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The U.S. national debt reached $20 trillion for the first time ever last Friday after President Trump signed a bipartisan bill temporarily raising the nation's debt limit for three months.
While at Camp David, Mr. Trump, with the stroke of his presidential pen, increased the statutory debt last Friday by approximately $318 billion, according to the Treasury Department. Before the bill's completion, the U.S. debt was sitting around $19.84 trillion.
The legislation allowed the Treasury Department to start borrowing again immediately after several months of using "extraordinary measures" to avoid a financial default. The bill passed last Thursday 80-17 in the Senate and in the House 316-90 on Friday. Around $15 billion in emergency funding for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts was attached to the borrowing measure.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-debt-hits-historic-20-trillion-mark/
[That works out to just shy of $62,000 per American. --Ed.]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @07:11PM (8 children)
As very eloquently explained by your parent, you cannot know whether resources have been created until the debt has been paid back.
The money is an accounting technology: So far, the accounting says that $20 trillion worth of resources have been allocated, but there's no proof that such an allocation of resources has been productive for society; the lender cannot know that allocating to you the "TVs and computers and groceries and toiletries" has been productive until the lender has been paid back (with interest).
Until your debt has been paid back, a conservative observer must assume that you have simply used up those resources, rather than created more wealth from those resources.
What's the point of even using money if you don't actually use it do any sort of accounting?
If the allocation of that $20 trillion worth of resources has been productive, then do something to make the accounting reflect that fact! Pay it off!
Let's say that said allocation has indeed been productive; let's say that the world has received a 100x return on investment.
Well, so what?!
Had those resources been left to the allocation decisions of the "private" sector, maybe the return on investment would have been 900x; there's no proof that government is a particularly good steward of society's resources—indeed, history lends itself to the argument that the "private" sector is a far better decision maker for how society's collective resources should be allocated.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday September 15 2017, @08:24PM (5 children)
This is completely ridiculous! Are you Bain Capital? Corporate raiders that can only rate an enterprise by liquidating it? There is no place for the $20 trillion to go. If it was not debt, it would not exist. Debt is someone else's asset, whether it is ever paid off or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @08:40PM (4 children)
The $20 trillion debt represents a lack of accounting for the return on investment.
It cannot be clearer.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Friday September 15 2017, @10:14PM (3 children)
No, it does not. Just because you think so, does not make it so. A Puritan background in tightwaddyhood and asceticism may make you abhor debt as a moral sin, but it is perfectly acceptable to have debt in perpetuity. Or are you suggesting that the United States of America should go out of business? Are you a Nazi, or a Reb?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:21AM (1 child)
And aristarchus WINS the Troll mod of truth! Victory lap, y'all! Goldbug neo-nazis feeling the burn! So sad, too bad. I sometimes wish our more repugnant ACs were a bit more literate and schooled in the ways of economics and monetary theory, but you know, there is something to be said for reprehensible stupidity. Not sure what that is, but someone once said it takes all types! Shortly after he said that, he was dragged away by a mob of Christians in Alexandria, cut into very small pieces, and burned on a pyre.
So we try one more time: Private debt and public dept are not the same thing. There is nothing wrong with fiat currency. We will tax your ass, with guns if necessary, because you should understand civic responsibility, and if you do not, when, the guns thing. And, you are stupid and deluded, and a libertariantard. So there!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:19PM
dude, stop with the colorful adjectives and nouns for your descriptions of people and concepts, and turn to the side and count to 10 when the righteous fury of being able to correct a wrong you have seen on the forum arises, and maybe you'd be less likely to offend when your rhetoric is toned down.
its hard to stay on your side when you seem to trade brains with ethanol-fueled--but he is at least consistent. we know what to expect from him. you don't have the same condition, but appear to be related somehow--you just got the passive gene and he got the dominant one.
unfortunately we are learning that you react strongly to perceived personal slights or misunderstandings--but you were not always that way.
i can't say lighten up, but I can say tone it down. you're free to post as you like, but remember, the community mods you if you don't mod yourself. i am not speaking of self-censorship either --i'm saying phrase your same ideas more professionally than resorting to name calling when it seems like people don't agree with you.
it may work on other forums, but it doesn't seem to be working here
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:26PM
It is perfectly natural to be poor, doesn't mean it is a good idea or desirable...
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday September 16 2017, @03:51AM
> you cannot know whether resources have been created until the debt has been paid back.
One can at least study the balance sheets; debt incurred vs expenditure on improved infrastructure.
The UK has an issue, I believe, because the balance sheets show that the debt is incurred to cover operating costs, rather than improved infrastructure. The investment on infrastructure improvements is rather small while the debt keeps growing.
Another way to look at it might be productivity as a function of debt. In the UK at least, productivity has not improved while the debt keeps growing.
I can't speak for the US...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @03:46PM
Because my buying them enabled the store to make money, the sales assistant to be paid. Plus whatever she spends that money on.
Plus the delivery guy got paid, and anything he spends his money on.
Plus the guy at the factory who made the TV's etc, and anything he spends his money on.
Plus the company who made the whatever to buy all the little whatevers and those people etc etc.
And all the dividends that the company pays, and whatever those people do with the money, spend or invest etc.
If I pay in cash or rack up a debt makes no difference to all those people. If I never pay back that debt it makes no difference to any of those people. The only thing harmed if I default is the bank. And here's the magic in the system. The bank created that money/debt out of thin air anyway.
But wait what if everyone did that? Well even if everyone defaulted, the bank is too big to fail and the fed will just create money and give it to them, also out of thin air.