The perpetual debt of the US federal and state governments makes some people forget that governments can actually be in the black. Governments like Norway, Singapore, Brunei, and Saudi Arabia run huge sovereign wealth funds that lend, for debt or equity, huge amounts of money to all kinds of companies.
> and state governments makes some people forget that governments can actually be in the black.
I don't think it makes sense to include the states in that indictment. Most US states are dramatically better run fiscally than ~95%-97% of all national governments around the world based on debt & tax revenue levels. If you ranked the states with nations, the 50 states would all be among the top 100 nations on debt to revenue ratios, credit rating, stability and predictability of tax revenue. They often have to be fiscally sound by law. Out of the 50 states, only five or six tend to ever have serious or frequent fiscal problems (with California, New York and Illinois routinely having problems).
Florida for example has a $1 trillion economy, a $91b budget, and $1.7b in annual debt service costs. That ratio would be the envy of the world outside of a few nations. Most US states are in at least that good of condition or better on debt costs to revenue. Two dozen states are in essentially squeaky clean fiscal condition, as solid as any governments get outside of Norway.
Nearly all of the states get extremely good credit ratings. The particular exceptions are: Illinois, New Jersey, Kentucky (the last two still carry good ratings).
Even California is in good fiscal shape right now (after a ten year economic expansion of course). They can easily afford their annual debt costs.
