It is absolutely necessary to devalue your currency over time. First money gets destroyed through wear and tear so you absolutely have to print more money. Secondly, as your economy grows you need more money for more transactions. Perhaps the main indicator of a strong economy is not how much GDP a country has, but how much and how fast money is changing hands. Finally, it is impossible to tell exactly how much money an economy needs and if there is too little money it acts as a bottleneck for economic growth. But it is certainly possible to estimate a ballpark which is why the ideal is between 2-5% inflation.
Debt fearmongering is BS. Yes, the USA has a trade deficit, but so what? Consumers can easily cut down consumption of luxury goods. Meanwhile, if your country totally depends on exports for well being whenever a recession or depression hits, many thousands of real jobs are lost when other countries institute protectionist controls or demand just dies. And of course, in terms of national security threat only external debt as percentage of GDP matters. And the USA is
far behind other developed countries. For example the UK is at 416%. If you owe money to yourself, well it doesn't really count does it?
If this were any other country, France, Japan, UK, Germany, Italy people would not care. But because it's the USA, people make up extreme stories about debt and state statistics without even a tiny bit of understanding what it means. By the way, USA infrastructure is not ****. The USA still has the most nuclear power plants and nuclear power generation in the world by a huge margin, extremely dense urban centers and the most highly developed higher education in the world. It is the world's most stable economy. In any other country if something like Gore vs Bush happened there would be riots or perhaps even civil war, but not in America; the loser concedes defeat entirely (and doesn't even want to power share). Most importantly as mentioned before the visa lines are not getting shorter and America is still viewed as a land of opportunity, despite possibly the worst turnout of events and Islamophobia short of a war with Iran. Despite the worst possible turnout of events (subprime crisis, war on terror etc.,) America is still the country to emigrate to. Finally and perhaps most important Americans are very independent and hardworking and do not depend on state handouts for success. The individual American on average might not be as smart as a Canadian or European, but what they lack in brains like voting for Bush they make up with productivity. They are the most productive workers in the world because their worldview is that living on government assistance is disgraceful.
People underestimate just how rich the USA is. It is not called a superpower just because it has a strong military. And they also underestimate the quality of American citizens and the ability for Americans to get out of trouble.