@Phil The Federal debt is not money borrowed from future generations, any more than GMs debt is. It's the capital structure of the government and the base of private sector financial assets. That doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about it -- the main problem with the Federal debt is it compels the government to make current payments to disproportionately already rich people. 1/
@Phil I wonder what contemporary countries you do not consider shitholes spend substantially less on government than the US. It's a very different world than 1900, everywhere. In 1900, most people still subsisted on land near where they lived. Under contemporary agriculture practices, most of us would starve absent some other basis for a claim to that food. 2/
@Phil The "higher productivity jobs" that came later did not arrive in sufficient numbers purely spontaneously. Absent the broadening of purchasing power created by the Federal government pursuing public goods more expansively and direct redistributions of purchasing power like Social Security, much of the country would have starved, begged, or been wards of private charity. If you want 19th C govt, you need 19th C labor intensive agricultue. /fin