4 ms·

> Government debt and household debt don't work the same way In what way? Enlighten us. Are you a MMT proponent? That's a bullshit theory that's fallen on its

> Government debt and household debt don't work the same way In what way? Enlighten us. Are you a MMT proponent? That's a bullshit theory that's fallen on its face pretty spectacularly since 2021. The debt has to be paid, either with inflation or taxes or both. Household debt also has to be paid with income (households don't have the moeny printing option, but that's not a get-out-of-jail free card either.) The US has been spending $1 to get $0.20 of GDP growth. That's not only unsustainable by any measure, it's also just lighting money on fire. The most egregious venture-backed sell-a-dollar-for-50-cents startups don't have a track record that bad. > This a common fallacy that serves political ends I don't care for what you're implying. Careful not to assume too much about me, you'll be wrong.

harimau777 3y ago
I'm not sure we're far enough out to really say for sure if MMT has been disproven by the events since 2021. The global pandemic, supply chain issues, and the war in Ukraine all muddy the water. The previous administration also squandered a lot of debt on tax breaks for the ultra wealthy. Even with all that, it's looking like we may actually manage to pull off a relatively soft landing. With all of that, I think it will be some time before we can accurately analyze what these events mean for economic policy.
- koolba 3y ago
  > The previous administration also squandered a lot of debt on tax breaks for the ultra wealthy. That's a nice sound bite but it's not true as the majority of the tax breaks went to the middle class: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/584190-irs-data-prove-trump-tax-cuts-benefited-middle-working-class-americans-most/ https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/584190-irs-data-prove-tr... https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/14/does-trump-tax-cut-give-percent-benefits-top-one-percent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/14/does-trum... https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/politics/fact-check-sanders-town-hall-tax-cuts/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/politics/fact-check-sanders-t... Even if the majority of the tax cuts went to the wealthy, there's nothing inherently wrong with the people who are paying the most taxes getting the most out of a tax cut. The other end of the income spectrum makes that immediately apparent. Would you expect every tax cut to directly pay money who don't pay any taxes at all? Can we never lower taxes on people making more than some arbitrary income? Or do you mean that after some arbitrary income amount, it's never okay to ever get a tax cut?
SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
> In what way? Enlighten us. You can google as well as I can, and if you're well-versed enough to have a firm opinion about MMT (and no expansion of the acronym needed) then you do not need my handholding. But anyway, I submit that the extra-ordinary claim would be the parties with the control of money supply and taxation structure, and the parties without it, are on an equal footing here when it comes to debt. Graeber has things to say on the topic. IDK, go ahead and make the case that they line up despite that. As for "implying" - it really does serve political ends, I hear party leaders across the wide wide spectrum from Mr Sunak to Mr Starmer all use this same lazy analogy regarding austerity measures, it's not one or the other. Yeah, assumptions are bad, huh.
- slashdev 3y ago
  > I submit that the extra-ordinary claim would be the parties with the control of money supply and taxation structure, and the parties without it, are on an equal footing here when it comes to debt. Well, obviously. There’s limits to the parallels you can draw here, but unsustainable spending into debt is bad for both households and states. Period.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    "unsustainable" is undefined and the rest is unproven. You cannot reason by analogy here.
    - slashdev 3y ago
      It's economics, not hard science. "Proof" is a different standard. What the US government is doing is unsustainable. The onus is on you if you want to argue otherwise, I already submitted a link that shows the problem with it. If the US keeps going at this pace inflation will either get really bad, or taxes will get really high while spending gets slashed. Or some combination of all of it. Either way, it can't continue like this for long before things break in a bad way. 32T in debt is bad, but if nothing changes that could be >70T in a decade. The economic growth is too slow to sustain that.

harimau777 3y ago

I'm not sure we're far enough out to really say for sure if MMT has been disproven by the events since 2021. The global pandemic, supply chain issues, and the war in Ukraine all muddy the water. The previous administration also squandered a lot of debt on tax breaks for the ultra wealthy. Even with all that, it's looking like we may actually manage to pull off a relatively soft landing. With all of that, I think it will be some time before we can accurately analyze what these events mean for economic policy.

koolba 3y ago
> The previous administration also squandered a lot of debt on tax breaks for the ultra wealthy. That's a nice sound bite but it's not true as the majority of the tax breaks went to the middle class: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/584190-irs-data-prove-trump-tax-cuts-benefited-middle-working-class-americans-most/ https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/584190-irs-data-prove-tr... https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/14/does-trump-tax-cut-give-percent-benefits-top-one-percent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/14/does-trum... https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/politics/fact-check-sanders-town-hall-tax-cuts/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/politics/fact-check-sanders-t... Even if the majority of the tax cuts went to the wealthy, there's nothing inherently wrong with the people who are paying the most taxes getting the most out of a tax cut. The other end of the income spectrum makes that immediately apparent. Would you expect every tax cut to directly pay money who don't pay any taxes at all? Can we never lower taxes on people making more than some arbitrary income? Or do you mean that after some arbitrary income amount, it's never okay to ever get a tax cut?

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago

> In what way? Enlighten us. You can google as well as I can, and if you're well-versed enough to have a firm opinion about MMT (and no expansion of the acronym needed) then you do not need my handholding. But anyway, I submit that the extra-ordinary claim would be the parties with the control of money supply and taxation structure, and the parties without it, are on an equal footing here when it comes to debt. Graeber has things to say on the topic. IDK, go ahead and make the case that they line up despite that. As for "implying" - it really does serve political ends, I hear party leaders across the wide wide spectrum from Mr Sunak to Mr Starmer all use this same lazy analogy regarding austerity measures, it's not one or the other. Yeah, assumptions are bad, huh.

slashdev 3y ago
> I submit that the extra-ordinary claim would be the parties with the control of money supply and taxation structure, and the parties without it, are on an equal footing here when it comes to debt. Well, obviously. There’s limits to the parallels you can draw here, but unsustainable spending into debt is bad for both households and states. Period.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  "unsustainable" is undefined and the rest is unproven. You cannot reason by analogy here.
  - slashdev 3y ago
    It's economics, not hard science. "Proof" is a different standard. What the US government is doing is unsustainable. The onus is on you if you want to argue otherwise, I already submitted a link that shows the problem with it. If the US keeps going at this pace inflation will either get really bad, or taxes will get really high while spending gets slashed. Or some combination of all of it. Either way, it can't continue like this for long before things break in a bad way. 32T in debt is bad, but if nothing changes that could be >70T in a decade. The economic growth is too slow to sustain that.