It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
theeconomiccollapseblog.com
It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
1–10 of 17 posts
Re: It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
#2debt denominated in a currency you control doesn't work the same way as it does for everyday citizens and companies.
also, the original article is economically illiterate. you can pay off debts larger than the whole economy. say I live on an island and we have 1 dollar in coins that we use for trade. you go into debt to me for 2 dollars. how is this possible? easy, you do a dollars worth of work for me and pay me the dollar. then you do another dollars worth of work for me and pay me again. we're square.
getting sick of the "money = magic" line of grade school economics.
Re: It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
#3This seems like a rather doomy web site. I'm always sceptical of excessive doom-mongering, which is often used as a vehicle for book selling or other merchandising. Qualitatively the current recession is no different from previous ones, with the primary cause being regular human folly/self-deception/greed.
Re: It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
#4debt denominated in a currency you control doesn't work the same way as it does for everyday citizens and companies. also, the original article is economically illiterate. you can pay off debts larger than the whole economy. say I live on an island and we have 1 dollar in coins that we use for trade. you go into debt to me for 2 dollars. how is this possible? easy, you do a dollars worth of work for me and pay me the…
See the historical UK national debt, which for most of the 20th century was above 100% of GDP.
http://www.economicshelp.org/uploaded_images/uk-national-deb...
Re: It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
#5I'm nowhere near able to understand the economics behind this, but this quote sets off my BS-detector:
You see, this is what the whole Federal Reserve System was designed to do. It was designed to slowly drain the massive wealth of the American people and transfer it to the elite international bankers.
It is a game that is designed so that the U.S. government cannot win. As soon as they create more money by borrowing it, the U.S. government owes more than what was created because of interest.
I'm no fan of the brand of capitalism that involved politicians buying favours for everyone and his cousin as long as they happen to own a large company, but this smells like a conspiracy crackpot. If the US congress could print whatever amount of money they'd want, which seems to be the authors preferred solution, the US economy wouldn't be anywhere near as strong as it is. A strong, independent central bank is a very good thing for financial stability.
Re: It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
#6debt denominated in a currency you control doesn't work the same way as it does for everyday citizens and companies. also, the original article is economically illiterate. you can pay off debts larger than the whole economy. say I live on an island and we have 1 dollar in coins that we use for trade. you go into debt to me for 2 dollars. how is this possible? easy, you do a dollars worth of work for me and pay me the…
See the historical UK national debt, which for most of the 20th century was above 100% of GDP. http://www.economicshelp.org/uploaded_images/uk-national-deb...
yeah, it's not like we're even at our historic maximum (WW2).
Re: It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
#7Probably, but let's all just keep pretending it isn't for a while longer.
Re: It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
#8I'm nowhere near able to understand the economics behind this, but this quote sets off my BS-detector: You see, this is what the whole Federal Reserve System was designed to do. It was designed to slowly drain the massive wealth of the American people and transfer it to the elite international bankers. It is a game that is designed so that the U.S. government cannot win. As soon as they create more money by borrowing…
Central banks and fiat currencies are the problem, what we need are asset backed currencies -- ones where politicians cannot inflate at will.
Re: It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
#9Funny, this is showing up right beside the "asteroids worth 20 Trillion" post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1154812). Sounds like the US just needs to get 1-2 asteroids!
Re: It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
#10My limited understanding is that national debt is not supposed to be paid off, actually attempting to do that is often a catastrophic move. If the interest is paid year to year, exponential growth of the economy takes care of things eventually. WW2 debt for example would be peanuts in today's money, so it's not really important if it was actually paid off or not.
How long exponential growth is sustainable, and how is this whole system different from a martingale gambling strategy is another question.