Debt: this time it is different.
Debt: Something owed, such as money, goods, or services.
Humans: A member of the primate genus Homo, especially a member of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other apes by a large brain and the capacity for speech.
Government: is the system or group of humans governing an organized community of humans.
So here is the foundational logic of this article. It is only humans that care about money. The Birds and Bees and everything else gives money no regard. Corporations, Governments, NGOs or anything that you can think of do not exist; except in your mind exist as a humans define them in common, no more than Santa Claus does. I am paraphrasing the 1860 supreme court’s ruling on corporations, and the movie Miracle on 34th Street, in which the court case scene replicated the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Thus we can modify the definition of debt more precisely as something owed by one human to another human. All the other contemplations of your mind are simply conduits.
Today not many of us truly believe Santa Claus will come and deliver gifts, no matter how many of us know the story. Where as a great many more believe The United States governments will deliver the gifts, and believe the story. I suggest you read the book?
https://www.amazon.com/This-Time-Different-Centuries-Financial-ebook/dp/B004EYT932 ? I would say that the failure observed over 8 centuries of failures is directly correlated to the amount of debt.
But whether the amount of debt has no limits as some would like to believe, my concern is, what human owes that debt to what human? Debt has been used for thousands of years for one human to enslave another human, bound to servitude in many legal forms. Slave, serf, indentured servant, sharecropper, and now with the contemplated governments as the intermediary, “citizen” obligated to servitude without knowing it.
For humans, debt is repaid with productive work in the future. Depending on the laws, that can be the work of children or generations after. For government, debt is postponed taxes, paid by the work of humans. When the debt is great or the taxes low what generation will pay? And who will pay, the rich or the poor? If the rich now invest their wealth in the debts of government, will they be rich when governments tax to pay the debt or will the poor suffer because the rich are no longer rich? Did you read the book for the answer? But if there is more debt, the interest rates go up, and the poor pay even greater interest rates than rich do, and more interest for the basics of living, reducing the chance of wealth gain. And the poor cannot buy the house to live in.
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Tax is the redistribution of wealth or the more efficient purchase of goods benefiting every human, like roads. Tax is postponed with debt. And debt is servitude in the future rather than now for humans. Yet debt has always been used to command servitude, both fairly and unfairly.?
Following the principle that each generation should produce its own wealth and consume what it produces. And leave the world and infrastructure better than it found it to the later generation who must work and produce for its obligation. Debt for the vagaries within a generation is warranted, and justifies debt with repayment for 2 to 5 years for leveled consumption and productivity. 30 years of debt for a bridge expected to last 45 years is also in keeping with this philosophy. However, unbounded debt for consumption growing in time of greatest wealth will only end in the servitude of the poor in later generations, and violent revolt that inevitably occurs. Oh, but this time it is different, you say?
If you asked me as an accountant, “Please create a single number based on verifiable numerical evidence that measures the disparity in wealth between the rich and poor.” I would tell you we already have it, the national debt. It is how much the population owes the rich. When governments collapse it is the poor that suffer the most, and the rich suffer more than the tax they would have owed.
This year we have been the most productive of any time. Virtually no unemployment. And yet terrible inflation, terrible housing, and growing interest rates making housing not affordable at all in the longer term. Increasing taxes will reduce inflation more than interest regulation. If you have less money you buy more necessities as a portion of your income, and less disposable income items, reducing inflation. Taxes can be used to pay debt, and in doing so less money is used to inflate prices through government purchases, whether government directly purchase or indirectly via citizens benefits.?
If the rich pay more in tax, used to pay the rich owning debt, which they spend rather than save reducing the trauma, because they have less money from paying taxes. But for this to be fair, it only is fair if the additional tax is to reduce debt. I have an entire article from 20 years ago as to the best way to do that tax. ?
But let us make this simple. Compromise between Liberal and Conservative thinking 50/50. Raise the income tax such that the increase eliminates all the current deficit. 50/50 means the appropriation is also reduced by the same amount as the tax increase, meeting to zero in the middle.
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