You bring up a second point that I didn’t want to. I thought it might muddy the message.
Just to be clear to everyone reading this, the cost of servicing the debt is dependent on interest rates, short term or long term, depending on how the auction is set up. Our current costs of servicing the debt are low because the Fed is keeping interest rates down. If inflation starts to kick in and the Fed wants to raise them, it may decide not to because that would (almost) automatically put us in default on the debt. If investors suspect that may happen, they will demand a premium interest rate from the Treasury which would have the same effect, put us in default.
There are not a whole lot of ways to get out of this.
Three times? I’m sure I hit the button just once.
Bond yields go up, as investors see more risk. And as bond yields go up, interest rates elsewhere will follow. That will continue to be a closed cycle toward default, unless the offices of various government funded socio-political causes are closed, and larger programs, severely cut.
But what is more likely to occur in politics? IMO, government employee lobbies will push back, as welfare and retirement programs are cut instead—the recipe for violence and forced repudiation seen in other defaulted nations.
One other consideration: sustainable revenues come from manufacturing, and future inventions will come mostly from small manufacturing operations. Larger, older manufacturing companies tend to become inflexible and stale, preferring only inherited/ranking, degreed, licensed, authorized, stylish input/feedback sources. Thus, deregulation of new, small manufacturing businesses may be needed (zoning in rural areas, etc.).