The United States is in aggregate the largest debtor nation in the world, while it can be said that America also has the world's largest economy, this does not take away from the immensity of its debt, which as estimated by usgovernmentdebt.us America's current debt is nearly $20 trillion dollars and growing, which equates to a staggering amount of $60,974 per person. Further adding to America's long term problem is that its GDP growth has slowed considerably since the beginning of the 21st century, so that the most recent year that real GDP growth was able to cross even 3% was 2005, so that any realistic hope of America being able to grow itself out of debt appears quite futile.
In cases in which countries or any debtor for that matter, has enormous debts, these debtors if they cannot successfully discharge such debt through default or through a structured discount to such debt, have only one other alternative which is to debase the currency of that debt, which just so happens to be the American playbook. This is why, America's government is constantly trying to encourage inflation, which actually is somewhat difficult to accomplish, because as America has both modernized in the sense of having more and more computing power, robotics, machines, analytics, and so forth, to become more efficient, this has acted to actually reduce the material cost of doing business, additionally, with the rapid decline and irrelevancy of labor unions in the private sector, labor costs are consistently quiescent, so that these things combined help to accomplish both better products that are also cheaper to produce in form and function, as well as often being less expensive in cost.
Nevertheless, inflation is part and parcel of the American milieu, for there are many sectors of the economy, such as governmental spending in all of its myriad forms, as well as healthcare, which are both inefficient, or have infrastructure that do not lend themselves to competitive influences which would tend to mitigate pricing increases. This inflation, is of critical importance to the ruling elite, for from the debasement of currency, subtle and not so subtle shifts in power and monetary strength are enabled, and those that are unable to play the game, or to even understand the game, correctly, are the losers to it.
For instance, anytime that inflation exceeds the amount of money being paid as interest to savers, then savers are the losers, for their currency value while increasing nominally, is decreasing in worth because of taxation of false asset appreciation, as well as the corresponding loss in purchasing power. On the other hand, debtors, that are paying back money in depreciated dollars, are gaining, for they have borrowed money at one value, and correspondingly paid it back with its attendant interest that in aggregate is of a lesser value, which is a formula, that done again and again, with very large numbers, effectively transfers wealth from savers to debtors, so that borrowers of money, can in essence, siphon wealth from productive members of society to themselves.
While, in general, debtors should be subservient to their creditors, if the debtor is large enough, powerful enough, and can control the rules of the game, that irresponsible debtor becomes enabled to funnel real money and real productivity from those that have created it to finance the things that the debtor so desires, to the world's end.