I want to put in a couple of relatively basic points.
First of all, that all the talk about who is and isn’t paying for the debt/deficit is probably entirely wrong. Not because any of the details everyone chooses to focus on are lies, they are wrong, because no matter WHO pays a bill in this world’s economy, they ALWAYS pass the cost of paying that bill, on to the next person down the line. No matter what they claim, taxes that businesses pay, are passed on to their customers, every time. Just as the cost of labor is passed on, the cost of borrowing is passed on, and so on. Whenever you spend money anywhere, you are part of what is paying the debt.
The other more important point, is that what’s critical about this, isn’t whether the debt is a good or bad thing. The most important thing is, that everyone in a position of power is USING THE EXISTENCE of the debt, to manipulate their way into getting additional changes to the world, which will benefit them.
That is why every time the dollar is “weak,” we hear reports about how THAT’S bad, and when the dollar is “strong,” we hear reports about how THAT’S bad.
Republicans declared in the last century, that deficits didn’t matter. Until the Democrats were in charge, and then suddenly the deficits were a huge problem, and it was important to get those spendthrift Democrats out of office again, so they could fix it. Once in, they ran the deficits up again, and used that as a reason to start cutting social programs.
I really have no idea myself, what’s good or bad about deficits or the national debt, because so many people have been playing politics over it throughout my lifetime, that I can’t tell who to trust. And economists come and go, and come up with conflicting theoretical ideas about it.
What I do know right at the moment, is that we need to be VERY careful about what tricks and games that we allow whoever is in charge to play, when it comes to how they go about addressing whichever stance they choose to take. If they decide to “fix” the debt by either raising taxes on the middle class, OR by cutting benefits to them, there will be another fall off in the ability of the middle and lower classes to spend their money and drive the economy, so we’ll go into another “recession.” If instead, they decide to play games with how they pay it, such as refusing to raise the debt ceiling as a show of political determination, then the rates we pay to borrow will rise again, and the debt will get much worse. If they decide to “fix” it by raising import duties, there is a risk that the people we raise those on will raise their own in turn, and we’ll be right back where we started.
I have no idea what does need to be done, in other words, I just know that it’s a LOT more complicated than making some self-righteous, oversimplified pronouncement about how no one in their right mind would try to get away with this as the head of a family, and so on.
