Yes, printing money is inflationary.
I've always seen that as an excuse to spend more that you have. Its a trap that is difficult to get out. It is the same as taking more personal debt that you can service. But in the case of the government the bank never says no.
The problem is it is forever, and it is growing.
Fantasy that you can do this for 50 years.
I expect various emergency measures to try to keep things afloat until the election. By "afloat" I mean, specifically keep the numbers everyone is looking at looking "good", mostly, the stock market indices, the various US Treasury rates, and the US Dollar Index. After that, who knows. And the fact that I expect them to try doesn't guarantee they will succeed. There's plenty of motivation for forces who want them to fail at that task to take measures to strike while the iron is hot.
He also claims the number is temporary because of tariff refunds, and that they will reduce the debt with more tariffs.
Just because there's no magical boundary number doesn't mean a metric can't become increasingly more shitty, and suddenly turn into a bad outcome. Not every response is linear.
then that the debt has been accelerating with either party in power - means this is a problem that won't be solved politically by the current actors i.e both parties.
Is a democrat in office?
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Yes No
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| |stop immediately_______deal
You'll note even the minority party rarely does much about it, like, proposing concrete spending cuts or anything. Not quite never, but rarely. Or pushing actual cuts through a branch they control even if it will be shot down by another. Proposing a concrete cut would open them up to criticism. They just complain vaguely about the spending.
How about paying back the principle when the bond comes due?
Scenario 2: AI and robotics deliver growth on par with semiconductors and internet. Couple of decades of the economy growing faster than the debt will put it in manageable ratio.
USA is really rich in resources, extremely well defended by geography, so I guess they will make do even in the worst scenarios.
* https://ips-dc.org/report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militariz...
that level of military spending is never going down and will only increase by design
something the average consumer has absolutely no control over and no ability to solve
we just wanted healthcare and homes, instead we got endless wars and bombing civilians with tomahawks
Of course they do. Grow a new fucking party and vote for it. Better than one half f the population hating the other half. Just what politicians of either branch enjoy.
What's more interesting is the long, overarching news stories that span decades, e.g. BRICS, and the demise of the petro-dollar
Not that they'll ever do that ofcourse.
At the same time, pull back on the spending. Or maybe even pull back on the growth in spending. No need to go to a full Doge; rather just pull it back a bit.
Why we can't do this, I am flummoxed.
Countries have a debt crisis when their debt is huge and their interest rate is off the wall. Pretty much the market deciding that they are cooked.
Wake me up when GDP is stagnant and interest rates are climbing over 15%. The US is still the global leader on multiple fronts with a well diversified economy.
Don't get me wrong, these are giant numbers and we shouldn't be spending like this. But We have been spending way more than we bring in since 2003, and it hasn't been an issue.
There are about 164,000 individual taxpayers in the US.
So each taxpayer is paying around $7,300 each just for interest on the debt.
Which is more than Canadians pay in taxes for universal healthcare.
These are objective numbers. I'm not sure how people can argue with them.
Clinton's balanced budget and surplus is a bit of an outlier, and my understanding is that it had two causes. One was the line item veto, eventually overturned. The other was a booming economy and no major wars (peace dividend). We could have the latter now, of course, if we didn't go get into wars that don't concern us.
Bush is when I'd say the Republican Party gave up any actual belief in fiscal restraint. They still use it rhetorically because it sells with their base but they do the opposite when in power.
Trump is the biggest spender, and I don't think you can blame it all on COVID because he's still doing it.
US policy will artificially lower the interest rate to stimulate the economy. Also, the spending of the federal government will continue to increase above the tax receipts.
This will result in inflation. Which is great if you owe money, since you are paying it back with cheaper money.
But, the interest rates being low will make it easier to borrow? The resulting divide by zero in the economy (meaning an exception that there is no solution to) will result in the US government repudiating it's prior debt and making the 'new dollar'.
This will cause a couple of years of chaos.
drcongo•26m ago