I can certainly agree with parts of this - it does seem to become meaningless at this scale, but that tends to be a fairly fragile state - any serious shocks to the system and suddenly things that don't matter, (can potentially) matter a great deal.
That aside, comparing national debt to GDP is a metric that seems to miss the point. Sure, GDP might be the rising tide that lifts all boats, but that is both disconnected from the individual tax payers QOL, and has an indirect impact at best. Comparing national debt payments to total tax revenue makes more sense to me; it seems more useful to understand roughly what it costs for the tax payers to maintain these "meaningless" level of debt, and how much money is being transferred from people paying taxes, to people owning US debt. I've only done some quick skimming on the subject, but it doesn't look like national debt / tax revenue receipts paints a particularly rosy picture.
National monetary policy requires more nuance than can be provided in this short article format, but I can certainly understand where the author is coming from, to a degree.
I think this article has a shallow take on the effects of governmental debt. It's not we run a significant risk of the whole system falling like a house of cards, it's that this perpetual QE is leading to a massive redistribution of wealth from the poor to the very rich.
There is no such thing as free money, inflation is the hidden tax that pays for all this.
That aside, comparing national debt to GDP is a metric that seems to miss the point. Sure, GDP might be the rising tide that lifts all boats, but that is both disconnected from the individual tax payers QOL, and has an indirect impact at best. Comparing national debt payments to total tax revenue makes more sense to me; it seems more useful to understand roughly what it costs for the tax payers to maintain these "meaningless" level of debt, and how much money is being transferred from people paying taxes, to people owning US debt. I've only done some quick skimming on the subject, but it doesn't look like national debt / tax revenue receipts paints a particularly rosy picture.
National monetary policy requires more nuance than can be provided in this short article format, but I can certainly understand where the author is coming from, to a degree.