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IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1d ago
Like any bearer asset, it doesn't magically obviate the need to launder the source of funds. People will also ask questions if you show up to a bank with bars of gold and no explanation as to where they come from.
Even with privacycoins, it's accounting that gets you busted in the end. That's how they got Capone after all.
No_one
1d ago
China doesn't have the people to need to build on Mars, Venus, etc, either, their fertility rate is 1.
And it's always going to be 1. Same as US fertility rate never rose after 1930s. And of course Chinese are never going to produce AGI aligned to their values which would make them a formidable threat even if the population went back where it was in 1930, about 400 million.
GoofyGoose
1d ago
The problem is never the amount of debt, but the backing of that debt. It is true that government debt is useful: money is a government liability (zero coupon, infinite maturity for cash) and treasuries are a safe security (until we default) in a world where safe securities are scarce. In the 90s, people were worried that by lowering deficits we would create a shortage of government debt and safe assets. This was completely misguided because we can always issue more debt and use the proceeds to buy valuable assets to finance the repayment.
When people say that they are worried about government debt, they mean relative to the ability to repay. Since we see that increases in debt don’t go towards increasing our ability to repay it but rather decrease it, it is natural to say that we want government debt to stop increasing.
I actually think that there is not enough Treasuries around as we can see by the convenience yield that they have. This convenience yield says that we could profit by issuing debt and investing in real assets, turning the federal government into a massive bank (which it kind of is). Yet issuing more Treasuries and then wasting the proceeds is not sustainable.
campfireSmoresEaten
1d ago
Maybe without leaded gasoline the average IQ (or brain health, if IQ is too gross) of the United States would have been raised just enough to prevent this.
No_one
1d ago
East Asians are severely underrepresented in gang criminality, religious motivated violence and the like.
East Asians do organised crime so well organised and so quietly that they basically never cause enough outrage for a democratic government to do anything. No bodies found, no shootings, no nothing.
Hacker: The freedom of the British people is worth more than the lives of a few Ministers. Freedom is indivisible. Ministers are expendable. A man in public life must expect to be the target of cranks and fanatics. [Sliding into a Churchill impersonation.] It is a Minister's duty to set his life at naught. He must be able to stand up and say, here I am, do your worst! And not cower in craven terror behind electronic equipment, secret microphones, and all the hideous apparatus of the police state. [He snaps back to his normal self.] Anyway, Humphrey, I don't want to hear any more about it.
Sir Humphrey: But Minister, you must allow me to say just one more thing on this matter.
Hacker: Very well, just one, but be brief.
Sir Humphrey: The Special Branch have found your name on a death list.
Hacker: That has absolutely no bearing on the situation... What?!
No_one
1d ago
Okay, 'embezzled'. It's not theft if the bitcoins were entrusted to you and you took them, it's embezzlement.
IMO he’s saying that:
- IF there are important things genuinely worth spending money on (there always are).
- AND it is the case that the US needs to be careful about the budget (it does).
- THEN the Republican Party should make the case for spending on things they think are genuinely important, leaving it to the Democrats to urge caution and reduce the deficit because they know the Republicans won’t.
- CAUSING the Republicans to get at least some of what they want and become popular, while the Democrats have to sacrifice their own objectives and cut spending in a way that makes them unpopular.
In short, play the game of chicken to its end in an attempt to reverse the usual dynamic where Democrats make heartrending pleas and inspiring plans while Republicans explain why lots of things have to be cut and dodge rotten tomatoes.
@FCfromSCC is this a fair summary?
MMT is propably not a popular position here.
That is definitely the case, but I would be surprised if anyone could do the t-accounts for various government & banking accounting operations and actually put the liabilities & assets on the correct sides, etc. Even most economists mess it up completely. It's just not something most people learn or care about. My guess was definitely about US officials and how their actions may be explained by their private knowledge, rather than an estimation about our forum members' beliefs.
The rest is the same thing in different words. And as for that.
Identities are a basic check to make sure you're not getting something totally wrong. If you think the government deficit is a bad thing that should be reduced, you have to explain why you think that of the non-government surplus as well. It is quite literally the same thing. As Kelton said in that presentation, people goof up on this all the time. The WSJ in the late clinton years proudly proclaiming in one column "isn't this wonderful? This is the longest sustained budget surplus since 1929!" while the next column over is hand-wringing "this is very worrying, the private sector savings are plummeting!".
Why is inflation correcting it?
