I’ve thought along that line too.
Ok,though experiment: say we do it what are the consequences both national (internal) & international?
1. No one is willing to purchase federal debt for a long while (I consider this a feature not a bug). In fact, I suspect other countries would face higher borrowing costs as well, which forces the day of reckoning on them as well.
2. Politicians are no longer able to buy votes and pay off supporters by robbing from future generations. That forces much great accountability and tougher political battles for spending bills, which is a good thing.
3. Holders of government debt are screwed. TBH, that’s going to happen one way or another because hyperinflation gives the same effective result. So the people who are horrified by my idea should consider that rejecting it doesn’t change as much as they think it does.
4. Entitlement programs become much more of a battleground (similar to #2), as maintaining unrealistic levels of redistribution requires taking from productive workers, not from children who have no political voice. And this means seniors, those on welfare and so on suddenly have a much great interest in seeing America healthy and productive (such that they can share in the resulting wealth) rather than play a zero-sum game of taking from others without regard to the impact on those others.