@laffisloon thank you for your excellent post. I wish there was a super-rec because your post is worth more than most rec’d posts.
I am particularly struck by the data of Interest payments/Federal government current tax receipts. Over 1/3 of tax receipts are going to pay interest on federal government debt. Of course, the government is running a huge deficit so interest payments represent less than 1/3 of the entire budget. I remember a time during the 1980-82 recession when interest payments were 1/4 of the entire budget. The deficit was much lower then but even then there was alarm over the size of the deficit.
Wendy