If you had 34 trillion in debt and a centuries-long history of making on-time payments, you’d have a perfect credit score.
Don’t forget being the only issuer of the currency you get indebted in. If I could get indebted in a currency I create myself, believe me I would
Articles and posts like this really just exist for conservatives to shout that we need to stop federal spending and cut out “unimportant” things like Dept of Education, as described in Project 2025.
The problem is that debt is good. It enables us to pay for infrastructure projects and services. It doesn’t work like a household budget…not on the scale of international economies…because money “in the bank” is money that’s not in circulation.
When money is not in circulation, it’s not being used to pay for goods and services…it’s just…sitting there being hoarded.
You all complain about Musk hoarding a few hundred billions. Imagine if the debt were in the opposite direction and the government had $34T sitting in the bank doing nothing.
And anyone can buy Treasury debt. In fact, last year it was an AMAZING return on investment for anyone that bought into it and holds into the debt for a few years. One of the safest places anybody could put money to earn a return (behind a HYSA at FDIC insured banks).
The US govt basically has a perfect credit score. They have almost infinite payment history and almost infinite available credit.
“Bankers hate him! Get an 850 credit score and dictate the terms and interest rate of your own debt using this one simple trick.”
Two things:
- if you owe the bank $34,000, it’s your problem; if you owe the bank $34,000,000,000,000, it’s the bank’s problem.
- its a big club, and you’re not in it.
That’s a lot of zeros, when written like that
Are you immortal? Do you have an income vastly higher than the servicing cost of that debt? Do you owe the large a majority of that debt to yourself? Are you able to, if push came to shove, tell your external creditors to go fuck themselves and dare them to so much as try to collect on the debt you don’t feel like paying? If you can’t answer “yes” to all these questions, you aren’t the US and have a debt situation that has absolutely nothing in common with the US debt.
Do not forget that you are also the very entity that hands out the currency you hold your debt in.
It’s like Dwight printing IOUs for Schrutebucks
Wait till you learn about how the stock market works. Everyone with a share actually just holds an IOU in the DTCC.
It’s all built on bullshit
I remember users on another platform went into full rage mode when I said the stock market was just legalized gambling, telling me how SAFE!!! IT IS IF YOU DO YOUR RESEARCH!!!>
Okay. Black Friday and Too Big to Fail only happened in my dreams.
-1000 social credit for questioning government
We ain’t China…. Yet
A social credit score would only harm the bad people
Who decides what’s bad and what’s ok?
The same system which makes laws
You mean the system that makes it illegal to have an abortion or to marry the person you love if they happen to be the same sex as you? Sign me up then cause, yeah, only bad people suffer in that system
On a serious note. Are there any countries without any national debt? Because if not then clearly capitalism is broken right?
No, if anything it shows capitalism is working. When you can increase or tighten money supply (ie when you can print and shred money) debt isn’t what you think it is. A state with money issuance powers is not a household.
I can thoroughly recommend “The Deficit Myth” book by Stephanie Kelton, if you wish to understand modern monetary policy better.
Or watch the film Finding the Money: https://youtu.be/3HRgsYSLOYw?si=g_CgqMWtC7oBCkGn
And to answer your specific question, there are countries with very low debt, but that’s usually due to either not being able to “borrow” money (again, borrowing doesn’t always mean what we would think as borrowing when you can issue your own money), being locked to another currency (Denmark is a great example - amazing economy and locked to the euro) or having a large generation of wealth (typically oil). Larger countries can issue debt more easily.
Well, since the billionaire class doesn’t pay it’s fair share of the tax burden, that money has to come from somewhere.
This is a popular thought, but even if we take 100% from the billionaires it pays for almost one year for the US.
While I understand what assumption you’re running under no one said for only billionaires to pay. The idea is progressive tax brackets the less you make the less you pay percentage wise. We also need less loopholes for the people that can buy lawyers and manipulate their funds to get out of paying what they should. There is no reason companies and the extremely wealthy should be paying an effectively less tax percentage than the diminishing lower middle class.
It’s not about only billionaires paying, it’s about them not being a magical money source. A higher rate might feel better, but it’s not solving government revenue problems.
It will not suddenly balance the budget but it is funding that will either reduce the deficit, or reduce the burden on poorer people. We can’t fix decades of poor decisions with one good decision, it’s simply a good decision we can make now that will help.
Now imagine if we had taken 30-40% from billionaires every single year… hmm…
We could have a couple year of almost not having a deficit.
Countries can print money. If the debt is denominated in your own currency you will never not be able to pay them.
I get your point, but they cant just “print” currency so we could actually not be able to pay when people/countries stop buying the bonds or lose faith in the system.
No, that is not true. That states sell bonds is a self-imposed rule.
As long as a state collects its taxes in its own currency there will be demand for that currency.
What happens when they run out of people to sell bonds to and they run out of money to tax?
Then stop selling bonds and start investing directly (build schools, repair bridges, pay your employees, etc.).
Countries don’t have to take the detour through state bonds because they can make money out of thin air. State bonds are a self-imposed and there’s no law of nature that mandates using them.
How do they make money out of thin air?
Serious question? Money today is nothing more than a number in an account. When a country needs more of its own currency, it can increase it’s account by that amount.
No they cant, that is illegal. You could say they will change the law so that they can do that, but that is not possible (in america) at this time.
