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I'm not even against these checks, but as far as the debt concern goes: doesn't it require paying interest? At which point when you can't pay the interest, you'

I'm not even against these checks, but as far as the debt concern goes: doesn't it require paying interest? At which point when you can't pay the interest, you'll have to print money, resulting in massive inflation? I never understood why people say it's fictional. Is it somehow fictional under the assumption of playing by the rules? Or under the assumption that when the US is demanded to pay it'll just say "make me" and then erase the debt that way?

eropple 6y ago
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that these debts do not begin at "fictional" and go from there (and this is a viewpoint I don't personally hold, so long as reserves are denominated in the U.S. dollar its motion and not the numbers on a balance sheet are what actually matter): spending creates money, taxes destroy money. If you're worried about inflation, tax better. Which is not merely "higher", but involves effectively targeting those taxes too for more returns. This is a generality and of course it's more nuanced than just this, but "spend in bad times, tax in good times" is a reasonable place to start. Where we have problems is that the "tax in good times" side of this keeps getting dropped for one reason or another. Cynically, I notice that this "for one reason or another" coincides strongly with a particular political party being elected once good times are back so that they can proceed to drive it off the nearest hillside yet again and somehow blame "government" for it.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  > If you're worried about inflation, tax better. Which is not merely "higher", but involves effectively targeting those taxes too for more returns. I mean, I'm not arguing about how to avoid inflation. My question is about the debt being fictional. When you say "debt is fictional" that means that you can rack it up endlessly without consequences, but this clearly means there are consequences that you have to mitigate in another way. To argue that it's fictional you'd need to argue those problems don't come up at all. Otherwise you might as well say heart attacks are fictional because we can treat them, snake bites are fictional because we can treat them, etc...

eropple 6y ago

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that these debts do not begin at "fictional" and go from there (and this is a viewpoint I don't personally hold, so long as reserves are denominated in the U.S. dollar its motion and not the numbers on a balance sheet are what actually matter): spending creates money, taxes destroy money. If you're worried about inflation, tax better. Which is not merely "higher", but involves effectively targeting those taxes too for more returns. This is a generality and of course it's more nuanced than just this, but "spend in bad times, tax in good times" is a reasonable place to start. Where we have problems is that the "tax in good times" side of this keeps getting dropped for one reason or another. Cynically, I notice that this "for one reason or another" coincides strongly with a particular political party being elected once good times are back so that they can proceed to drive it off the nearest hillside yet again and somehow blame "government" for it.

mehrdadn 6y ago
> If you're worried about inflation, tax better. Which is not merely "higher", but involves effectively targeting those taxes too for more returns. I mean, I'm not arguing about how to avoid inflation. My question is about the debt being fictional. When you say "debt is fictional" that means that you can rack it up endlessly without consequences, but this clearly means there are consequences that you have to mitigate in another way. To argue that it's fictional you'd need to argue those problems don't come up at all. Otherwise you might as well say heart attacks are fictional because we can treat them, snake bites are fictional because we can treat them, etc...