National Debt.
What, Me Worry?
I read that the USA has a national debt of 36 trillion dollars. The interest on that debt is a very large part of the federal government budget - a part that is sacrosanct. This is a topic that makes very little sense to me.
Paul Krugman wrote years ago that a sovereign State basically can't go bankrupt because it can make it's own money. So why does it have to borrow any money at all?
Money is used to facilitate transactions. There needs to be enough money in the system so that buyers can buy all that is produced. Inflation happens when there is more money in the system than the value of what is produced.
The State creates money to satisfy the needs of the economy. The role of taxation is to remove excess money from the economy to control inflation, Thus its not taxation that funds government. Government can be self funding. The whole point is to enable an economy where people can buy what they need to be productive citizens. Of course there are complications.
So I'm not worried about the $36 million. It seems to me to be more an artifact of a flawed conception of how the economy works. After all, the economy works pretty well even with that debt.
Even with our present system it's easy to see that the national debt could be reduced by increasing taxation. Nobody wants to talk about that. But heads up - government wouldn't have to borrow if it's income from taxation was adequate to its needs.
Of course this would mean taxing billionaires a lot more. I say billionaires because they are the ones with the money. But they want that money for their own pet projects from colonizing Mars to building superyachts.
There is a practical problem with taxing billionaires though. They have the resources to influence tax policy directly or they can just up and move.
When the State has to pay out more to fulfill it's obligations then it sells various sorts of bonds and securities to make up the shortfall. When I was young I used to buy Canada Savings Bonds. (Hmmm I don't think I ever redeemed them. There's probably an account someplace piling up interest for me.)
These bonds act sort of like taxation above - it's a mechanism for removing excess funds from the system.
But still, though this situation seems to be working just fine, can it go on indefinitely?
The problem arises because government in our society has to borrow money to pay its deficits. This is kind of a silly situation. Money is created, in the long complicated run, by the State just increasing the amount that can be withdrawn from an account. Thus the actual creator of money has to borrow it back at interest to finance its deficits.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.