> the US has levers to pull to pay the debt

Based on that list, here's the levers:

1. All your land now belongs to the USG, and your labor to extract those metals for us. Hi, slave.
2. All your land now belongs to the USG again, and your labor to extract those minerals for us. Hi, slave.
3. Nice house you got there. It is now ours. If you want to live here, pay rent. Hi, tenant.
4. We already took the land but we're taking it again. Shoo. Get off our land.
5. Heya, this is JP calling to inform you that we just handed over your entire stonks portfolio to the USG. They said we have to.
6. Huh? You want energy for your fridge? Sorry, no energy. It was all taken by China because we owe them.

TLDR; don't give them any ideas, because before you know it, your life is forfeited and you will own nothing and you will not be happy, because you died from spoiled food as the electricity needed to use your fridge was sold to China.

optimism

The revolutionary world war fixes the courts.

coffeebadger

BlokchainB

The bigger problem for that argument is that the government doesn't own most of that stuff. It's basically saying that the debt isn't a problem because the government could just steal all of our stuff and give it to the creditors.

the US has levers to pull to pay the debt

Theoretically, yes. It turns out to be really hard to pull those levers, though.

Trump is trying to slash the federal bureaucracy and offload federal properties (not to the extent I would like), but he's constantly jammed up by the courts. Congress has been essentially useless in this. Despite being Republicans, they keep pushing the same agency budgets, even when Trump has dramatically slimmed the headcounts.

Politics_And_Law

econ

The Return of Economic Gaslighting

Undisciplined

The bigger problem for that argument is that the government doesn't own most of that stuff. It's basically saying that the debt isn't a problem because the government could just steal all of our stuff and give it to the creditors.

> the US has levers to pull to pay the debt

Theoretically, yes. It turns out to be really hard to pull those levers, though. 

Trump is trying to slash the federal bureaucracy and offload federal properties (not to the extent I would like), but he's constantly jammed up by the courts. Congress has been essentially useless in this. Despite being Republicans, they keep pushing the same agency budgets, even when Trump has dramatically slimmed the headcounts.