If one coin can be worth $1 trillion dollars, then, why not 1 million of those coins. If there is no treasury backing for a trillion dollar coin, then, why even bother to mint those coins? Just declare the national debt paid, and raise the the debt limit to ‘limitless’.
While they’re at it, I could use one of those trillion dollar coins. Better yet, just give me everything for free, and the same for everyone else.
That is what Krugman is saying, without actually saying it or perhaps not realizing what he is saying. But he should be aware of this as a “Nobel prize winning economist”:
There is a theory, one which may be preferable to many others, that we can and should just print all the money we need. Nobody pays taxes either in this scenario. The tax we pay is inflation in the things we buy.
Under this theory, when the price of milk costs $10 a gallon and bread is $15 a loaf there will be so much outrage that politicians would be absolutely forced to stop printing and spending so much.
They will never go for it because they know, deep down inside, that inflation hurts working and poor the most. They prefer to try to deflect, divide, and skim as much as possible for their own pets and pork.