this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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That budgets for households, businesses, and goverments have much to do with each other
Edit: fixed typo. 'nd' to 'and'.
Hurr durr but the national debt is like a credit card and all debt is bad. China can just say pay up and we're fucked.
And other stupid shit my parents used to say.
Yeah, them and what army? (Well, the PLA, but going into MAD and great power military strategy would be too much of a digression)
A classical example of Westerners thinking human laws are laws of physics somehow. I assume, anyway. It'd be weird to hear this from anyone recently imported.
the government can go into unlimited debt if it is willing to cause a hyperinflation at some point later in the future to eliminate all of that debt.
They are more similar than they are different though. The numbers are bigger and the limits aren't known, but they do exist. Many countries have felt the pain of excessive debt, the arguments that it can't happen to the US are essentially that the US is a unicorn country.
The US is a unicorn country because the US dollar is the primary currency in the world. If the Euro supplanted the US dollar for that position, then the problems with excessive debt could absolutely happen in the US.
That's becoming less true year over year though. Excessive debt can make it less attractive as a standard in addition to the growth of both the Euro zone and BRICS.
True enough. And Trump could very well accelerate that with his economic temper tantrums. Still, I don't know what currency BRICS would settle on; certainly not the ruble, not after Putin cratered the whole country's economy. The yuan?
What they settle on isn't too important other than it won't be the dollar.
Hmm. Business budgets are pretty similar to household budgets.
In government budgets thing do get a little fuzzy, because historically they always run a slight deficit until they fall to war or revolution and "reset". If it's a rich country, they can raise taxes whenever they feel like, too, assuming they don't care about re-election.