American debt

Discussion in 'Economics' started by Drawdown Addict, May 4, 2024.

  1. SunTrader

    SunTrader

    Silly headline. A record amount of debt has to of course have a record amount of interest to cover it. Ditto next year, the year after ......................
     
    #61     Sep 14, 2024
  2. piezoe

    piezoe

    To avoid confusing yourself, you should stop calling our expansion of private sector money, "debt". Expansion of money is necessary due mainly to growth in private sector productivity (worldwide!) Expansion at too high a rate necessitating a higher rate of Treasury security issuance may be partly due to, in the U.S. at least, our chronic failure to tax appropriately. Your long range concern re servicing of Treasury Securities may be well-founded. Whether it is, or not, is a topic on which there are differences of opinion among MMT economists, who are the only economists we should listen to on sovereign money matters.

    In this regard, we should definitely not listen to our parents, because nearly everything they taught us about how government finances work is nonsense. There is practically nothing government finances have in common with private sector finances. Our parents did not know this!
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2024
    #62     Sep 15, 2024
  3. piezoe

    piezoe

    I am intrigued by your sentence above. After ~15 years of concentrated study of the work of the MMT economists I have finally plumbed down to its essence: All the transactional money we use in the private sector comes from deficits. "Wealth" is too broad a word here, but if we bone- headedly use the word to mean "money", then we would have no money (at least no government money) without deficits. In that sense, "deficits are the source of 'wealth'."
     
    #63     Sep 15, 2024
  4. maxinger

    maxinger

    Trivial news.

    American debt / GDP is very low.

    Japan's debt / GDP is the world's highest.
    And the Japanese are not even bothered by it.
     
    #64     Sep 15, 2024
  5. newwurldmn

    newwurldmn

    japan will become a failed state.
     
    #65     Sep 16, 2024
  6. SunTrader

    SunTrader

    My parents taught me that money borrowed and owed is ... debt. Stop with the silly we don't owe because we print, print, print. Or at least stop foolishly trying to dissuade others from correctly referring to it as debt.

    My parents were right.
     
    #66     Sep 16, 2024
  7. piezoe

    piezoe

    Your parents confused, just as mine did, their finances with that of governments. Eventually, reality triumphs over fiction's beguiling seduction.
     
    #67     Sep 16, 2024
  8. SunTrader

    SunTrader

    There's hope for you yet.
     
    #68     Sep 16, 2024
  9. 2rosy

    2rosy

    MMT allows the government to cancel student debt, provide UBI, aid marginalized communities, deliver reparations, ... at no consequence. Those arguing against utopia are doomers gloomers. We print money to pay debt, to pay for stuff, to pay for printing machines, ... Not sure why some cannot understand that.
     
    #69     Sep 16, 2024
    zghorner likes this.
  10. zghorner

    zghorner

    MMT sounds like an inflation and taxation nightmare.
     
    #70     Sep 16, 2024