Having recently read that England has a debt of just over £2 trn then checking again America has a debt of $59.4 trn, obviously other nations too has debs it seems with the interest added these debts will never be paid off as the interest is accruing faster than the debt that's being paid off,
Q; so why don't all these countries scrap the debts owed completely and start again , as who so ever owes some one, these debts will only get bigger and will never be paid off at all,
Alfred,
The UK national debt is £1.8 Trillion.
This is all borrowed money, a good portion of it borrowed from the roughly 6,000 occupational pension funds, which pay out pensions to roughly 15 million pensioners and keep assets to pay the future pensions of another 17 million people currently in work.
The rest the debt is owed to counties with surplus cash, such as Norway and UAE, as well as private investors who invest in a range of savings and investment products.
The government can default on this £1.8 Trillion of debt, but to do this a good portion will be taken from retirees and workers who've saved for a pension.
If you have an occupational pension, take a look at your pension statement which should tell you how much of the fund in invested in government bonds.
There are modern examples of States that have defaulted on debt, Greece is one. Greece took the money from Private Pension Schemes and used it to service the Debt it had with the IMF and the ECB. And pensioners had their pensions reduced as a consequence.
In the UK we too have a political party who have a policy to default on debt, it is called the Labour Party. The Labour Policy is predicated on Spending more money than well earn, adding to the £1.8 Trillion of debt which will ultimately lead to default.
Any Government can sequester the property of pensioners and corporations and individuals that property. Given that your Topic suggests it a good idea to default on debt, perhaps you'll not mind what property you have being forcibly taken by the government, because that is what default leads to, because if government can't borrow money (because they defaulted) they'll come and take your assets to pay for government.