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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   29643 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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the government's deficit is the private sector's surplus, which most people find desirable and wouldn't want to cut.

Citation needed? Every citizen is ultimately on the hook for the government's debts in one way or another. If you find it desirable, why not cut the middleman and increase corporate surplus by donating your money to a corporation directly?

Every citizen is ultimately on the hook for the government's debts in one way or another.

I'm pretty sure they were also saying 200 years ago "our grandchildren are going to be burdened by paying off this debt!" Somehow the bill hasn't come due yet, but maybe our grandkids will finally be the time? Seems a bit more likely that people should solve their cognitive dissonance on this stuff by realizing they don't quite understand money, accounting, banking, and government finance as much as they thought they did.

"The fiscal crisis is about to destroy this country, the government deficit is about to hit $10 million $2 billion $90 billion $1 trillion $50 quadrillion"

Particularly if anyone finds themself like Elon saying 'what, the total worldwide debt is $100 trillion...lol who do we owe it to, Jupiter??', surely there must be some sense of 'maybe I just don't understand this fully'.

If you find it desirable, why not cut the middleman and increase corporate surplus by donating your money to a corporation directly?

If I had the power of broad taxation where the only thing I accept in payment is my own IOUs back to me, then: my IOUs would be perpetually valuable, people would probably want to save some extra for a rainy day / retirement, and I would indeed (have to) satisfy their savings desires by spending & giving them out (hopefully in reasonable ways).

I'm pretty sure they were also saying 200 years ago "our grandchildren are going to be burdened by paying off this debt!" Somehow the bill hasn't come due yet, but maybe our grandkids will finally be the time

Has it not? Per Wikipedia, the US spent about 14% of its total federal budget on debt servicing in 2023, or 726 billion per year. Put differently, everyone's taxes could be 14% lower if you were not paying off the debt. This seems nontrivial, especially for businesses that operate on slim margins.

They are choosing to set the interest rate above 0%, to subsidize savings by giving money to people who have money. Interest is just another type of deficit spending. On balance I agree with the view that it's probably a pretty dumb idea to do that subsidy spending. But the current macro regime still thinks that higher interest rates are anti-inflationary (even with large debt-to-gdp, which doesn't seem to have been worked into their models), and they want to have the ability in the future to drop rates (because they still think that's stimulative).

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