The sequester is 3-4%.

Without the debt, we'd swallow the sequester and still have billions more for public services.

This is with record low interest rates. When the rates increase, as they're sure to do one day, the choice will be to retire debt as it comes due or reissue it at higher interest rates. We'll be in no position to retire the debt.

The only realistic alternative is to inflate the economy. Given 10% inflation per year, yeah, fixed pensions, IRAs, etc., will be decimated (annually, as it turns out), but the debt would also be diminished. That kind of inflation hurts the weakest among us--real investments and securities tend to keep pace with infaltion--but it's what some advocate. "Ravage the poor to spite the rich" is always a losign proposition, IMO.

This argues that he would have more for public services if we did not have a debt to pay interest on. That would be true if the debt went away on its own at no cost to anyone, but since we would have to pay out money to eliminate the debt the proposal becomes, "cut social services today so we can spend more on them tomorrow."

Why? There's nothing obvious about that... why is it better to cut public services today than cut them tomorrow? It all works out the same.

You are presuming that interest on the debt represents a net loss. It does not. Interest on the debt is an incredibly fair price we pay for a thing of value that we purchased, which was higher economic growth.

We can try the thought experiment of going back in time and reducing budgets along the way so that our total debt today is $0.

Okay, so where are we? We have no debt, which you presume means a leap in government spending as opposed to a tax cut(politically optimistic). To what will we be devoting that surge in government spending? Plenty of stuff, because the world around us is missing a lot of highways and hospitals and bridges. There are a bunch more under-educated persons. Poverty is more entrenched. Violent crime is worse. People are sick right and left, often with diseases that could have been prevented.

If we had not spent the money that made up today's debt the world would be a different, and worse, place.

It is hard to imagine anyone in that scenario saying, "Hooray! Our thrifty ways paid off. Now we can spend on public services."

What people would be saying would be, "It's nuts that we made the world a worse place as a strategy to someday have a higher budget for addressing the problems we were creating to be thrifty."

If the interest we pay on the debt was Prime + 10% then the interest on the debt would matter, but the rates we really pay on our debt are the lowest in the world -- the closest to inflation of any interest rate.

Subtract cumulative inflation from that debt interest and the burden would be revealed to be quite small... as small as a debt burden can be, since we pay the lowest rates.

In any event, the OP is about the economic effect of the debt. The effect on how much we *chose* to spend on public services is a political question.

I don't see any economic reason why reducing the debt today would cause higher spending on public services tomorrow. I also see no political reason... why would we assume that government revenue will always stay the same and we will spend whatever comes in, no more and no less?

Because that is the assumption being made to think that cutting government today leads to bigger government tomorrow.