You've got to get your economic house in order in the USA

[Belle]

This is alarming, but I have always believed that in the 21st century the USA lives well beyond its means. I remember having a discussion with the late John Francis about this saying that America is 'broke' and he vociferously disagreed. A nation totally indebted and printing money is BROKE. This has been going on for years now and it can only worsen.

Printing money - 'quantitative easing' (cough) - is disastrous and causes runaway inflation. Ironically, it's inflation that 'reduces' debt in the long term but it creates havoc in the here and now amongst those who cannot afford the burgeoning costs of living and creates a wider indigent class. But the post-materialist bien pensant, with their pretty little causes and luxury beliefs, won't care in the slightest about this. This latter group is now the predominant demographic of the Democrat party!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-93diMiCh9c

Very sad to say, all this will simply become another political football for an already-discredited polity and its media apparatchiks.

[jserraglio]

John Francis was absolutely right. Your idea is economically naive, not to mention dangerous. You can’t manage the world’s dominant economy like a housewife balances her household budget. Well, you can, Herbert Hoover tried; that didn’t work out so well, did it? Even Ronald Reagan knew that; the deficit ballooned during his term.

[barney]

Not sure that we in Australia should be pointing the finger elsewhere after nine years of economic failure by the Liberals. $1 trillion in debt is a massive number for a country our size.

[jserraglio]

Not sure that we in Australia should be pointing the finger elsewhere after nine years of economic failure by the Liberals. $1 trillion in debt is a massive number for a country our size.

Aussie Belle’s view are vituperatively anti-American, even as she shelters under America’s nuclear umbrella.

[maestrob]

Not sure that we in Australia should be pointing the finger elsewhere after nine years of economic failure by the Liberals. $1 trillion in debt is a massive number for a country our size.

1) Our national debt shrank as a percentage of GDP this past fiscal year, partly due to inflation.

2) Japan's debt to GDP ratio is about 250% and their economy keeps humming along quite nicely. Ours is not even 1/2 of that.

[jserraglio]

Our national debt shrank as a percentage of GDP this past fiscal year, partly due to inflation.

Right, one can’t deal in absolutes, one has to take productivity into account, and the US is highly productive..

The thing about debt: You usually wind up paying off your creditors in inflated dollars. Within limits, this is a good thing.

Contrary to notions about economics expressed here that harken back to the Stone Age, a reasonable amount of deficit spending need not cause runway inflation.

[maestrob]

Our national debt shrank as a percentage of GDP this past fiscal year, partly due to inflation.

The thing about debt: You usually wind up paying off your creditors in inflated dollars. Within limits, this is a good thing.

Contrary to notions about economics expressed here that harken back to the Stone Age, a reasonable amount of deficit spending need not cause runway inflation.

Just so.

This is why people take out 30 year mortgages.

In Japan, mortgages for Tokyo apartments can take 3 generations to pay off. With our housing prices rising so dramatically, this may well need to become standard practice here. Generational wealth is now needed to buy housing in major metropolitan areas right now.

[barney]

Our national debt shrank as a percentage of GDP this past fiscal year, partly due to inflation.

The thing about debt: You usually wind up paying off your creditors in inflated dollars. Within limits, this is a good thing.

Contrary to notions about economics expressed here that harken back to the Stone Age, a reasonable amount of deficit spending need not cause runway inflation.

Just so.

This is why people take out 30 year mortgages.

In Japan, mortgages for Tokyo apartments can take 3 generations to pay off. With our housing prices rising so dramatically, this may well need to become standard practice here. Generational wealth is now needed to buy housing in major metropolitan areas right now.

Here too. I bought my first house in 1983 as a single-income family. Not possible for most people now. (We're still living in our second house, bought in 1995.) But trying to run a national economy like a household budget would be fiscally irresponsible, as every company can also affirm.