This is a nice graphic . I like it when I find an image that really simplifies something and shows you exactly how something complex works.  Of course we kind of know this but seeing it laid out like this really sticks and makes all the other images and stories easier to digest – it's like a good investment that keeps paying off . The Government "invested" $10Tn since Donald Trump took office in January of 2017 and, since then, the GDP has gone from $19.542Tn to $21.277Tn so a 50% addition to our National Debt has bought us 8.87% more GDP.  The hard numbers for the 2018-2021 (not finished, so estimated) are $20.611 (+$1.069Tn), $21.433 (+$1.891Tn), $20.936 (+$1.394Tn) and $21.277 (+$1.735Tn) so the total gain in GDP over $19.542Tn is $6.089Tn – we're not exactly getting good bang for our buck, are we?   What this really means is the tax cuts did not pay for themselves, did they?  For that to happen, the extra $1Tn a year of deficit spending we've endured to make the rich (like Trump) much, much richer should have resulted in a $3Tn boost to GDP which would have generated $1Tn in taxes.  Of course that wouldn't really work because, as we know, almost all of the gains go to the Top 1% and they effectively pay only 18% in taxes while Top 1% Corporations pay more like 8% so the GDP would have had to have gone up more like $6.5Tn for those tax cuts to pay for themselves. So that is gaping wound #1 in our economy – we don't collect enough tax revenues to pay for our spending.  Gaping wound #2 is, of course, Covid and we spent $4Tn last year fighting that economic disaster (not the so much the disease, just the economic impact was fought) and the Fed spent another $4Tn of our money making sure no bank was harmed by the virus as well.   Gaping wound   IN PROGRESS