Taking Stock of the World’s Debt
<i>&gt; The world has never had as much debt as it has right now</i><p>Since Earth doesn&#x27;t owe money to Mars, it&#x27;s not at all clear that world-level debt is good or bad.<p>Every dollar or euro liability for someone is an asset for someone else.<p>For example, I own US treasury bonds, so for me that&#x27;s an asset. They pay interest and they&#x27;re extremely likely to get paid back in full.<p>For me, debt is good. It allows me to consume less than I produce right now so years later I can consume more than I produce.<p>Obviously when a family or a company takes on too much debt it can bad for the debtor (interest payments compete with rent and food) and it&#x27;s bad for the creditor if the debtor can&#x27;t pay it back.<p>But at the world level, it&#x27;s just some of us choosing to consume more than we produce right now, and others of us choosing to consume less than we produce right now.