by the way America is going bankrupt

“By the way, America is going bankrupt,” Musk wrote in a July 22 post on social media platform X. The post was in response to Dogecoin creator Billy Markus’s post, where he had in turn shared an article about a report about rising interest payments in the US.

The article referred to a report that outlined the revenues and expenses of the US budget for the month of June and the fiscal year. It turned out that the US government received $184.9 billion from personal income taxes in June, while $140.2 billion was spent on interest payments on the national debt. The Treasury Department estimates that interest costs for the entire fiscal year will reach more than $1.14 trillion.

Economist EJ Antoni reported in X that interest payments were proportional to 76 percent of personal income tax revenue. “This is the largest source of revenue for the Ministry of Finance, and three-quarters of it just goes to pay interest. Does Congress know? Are they bagged at all?” Antoni asked in his post.

Government incompetence

Musk commented under Anton’s post: “I’m very pleased that 76 percent of the income tax I pay goes to important things, like paying interest on past government incompetence.”

Where is the dollar?

On July 22, Musk also posted a picture of Xi showing where the US dollar is currently in its evolution. “Where do you think we are in the process of destroying the value of the dollar?” Musk added to his post.

If the first phase was a silver coin, followed by silver certificates on paper (paper money backed by silver), then the third was the Federal Reserve notes, which are backed only by debt.

The fourth phase shows a $50 trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe’s 2008 hyperinflation. However, in the fifth phase, a gun bullet is shown, presumably referring to the wars that tend to follow after such processes (hyperinflation) take place.

Musk has also previously written that the financial position of the USA is very bad and that Americans are facing difficult times. “We have to do something, otherwise the dollar will soon be worthless,” he wrote at the beginning of May.

At the beginning of 2000, the national debt of the United States was 5.77 trillion dollars, but by the beginning of 2010 it had grown to 12.77 trillion and by the beginning of 2020 to 23.22 trillion. However, the subsequent growth of the national debt has been insane – by now, the national debt has risen to 34.9 trillion dollars, according to the latest data from the US Treasury Department.

The Treasury Department expects interest payments to be $1.14 trillion this year. In my opinion, this is a rather conservative forecast and the interest payments will more likely reach the range of 1.3-1.5 trillion dollars. Recall that the government’s own total revenue for the fiscal year is about $5 trillion.