Everyone talking about sovereign debt.

Menzie ae Econobrowser and Dylan on Zero Hedge. Same numbers different interpretation.

How often do we expect the government account to go into primary surplus? Menzie quotes a chart that says about 20 years, 10 from now. During that time, interest cost grows, and needs to grow slower than the whole economy. What interest rates? Given the size of government, we might think it should act as a competitive private enterprise, and minimize constrained resources. Hence, meeting the condition, government deficit investment should raise government productivity in the use of the constrained resource, mostly, decorrelate with itself.

So, all this history of Congressional action on medicare counts into unsurprising productivity gains. That becomes the median likely result of government productivity gains over the next 10 years.