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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   31112 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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Yes, in order for the private sector as a whole to be a net creditor, the government must be a net debtor, but that's meaningless. There's no reason we should care about the private sector being a net creditor.

Well I agree that it's not like a rule of the universe that the private sector must always need or want to be in perpetual surplus, accumulating monetary savings. It just happens to be how people have acted, in the US in the past few centuries at least.

In the US's history, there have been 6 periods where the government went significantly into surplus, with the private sector being significantly in deficit. Those ended in the 6 depressions in the country's history:

  1. 1817-21: In five years, the national debt was reduced by 29 percent, to $90 million. A depression began in 1819.
  2. 1823-36: In 14 years, the debt was reduced by 99.7 percent, to $38,000. A depression began in 1837.
  3. 1852-57: In six years, the debt was reduced by 59 percent, to $28.7 million. A depression began in 1857.
  4. 1867-73: In seven years, the debt was reduced by 27 percent, to $2.2 billion. A depression began in 1873.
  5. 1880-93: In 14 years, the debt was reduced by 57 percent, to $1 billion. A depression began in 1893.
  6. 1920-30: In 11 years, the debt was reduced by 36 percent, to $16.2 billion. A depression began in 1929.

And it seems pretty understandable logically, that people like accumulating net savings over time.

In more recent history, the private sector going into financial deficit (some combination of spending down savings and increasing private debt) in the late '90s and mid '00s ended with a massive recession. Your contention that non-financial physical asset wealth was fine didn't seem to stop that resulting recession.

It's true that if government doesn't run deficits private investors can't invest in government bonds, but they can buy private bonds or invest in equities.

It's not even about the actual financial savings instruments being available, because we have banks with infinitely flexible balance sheets (indeed, the current monetary policy regime is simply paying interest on reserve balances directly, so treasury securities are a pointless vestigial leftover). It's more about the flows of spending: someone's spending is someone else's income.

The government borrowing [...] adds to the burden of private borrowers by driving up interest rates

If there's enough demand for government bonds that government can borrow at rates low enough

For a government that uses their own currency and has their own central bank, the base interest rate is a simple policy tool set wherever you want -- it's not subject to market forces.

Under no circumstances should the government borrow 6% of GDP at 4% interest at the peak of the business cycle in order to subsidize middle-class consumption.

Totally agreed, as they should drop the interest rate much closer to 0-1% and leave it there. Interest income is just deficit spending in a mostly-pointless, regressive way.

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