National debt

1. Ah, okay, that straightens the clothing store out nicely, thank you. So let me use it to give you two possible scenarios. A: People with no jobs need clothing so they go to the clothing store and buy a bunch of a clothes on credit. Then they go home and go waaa I'm in debt, fail to pay it off, and ultimately the clothes are repossessed, and they are unable to return to spend more money at the clothing store. This, I would argue, is the consequence you are alluding to. B: People with no jobs need clothing so they can go to interviews in something nice and get one. They go to the clothing store, buy a bunch of clothes on credit, then they go to their job interviews, get good jobs, and are able to both pay off their debt AND ultimately but MORE clothes. The fact that credit was the mechanism initially used to make the purchases doesn't actually have much effect afterwards. Now, I would say that scenario B is slightly more what I'm getting at, but NEITHER of these scenarios is really apt because unlike a clothing store OR a jobless person, a nation-state doesn't have to suffer any of these consequences. It isn't going to get "closed down" or not having customers. It isn't going to have things repossessed or get sent to jail. There isn't a consequence. We'll get to this more later on as I respond to the rest of your argument. 2. Printing money (i.e., borrowing it, because we do back it before we print it with SOMETHING, even if it is an IOU from another country) does indeed devalue currency, you're right that there's no debate on that. But by how much? It's a pretty basic supply-and-demand fact that the greater a supply of something (money) the less it is worth, yet there is no specific devaluation in play. And weirdly enough, expressed as a percentage, the more money overall there is in circulation, the impact that we suffer from printing more because the proportion gets so small. Think of it like this (I'm gonna use very small numbers here) : Back when there was only 10 dollars in the whole US, printing another ten without any backing effectively cut the value of the currency in half, it's true. Now that we have, let's say, 100,000 dollars in play, printing another 100 while it may sound like a lot, is only devaluing the rest of that 100,000 by less than a tenth of a percent. Add to that the fact that currencies value IS now somewhat faith-based and the impact of individual printing runs is extremely minute. I would submit that you even realize this on some level, because when you try to grope at how the actual doomsday situation you fear would look, you don't really come up with much. You list no tipping point as to WHEN businesses will stop borrowing or people will find it risky to lend to the US, you just say it will happen. I would further submit that you CAN'T name such a point because it doesn't exist. 3. My solution DOESN'T concentrate wealth in government. I stated very clearly that money which gets taxed by the government ends up re-circulating back into the economy, often more quickly then money which ends up concentrated in less hands. You've bound yourself up in a nasty trap on this one. Is the problem that government is hoarding our money or spending it too readily? Which is it? It can't be both. And finally, read your own words, "Eventually we're going to be held accountable". When? I repeat: Nation-states are immortal entities, they can wait out any consequence that exists purely as an abstraction. Nothing is more abstract than money. I look forward to your concluding arguments.