Good set of two, but there is a third. Incurring the debt is done by siphoning off capital from the free market that would otherwise be used to create jobs.
good point...but the fact interest rates are so low..DESPITE such massive Federal borrowing, means NO business is borrowing money...because in this tax and regulatory climate...credit is useless. It CANNOT grow..and so no point in borrowing AT all. Which compounds the Federal deficit which is used to growing in parallel with job and business growth.
this is a terrible, terrible trap...out of which the only route is effective dissolution of the Federal Gov’mt as we know it, and Constitutional Re-Federalization. If properly and timely done-America would own the next 100 years.
Economists have been talking about the possibility of the federal government "crowding out" the private sector since the 1980s at least. That was back in the hey-day of supply side economics — which is really the only alternative to Keynesian orthodoxy. All of Obama's "stimulus" was pure Keynesianism, it totally failed, and now the President is out of ammo. Will he try to "double down" anyway?
Bottom line, too many Americans seem to believe that (1) all solutions to social problems must emanate from the federal government; and (2) there is a limitless stock of wealth for the federal government to commandeer in order to pay for these "solutions."
And it is just those "too many Americans" who compose the tax-consumer class.... Life for them is limitless freebies paid for by someone else.
No jobs will be created in America until and unless the federal government gets its boot off the neck of the private sector, the taxpayer class. This can only be effected by profound tax reform, massive deregulation, and (IMHO) the elimination of entire federal departments (can we please start with the Department of Education?); and major entitlement reform.
I don't see any other way to revive the economy, the engine of creativity, economic growth, and rising personal prosperity.
And yet perhaps these are the very things that President Obama most resents.
It's time for a new President — and a new Congress. This gang is either totally incompetent, or deliberately trying to destroy America as we know it.
My two-cents' worth, FWIW.
Thank you so much for writing, mlocher!