Adrain, yesterday you commented on debt and the consequences by the government.
“The conservatives make like the debt is “evil”.I do NOT know if they are correct or not….I do suspect that they know nothing of economics….”
I think this is an important point to clarify and so in a non-partisan way I would like to add to this. Our debt is significant because when we borrow money (sell treasury bonds) to pay for our governments expenses, we are “financing” roughly 50% of the governments spending. Aside from the significant amount of interest having to be paid, we inadvertently devalue our currency (create inflation). The Chinese and others that own our debt could do significant damage to our economy if they cashed in their debt holdings. Aside from that, our debt rating gets lowered, just like yours, when your ‘over borrowed" and your availability to borrow becomes more expensive (higher interest). This debt not only costs us progressively more to maintain, it also ’crowds out" capital that is available for borrowing by the private sector. As governments borrow more and more, interest rates rise because demand for money increases.
There are only a few remedies for this to break this cycle. You can raise taxes on a broader range of Americans, or realistically decrease spending so we don’t have to borrow as much. We are already experiencing inflation on our cost of living. Our GDP is stagnant, which means the taxes collectible on business and personal income decreases. I don’t care who you politically throw rocks at, deficits do matter and the lofty hypothesis that we will grow our way out of the problems we are in are unrealistic.
Adrain, yesterday you commented on debt and the consequences by the government.
“The conservatives make like the debt is “evil”.I do NOT know if they are correct or not….I do suspect that they know nothing of economics….”
I think this is an important point to clarify and so in a non-partisan way I would like to add to this. Our debt is significant because when we borrow money (sell treasury bonds) to pay for our governments expenses, we are “financing” roughly 50% of the governments spending. Aside from the significant amount of interest having to be paid, we inadvertently devalue our currency (create inflation). The Chinese and others that own our debt could do significant damage to our economy if they cashed in their debt holdings. Aside from that, our debt rating gets lowered, just like yours, when your ‘over borrowed" and your availability to borrow becomes more expensive (higher interest). This debt not only costs us progressively more to maintain, it also ’crowds out" capital that is available for borrowing by the private sector. As governments borrow more and more, interest rates rise because demand for money increases.
There are only a few remedies for this to break this cycle. You can raise taxes on a broader range of Americans, or realistically decrease spending so we don’t have to borrow as much. We are already experiencing inflation on our cost of living. Our GDP is stagnant, which means the taxes collectible on business and personal income decreases. I don’t care who you politically throw rocks at, deficits do matter and the lofty hypothesis that we will grow our way out of the problems we are in are unrealistic.