The only reason the national debt matters is because it is often used as a cudgel by the Right to justify cutting government programs.

It's a nonissue. We aren't "short on money." And it's not as much that the govt can always "print more"--it's that they have the ultimate authority to tax the populace and corporations.

Wood Goblin wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 4:40 pm FWIW, our debt-to-GDP ratio is similar to that for France and is a hell of a lot less than the ratio for Japan. Some of the Scandinavian countries have low ratios, but so do Mexico and Russia. It really is manageable, and there’s a reason economists don’t fret about it.

It also helps maintain the hegemony of the dollar! The logic of debt for a massive corporation or a sovereign currency country - or just for a really rich person - are totally different than debt for a common consumer household.

zorg wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 3:49 pm

Gramsci wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 2:39 pm The “debt” is nonsense. The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Turning it into a “just like your family finances” schtick is a conservative trope to sell you cuts to public services.

Now the national debt is a conservative conspiracy theory? Talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face. I'll let you guess whose services get cut first. it won't be the profiteers, it will be the "robust tax base" who are keeping things afloat in the first place. Things will crumble when we run out of exploitable assets. Might be tomorrow, might be a few generations from now. I don't know how it would be beneficial to the US for this to persist. And furthermore for what? Corporate tax incentives for Elon Musk and "defense" spending. Great, glad you're happy.

No. I’m saying that US debt is not a problem and that government finances are not like personal finances.

The debt is real, it just has no relation to how people perceive debt in their personal lives. The US government owns trillions in physical assets, the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. When conservatives talk about lowering debt they’ll often use a relatable concept like The Family Credit Card, followed with “just like at home we need to cut spending to get it down”. Except your family debt isn’t tied to trillions in assets and you aren’t allowed to print money.

Here in the UK Thatcher successfully convinced the British public that government spending was equivalent to personal finances. It’s absolute economic woo.

Gramsci wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 12:47 am government finances are not like personal finances.

The debt is real, it just has no relation to how people perceive debt in their personal lives. The US government owns trillions in physical assets, the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. When conservatives talk about lowering debt they’ll often use a relatable concept like The Family Credit Card, followed with “just like at home we need to cut spending to get it down”. Except your family debt isn’t tied to trillions in assets and you aren’t allowed to print money.

Here in the UK Thatcher successfully convinced the British public that government spending was equivalent to personal finances. It’s absolute economic woo.

this is some hard truth

I have to ask, is this some kind of partisan Zoomer YOLO thing that I'm out of the loop on? Because the hubris of thinking that USA is has limitless money sounds like a wildly dangerous fantasy. Corporations fail, Empires fall. Have you ever visited Detroit? But it doesn't need to be a catastrophic failure for this to have a terrible knock-on effect for the quality of life for citizens. The fall of Rome was actually like hundreds of years of slow but steady decline. Sure you can sell assets to pay the bills. You think this is a good idea? Our mayor sold Chicago's parking meters for 75 years to foreign investors and the city has already lost additional billions with more than half a century left to go. https://news.wttw.com/2023/07/27/wttw-n ... meter-deal One thing you can be guaranteed is that it will be YOU (or your children) who will be left holding the bag. We're already paying for it right now.

It's hard to completely dismiss the debt when Trump drove it up more in 4 years than anyone. (Obama did more overall but over 8 years)

Trump slashed taxes for corporate toadies, so the money had to be borrow from them.

penningtron wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 10:01 am Trump drove it up more in 4 years than anyone. (Obama did more overall but over 8 years)

That was the only reason I brought it up anyways I did not think it to be the usual butt-hurt partisan scenario. Plenty of blame to go around. From my perspective it's a problem for everyone, except maybe the super rich, who actually have enough physical assets and gold bars stowed away to stave things off indefinitely. Everyone else can already see their standard of living eroding.

You do not personally owe (insert number here) based of the dollars the US government has rented to other countries and businesses.

No one is or can calling that “debt” in. The word debt in the context of government and the word debt in the context of your credit card are not the same thing. They are the same word with very different meanings.

Here’s a decent article explaining the difference.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/ar ... the%20debt.

Every counter response ends up as “yes, but debt”. It’s apples and oranges except they’re both called apples.

OH MY GOD, THIS IS SO STUPID!!!! No, I don't wear a tinfoil hat and think that some gangster is going to come to collect from what I have stashed under my mattress.

However, the already wealthy gangster IS going to receive money from the government that could otherwise be going to my elderly and quite mad mother-in-law who lives in deplorable conditions in public housing.

It s as simple as that. It's not some wild conspiracy, it is really flipping straightforward. Why doesn't the UK just print up a bunch of money to pay for the faltering NHS? Because there is a REAL UNDERLYING COST that has to come from somewhere.

By the way, I don't even want to bring it up, because I'm sure it will be used to call me a lunatic fiscal conservative or something, but the article you linked says the same thing.

A government has an income, mainly from tax receipts, but unlike a household, it can raise many billions of pounds more in the short term by increasing taxes.

Maybe in the UK this might mean taxes on the wealthy, but that is certainly not something I'm anticipating will happen here.