When collectively the private sector has more monetary savings than we want, we will value money less and increasingly try to spend it away - the hot potato effect. Prices will get bid up high enough from this economic activity (falling value of a dollar) until we have the correct/desired amount of savings again. Or before that, the increased economic activity will cause the excess monetary savings to get shed off in increased tax payments (monetary destruction, IOUs returning to their issuer).
So taxes being set at rates instead of flat amounts is therefore one of our main automatic stabilizer policies (the other being safety net spending): the government deficit automatically shrinks & grows depending on the state of the economy. Demand-pull inflation is the final relief valve after that, re-valuing money downward until we have the amount we want.
Corvos
1d ago
I think ‘buying trinkets’ is an okay way to say essentially ‘frivolous spending that has no long-term advantage’.
Since we’re talking about literal spending here, perhaps more context would be better in this case to be clear that you aren’t literally talking about buying physical things like jet planes.
MMT is a relatively accurate model of how modern Western monetary policy works. But have you sit down for a second and asked yourself if that's a good thing that it works like that or not?
Because if you did not, I don't think you're equipped to engage with its actual opponents.
Does the State having control over the rate of interest incentivize good or bad investments? What's a good rate of inflation and who does that good rate benefit and harm? And most importantly, what happens to all this the day that people stop buying US debt no questions asked?
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Exploration isn't part of the Chinese national character. Having satellites is actually beneficial; having pretty pictures of Jupiter is pure status display. China doesn't have the people to need to build on Mars, Venus, etc, either, their fertility rate is 1. Chinese space exploration exists to outcompete the west, not because the Chinese think it's valuable.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1d ago
It's only different because it has the most powerful army in the world. Well that and dwindling traditions of people using the dollar to price things that come from it.
The day that people stop fearing the US is the day that it collapses. And those soldiers, like the praetorian guards of old, need to see real value to remain loyal, not mere debt.
America's doomed like all empires are doomed, the only way out is growth. Ironically the MAGA people refusing to look at the number are the saner party here. There is no government cut that could ever pay this off without completely destroying the US and the world.
Musk is smart, but you can't outsmart that abyss.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I mean the even bigger issue with raising taxes on 'the rich' is there just aren't enough of them.
campfireSmoresEaten
1d ago
There is a common human thing where someone gets into a hole and takes a huge risk in hopes of getting out of that hole, which makes the problem much much worse.
If politicians embrace AI for this reason and then superintelligence kills everyone, I would describe this as that
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I hate to break this too you, but Democrats-as-they-actually-exist are pretty NIMBY.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1d ago
Do you really not think people would flock to competent governance like corporations once did to Delaware?
Any other answer is acceptable, I was genuinely asking. It just seems mysterious to be allergic to the concept of scientism in a world where this building exists.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1d ago
Why don't you just send your confession directly to the feds instead of their best friends and save a judge some time?
hydroacetylene
1d ago
America is long past the point at which most countries would have seen fiscal collapse, default, or otherwise serious consequences from the debt.
It's not unreasonable to note that at the moment, America(and Japan, apparently) Is Different.
Yeah but you always run the risk of being captured anyway. See what happened to El Chapo. There are no safe countries from the reach of the US anymore except perhaps North Korea.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
1d ago
I saw that. It's amazing how much MTG cards have appreciated over the past 25 years that the market can absorb such a large transaction. It's like an asset class in and of itself. someone should make a MTG card ETF or an ETF of MTG and Pokémon.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
MMT is propably not a popular position here. Your comment mostly assumes its true, and your very long quote is entirely about why the reactionaries wont see the light. The justification is essentially this:
To be economically literate, one would have to know that saying the government deficit should be cut is identical to saying the non-government surplus should be cut.
The rest is the same thing in different words. And as for that.
Government deficit & debt are good things, and the only problem is along the lines of 'too much of a good thing' (inflation, which is the self-correction mechanism)
Why is inflation correcting it? We have over the last few years heard from many left-leaning economists that inflation is actually fine, the lower classes are just irrationally afraid of it, go right ahead Mr Biden. In a mostly cashless economy like the US, even the logistical problems of hyperinflation can be handled pretty well.
dr_analog
razorboy
1d ago
Unclear. Employers in the US vary on how comprehensive a health plan they will buy for their employees. Additionally, some households will have one spouse enroll in their employer's family plan while the other opts out entirely (and maybe even gets a monetary rebate for declining it).
Another complication is even with 65%+ total employee cost going to taxes, professionals in France opt for additional supplemental insurance so they don't have to share services with the poors.
It's claimed the nomination being rescinded was part of what made Musk mad and lash out. (I don't know).
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