Posted on 04/07/2021 7:10:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Writing an article about the national debt is ridiculous. Nobody will read it, fewer will understand it. And those who do will have a knee-jerk reaction to it. It matters or it doesn’t matter.
The Paul Krugman school of “guilt-free spending” envisions the devil on politicians’ shoulders whispering in their ears to “spend, spend, spend.” The angel on the other shoulder that’s supposed to whisper “no, no. no” has fallen asleep. There are few constraints on spending and any old fuddy-duddies who make a stink about multi-trillion-dollar bills are dismissed as cranks or party poopers.
For going on 40 years, doomsaying fiscal hawks have warned that piling up the national debt will lead to runaway inflation — Venezuela on steroids. But so far, the warnings have not become reality. And after running up a national debt that exceeds the gross domestic product for the first time since World War II, and routinely running trillion-dollar government deficits, all the doom and gloom predicted for overspending has failed to come to pass.
But John Cochrane, an economist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, makes the point that the debt doves must be right 100 percent of the time while the hawks fear being right only once.
As a fiscal hawk, Cochrane acknowledges that his doomsaying has been wrong for the past decade, but he says that doesn’t mean he’s wrong now.
“I live in California. We live on earthquake faults.” Cochrane says. “We haven’t had a major earthquake, a magnitude nine, for about a hundred years.” It would be foolish to consider someone a doomsayer for preparing for an earthquake in California, he says, despite the fact that major earthquakes aren’t a common occurrence.
“That’s the nature of the danger that faces us.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
It’s called “Modern Monetary Theory,” (Google it) and it has been going on since the big spending GW Bush days. Politician’s don’t want to use the term because then the “secret” would be out as it is radically opposite of any economics that Americans have been taught (Chicago School.) It states that the Big Dog governments can essentially spend any amount of $$$ they wish since they are the “Big Dog” and can do so without consequence. When republicans aren’t in power they nominally mention the debt. When in power republicans spend like democrats.
Unless you are pro import tariff then you are not serious about the debt and/or deficit.
No.
Because the fact is for 40 years we’ve heard scare stories of the “National Debt” and “Deficits” and the ONLY hyperinflation we’ve had was from energy lockdowns in the 1970s.
In the 1990s, a MASSIVE, as-yet un-accounted-for DEFLATION hit the world, and most still haven’t recognized it. It’s called the computer. Suddenly, numerous sources are starting to realize that the productive value of the computer skyrocketed past valuations and the ability to “cost” its functions. (See the recent article on entropyeconomics about the $51 million smartphone). Even some of the “traditional” economists are starting to note that their CPI/GDP numbers were horrendously off in the late 1800s, meaning they are nowhere close to appropriately valuing things today.
Add in Chinese/Asian/Latin American deflationary slave labor. We likely climbed into a gigantic deflationary hole in the early 1990s that all the QE1, 2, 20 won’t affect in the least.
Then there is the legal issue of the U.S. Treasury not being allowed to value American assets at MARKET prices, but must value them (think things like gold and land) at PURCHASED price-—which means at the very least our “national debt” has not taken into account TRILLIONS of dollars of real valuation that the US government owns.
So until you start seeing wages going up fivefold at least, you won’t be seeing a lot of inflation. Which means no one will care about the debt.
When you see those numbers it starts to become more clear why the U.S. is hell-bent on pushing for unlimited immigration. We have reached the point where we literally need to find people who are dumb enough to take on the cost of a mortgage without having a home to go with it.
I greatly resent what both parties have done to our children and grandchildren. The balloon will burst. They always burst. The longer it takes the higher we become and the longer the fall.
I wish it were soon so that I can deal with it and not my teenage children, but I suspect that it will occur in the prime of their life. The crash of the dollar as the world reserve currency will bring massive change to the entire world.
That didn’t mean everyone is a credit abuser. Only that on average Americans are.
‘No one’ cares anymore cause of a multitude of reasons.
When you in Hell, it’s a bit too late to scream about being in Hell or that Hell is too hot, yeah? The National Debt is beyond sustainable and the only thing to wait for is the inevitable, simple.
Long ago Germany tried this and all of a sudden they had to start adding zeros to the Bills, and things went bad real fast. Other nations tried this as well. All it leads to is a “Man on a White Horse” to ride in and set things right in a bloody way. It might be a Napoleon, Lenin, Mao, Evita, Mussolini or Adolph Hitler. Everything will get better for a while—until it doesn’t. Favism, works to get things going but its a powerful drug with terrible side effects. It ends badly.
All the bs going on in the world gives a silver lining to the downhill side of life.
A straw in the wind?
China Creates Its Own Digital Currency, a First for Major Economy
The U.S. already has a digital currency. It’s called the dollar.
Your whole post is 100% nonsense. Qnuts are just moving on to the next shiny object that the gullible cult is spoonfed.
I was a programmer in the '60s and can remember when, of a sudden, the computer became cheaper than the people who coded for it. In the beginning, using COBOL, we had to desk-check every line of code before sending it in because the computer was so expensive. When we went from the IBM 360 to the 370, everything changed.
One day I got jumped for "using the computer too much" when I made my third trip to the computer room for a recompile (punch cards). I told the manager that the computer could find the error in seconds where it took me a half hours worth of desk checking and STILL missed the error (damned missing period). Deer in headlights.
[Sidebar] When we computerized our inventory (K-Mart type of operation) the bean counters said we saved the company the equivalent of all the programmers yearly wages.
The Federal Government does not have a Balance Sheet. Only an Income Statement.
Yeah, I think nations are fully exploiting growing populations - which seem to be able to put off doomsday. The ultimate Ponzi schemes. The date is out there still when the momentum of the large world population finally turns the other way. Most modern nations only grow by immigration - Canada, the UK, Germany, France. The USA has a small net internal growth rate, largely due to the birth rate of the Latino community.
You can’t eat an iphone. Food prices have not seen deflation but rather rapid inflation.
Honestly, with the almost $2T Biden just passed, and the upcoming either $2T or $4T he’s looking to pass, on top of the current debt, I’m expecting the US to just hand wave it all away, as they will with student loan debt (but not say, my mortgage, since I don’t have any student loan debt).
Just for one example, we had an entire department at corporate HQ dedicated just to expense reimbursement. Expense reports would be submitted to them through interoffice mail or by fax machine. 2-3 weeks later, you would get your reimbursement check.
Now when I travel, I take pictures of my receipts with my cellphone and they automatically upload to my current expense report. Each month, I hit "submit" and within 24 hours, my corporate card is paid or if out of pocket, I get that amount direct deposited to my bank account. No human intervention at all except those in the approval process. Once in a while, your expense report might get the "random audit" by a third party.
But an entire department of 20 people no longer exists.
Of course, I'm just scratching the surface of the efficiencies that computer technology has brought to the corporate world. The job I do today would have taken several people just 20 years ago and I would have had a "secretary" as well.
I do miss having a secretary sometimes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.