japanese and American contexts but nonetheless it seems possible for developed countries to sustain high levels of public debt for a considerable amount of time. I think how long of a time is still an open question. I’d expect to see the Japanese situation unravel before the American one and maybe that might give an indication of how sustainable extreme high levels of debt are if there is ever such an unraveling.
The public debt to GDP ratio in Japan is over 260% and they still haven’t defaulted (it somewhat boggles my mind that they can sustain such high debt levels even though it seems that there are reasonable explanations for it). There are ostensibly some differences between the Japanese and American contexts but nonetheless it seems possible for developed countries to sustain high levels of public debt for a considerable amount of time. I think how long of a time is still an open question. I’d expect to see the Japanese situation unravel before the American one and maybe that might give an indication of how sustainable extreme high levels of debt are if there is ever such an unraveling.