Budget and National Debt

Any serious discussion of the burden of the debt must also talk about the trillions of dollars of patent and copyright rents that the government is committing the country to when it grants these monopolies.

How can someone who claims to be concerned about the burden of the government debt on our children, ignore the burden, in the form of higher prices, created by government-granted patent and copyright monopolies?

Based on the IMF’s accounting of SDR holdings as well as media reporting on member countries, we can get a preliminary sense of what countries immediately used the additional allocation of SDRs and for what purposes.

Other than Denmark, our country is alone in the world in having a self-imposed limit on the amount of money it can borrow. In other countries, legislatures approve spending and taxes, and governments borrow to cover any gaps.

Spending money on greening the economy is a great way to keep people employed.

Arguably, the full cost of the $3.5 trillion (1.2 percent of GDP) reconciliation package could be covered by savings on prescription drugs alone.

Senator Manchin wants to pretend that this climate debt does not exist. He only wants to look at the debt that comes from the government directly borrowing money.

To my mind, this is a silly debate, starting with the idea that we should be concerned about inequalities in wealth resulting from low interest rates. That one is a bit hard for me to see.

This article on the $3.5 trillion budget outline didn’t mention once that the spending would be over ten years.

Deficit demagogy has (finally) become a fringe position in American politics—just look at the massive bills moving through Congress.