The $30 trillion U.S. government debt is a phony number, critics claim. It’s three or four times that, they say. Persistently high deficits and debts, they add, cause high inflation rates and can retard growth. Critics contend that the nation’s red ink is a problem because, in good times and bad, it keeps rising. “The official federal debt with Social Security is fast approaching $30 trillion or four times the amount 15 years ago,” Mark Thornton, an economist with the libertarian Mises Institute, told the Epoch Times. In a 2020 publication, “Federal Debt: A Primer,” the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says federal debt has risen for about a decade. Although previously deficits have generally declined during boom times, large deficits have persisted recently, according to the CBO report. “Between 2012 and 2019, the debt rose, on average, by nearly six percent annually (compared with nominal GDP growth of about 4 …