Debt levels may be enormous, but interest payments aren't at historical highs.
In Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment, a cat is placed in a sealed box with a mechanism rigged to possibly release cyanide in an hour, depending on the rate of atomic decay. It is a quirk of quantum mechanics that, until the contents of the box are observed, the cat can be considered to be both alive and dead—simultaneously.
The thought experiment is well suited to pondering the U.S. federal government’s current debt situation. Currently, there is an unprecedented amount of debt in the proverbial “box,” and the outcome is difficult to observe until after the fact.