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Remember the Romans also had a welfare state of sorts, with their free bread and circuses. The welfare state and the warfare state work hand in hand. The welfare state keeps people quiet because free stuff keeps people from rebelling against the government and its wars. By the end of the empire, both had gotten out of hand. The number of public holidays had graduatlly increased over the years. People worked less. The birth rate dropped. Rome kept fighting wars. See any parallels?
You are comparing a civilization that existed over 2,000 years ago with NOW? no I don't see any parallels at all. The "welfare" state as you call it keeps people alive, you claim it keeps them from "rebelling" against govt, no it doesnt, letting people STARVE on the streets after being thrown out of their homes definitely WILL cause rebellion and violence when people who have NOTHING to lose decide to take their anger out on the rich, businesses, stores AND the govt.
Rome collapsed because they had a crazy dictator in charge and spread out all over the place trying to take over every other empires' people and cultures and spent enormous sums of money and resources not to mention every available man for the "war" effort, many died as result.
You are comparing a civilization that existed over 2,000 years ago with NOW? no I don't see any parallels at all. The "welfare" state as you call it keeps people alive, you claim it keeps them from "rebelling" against govt, no it doesnt, letting people STARVE on the streets after being thrown out of their homes definitely WILL cause rebellion and violence when people who have NOTHING to lose decide to take their anger out on the rich, businesses, stores AND the govt.
Why would people get thrown out of their homes? Do they own the homes, or are they renting?
If they are renting, why would they get thrown out? For not paying rent for one month, or one year?
And do you think the pantie-fa and blm leftist thugs could actually stage a successful revolution? What happens when the dope and Doritos run out? Did you not see how lame the CHAZ/CHOP ended in Seattle? They went crawling home to momma.
So the point of created the $5T in the first place is what then? If only to be destroyed later.
Or is it spent by those, and then taken out of circulation?
If is latter, then I say the situation is even worse. The system creates it, lets the select few to use, and disappears it. And then of course whenever the select few need more, they can just create more in whatever amount.
The FED typically rolls over the debt, so it's not destroyed. When bonds held by the FED mature, the US Treasury gets the money to pay the FED by issuing new bonds, sold in the primary market. The FED enters the secondary market and buys exactly that monetary amount of bonds, effectively just rolling over the debt.
If the FED were to destroy debt as bonds mature, it simply would not go into the secondary market to repurchase another batch of bonds.
The point of creating and then destroying debt is to maintain liquidity in the economy. It's Keynesian economics. When there's a recession, the government steps in to make up the lost GDP.. to help keep money circulating so businesses don't all fold and banks collapse as investment collapses. When the economy has recovered, the debt "should" be repaid through increased revenues, mainly from taxation of recovered incomes. However, I think only during the Clinton administration did we ever have something akin to textbook Keynesian economics in practice... where Clinton raised taxes as the economy grew, ran a surplus, and began paying down the debt. Normally politicians don't have a long career if they raise taxes, so we just keep creating more debt. If things had continued on the "Clinton" path, I believe 2020 was the year the entire national debt would have been paid off. Ce la vie, that was doomed to fail since Americans love government services when they are free!
Last edited by mitchmiller9; 01-06-2021 at 01:46 AM..
Democrats never have an answer for what happens when someone refuses to work. They don't want to cut anyone off. Let anyone starve. I would. Republicans will bail out corporations also. I wouldn't. Let them file chapter 7/11. The debt will just cause inflation. People were squawking about the debt 100 years ago and we are still around. Fact is, the stock pumptards love their debt because the extra money in people's hand has driven up their stocks. Everyone seems to be high on stimulus at this point. We shall see what result it has in time. True conservatism is dead.
Likely we will see major inflation without a corresponding increase in wages further diminishing the purchasing power of those who work. Let's hope they invested in the high flying tech stocks to some degree or they'll become the working poor, as more and more housing is being driven up in price by wealthy investors.
I personally don't believe you can defeat the laws of nature and get something for nothing forever, and that eventually something is going to give by bailing out everything.
Just as the title say's can the US hit 50 trillion in debt by 2024 and still maintain our standard of living? still keep the dollar as the world currency.
I have a sinking feeling that a "great reset" will mean making every states debts, and pension shortfalls to disappear with the tap of a few keys.
This is not a right/left issue, I'm positive that both sides of the fetid swamp are salivating over the idea of this much money flowing out of DC, lots of opportunity to syphon off hundreds of million into there off shore accounts and campaign war chest.
We can barely agree to pass the current spending bills. You really think that they will be able to pass all those other bills needed to get to 50 trillion. I get that some politicians are spend happy but not everyone will agree.
Anyway if it happens it happens. Nothing any of us will be able to do about it. Best thing is to simply prepare and do what is best to survive the incoming presidency. Like anything else people eventually get tired of whatever administration is running things and vote fir the other guy. Plenty of republicans voted fir Biden. Eventually democrats will flip to a republican.
The FED typically rolls over the debt, so it's not destroyed. When bonds held by the FED mature, the US Treasury gets the money to pay the FED by issuing new bonds, sold in the primary market. The FED enters the secondary market and buys exactly that monetary amount of bonds, effectively just rolling over the debt.
If the FED were to destroy debt as bonds mature, it simply would not go into the secondary market to repurchase another batch of bonds.
The point of creating and then destroying debt is to maintain liquidity in the economy. It's Keynesian economics. When there's a recession, the government steps in to make up the lost GDP.. to help keep money circulating so businesses don't all fold and banks collapse as investment collapses. When the economy has recovered, the debt "should" be repaid through increased revenues, mainly from taxation of recovered incomes. However, I think only during the Clinton administration did we ever have something akin to textbook Keynesian economics in practice... where Clinton raised taxes as the economy grew, ran a surplus, and began paying down the debt. Normally politicians don't have a long career if they raise taxes, so we just keep creating more debt. If things had continued on the "Clinton" path, I believe 2020 was the year the entire national debt would have been paid off. Ce la vie, that was doomed to fail since Americans love government services when they are free!
You are a little loose on the Clinton angle. Clinton did help increase taxes in '93 IIRC. A couple of years on we were still in very significant deficit territory. Congressional republicans under Newt Gingrich should get a lot of credit for the short run of fiscal sanity '97-'01.
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