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No it doesn't, and the Economist, as an iconic neoliberal publication, has been saying the same thing since I was a kid and Carter was president. Nobody cares.
by CPLX 3y ago
No it doesn't, and the Economist, as an iconic neoliberal publication, has been saying the same thing since I was a kid and Carter was president.
Nobody cares. The whole thing was a scam, it never actually mattered that much and the entire argument about government debt has basically just been an organized effort to have a reason for the government not to help people.
The debt ceiling is complete bullshit, a totally manufactured crisis that doesn't even make sense on paper. They only reason it's happening at all is because the right-wing Democrats thought that instead of just killing it when it was easy to do, they'd use it as an excuse to cut social programs by pretending it had to happen to compromise with Republicans. Then that clever idea fell apart.
But it still doesn't matter. It has never mattered.
- bbarn 3y agoNot sure why you're getting downvoted, because you're right in principle. (Probably because you insulted both parties at once). Where it does matter is as an excuse to push other agendas through with "emergency" bills to raise it.
- r00fus 3y agoIt's interesting who the USG owes money to. A non-trivial portion is to social security - ie, the government borrowed from the social security trust fund and has yet to pay it back. So politicians vote to borrow against this fund to pay for an astronomical defense budget then unsurprisingly start "sounding the warning" that social security will run out of money...
- gowings97 3y ago"The debt ceiling is complete bullshit" It has an instant impact to value attributed to the currency, which then impacts imports/export prices, which then impacts economic activity. Look at what's happening in South Africa - they thought they issue debt/ print money to paper over social issues, and everything would be Ok. They are finding out that analysis was incorrect.
- s3r3nity 3y ago> But it still doesn't matter. It has never mattered. Following this logic, why pay taxes at all? If the amout of debt the USG taking on is irrelevant and a "scam," then why not just set tax rates to 0%?
- mb9000 3y agoAnd increase the debt ceiling to give everyone UBI at the same time. Because it's a scam and doesn't matter. The GP's facile and surface level thinking on this issue is click bate content but doesn't give any of us more insight into the meaning of a debt ceiling, budget decifits, and the problems/solutions surrounding them.
- CPLX 3y agoThe amount of debt we are taking on is certainly relevant, it has strong effects on interest rates and inflation. Using those metrics, interest rates, and inflation, to figure out what's going on, makes sense. Using nominal national debt doesn't. And worrying about the "debt ceiling" is a complete and total scam. It's utterly meaningless and the only reason it exists is because people thought it would be a clever political tactic to use in cutting social insurance.
- mb9000 3y agoLet's say you could help everyone and print+spend money without any fake or real reason holding you back. How long would that go for and at what point would you eventually have to say ok let's turn off the printer because there are consequences we haven't been paying attention to.
- CPLX 3y agoThe thing that would hold you back is the amount of productive resources the country has. You could print millions of dollars and send it to people, but that wouldn't make houses come from nowhere, so it would just increase inflation. On the flip side, you could print millions of dollars and use it to build housing and infrastructure and fund education in the trades and so on and then it would actually help houses get built. And so on. The point being that the notional deficit doesn't really matter at all. What matters for increasing wealth is the ability of the country to produce material wealth, and government spending is either helping that or not.