I don't know why you think I believe that, and in fact I'm inclined to beli eve that you do know better, and are merely phrasing the claim in the simpl est manner possible, out of pure laziness.
Issuing more bonds isn't any kind of cost-free exercise. The problem is tha t the alternative - letting the economy tank in a re-run of the Great Depre ssion - imposes even higher costs.
As long as the national debt represents money invested in productive assets , it's not a problem. Growing a national economy is like growing a business , you get capital where you can when the price is right. Debt is fine, so l ong as you can service it, and so long as you can invest the money raised i n productive assets.
Pump-priming stimulus spending counts as a protective investment - if you d on't do it, factories shut down (and won't re-open) and businesses go bankr upt (and their assets get sold off at ten cents on the dollar, and are neve r again worth what they were when they formed part of an active business).
ack? I was looking at some figures for the national debt of various countri es and it looks dismal. The debt for the US for example is 52K per capita w hile the UK is about three times that at 160K. China is fairly low at 2K. I t bothers me a little bit that I owe my country 52K, but I don't worry abou t it much since I know somebody else will pay it for me. So, I guess I'm a socialist.
That's a bit exaggerated using a 75 year time horizon. SS is underfunded by 5.3T and medicare is short by 13.4T and current debt is 17T which works ou t to 35.7e12/300e6 = 119K per capita. Using an infinite time horizon make s the problem appear 2X worse, but nothing estimated today will have any me aning in 75 years. SS and medicare will probably be means-tested to reduce costs.
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"According to the US Census Bureau, there were approximately 117.2 million households in the United States in 2009 (US Census Bureau, Table AVG1). The NPV of Social Security's unfunded liability over the next 75 years is $5.3 trillion, or approximately $45,000 per household (2009 Social Security Tru stees Report, p. 61). The NPV of the unfunded liability over the infinite t ime horizon is $15.1 trillion, or approximately $129,000 per household (id. at 62).
Medicare has two main components, and the Medicare Trustees' Report tracks figures for them separately. Hospital Insurance (HI), or Medicare Part A, h elps pay for medical care for the elderly and disabled. Supplementary Medic al Insurance consists of Part B (care for the elderly and disabled who have voluntarily enrolled), Part C (private "Medicare Advantage" plans), and Pa rt D (subsidies for prescription drugs). Due to the automatic funding of th e other Medicare programs, the HI program is the only one with an unfunded liability. The NPV of the unfunded liability of HI over the next 75 years i s $13.4 trillion, or approximately $114,000 per household (2009 Medicare Tr ustees Report, p. 69). The NPV of the unfunded liability of HI over the inf inite time horizon is $36.4 trillion, or approximately $311,000 per househo ld (id.)."
Quite so. Especially when Lefty governments purposely increase the constituency that supports them by busing in illegal immigrants by the million and vigorously encouraging the breakdown/annihilation of the family.
If the US is the new Stalinist USSR, it's a bit short on forced labour camp s. There are still chain gangs, but not enough prisoners die to meet the Stali nist examples. And there's a shortage of political show trials, and senior politicians being shot after confessing their ideological errors.
The Tea Party may be introducing show trials, but they haven't shot anybody yet - their enthusiasm for gun ownership may have got quite a few people s hot, but that's merely stupidity, rather than targeted homicide.
I imagine that the people leaving the USA have noticed that it's not the la nd of opportunity that it used to be, not so much because the opportunities are fewer than they used to be but because places like Scandinavia and Ger many, with Gini-indices of 0.25 and 0.283 are now offering rather more oppo rtunities for social mobility than the US ever did, particularly now that U S the Gini-index is 0.45 and rising.
Paul Burridge won't be able to make any sense of this, but that's because h e's a right-wing nitwit with rather restricted set of ideas and no capacity to get his head around new concepts.
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