Deficit hawks say that the government should live within its means, like us. They obviously haven’t heard of auto loans, home, mortgages, student loans, or credit card debt. Americans carry trillions of dollars of debt for purchases they couldn’t afford.
You Are a Crazy Deficit Spender Too
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Ahhhh … you’ve been reading Marx. For Americans to be carrying all that debt, while businesses are making billions of dollars in profits and a small class of investors are making so much money off their investments that they do not need to work would indicate one of two things: Americans are spending uncontrollably beyond their means, like addicts pushing junk into their veins, or … the people doing the work are not being given enough of their labor’s value to meet their needs.
I wonder which it is in most cases …
Not to mention trillions of dollars of corporate debt. If we are to run government like a business ….
Sadly, most people compare the government’s “debt” to household debt like Rall does here. But the government issues the dollars, and dollars issued, but not retrieved in taxes are debt. They are also the dollars in your wallet or savings account. News flash, people: Dollars don’t grow on billionaires. National debt is like bank debt. Your bank account is your asset, but the bank’s debt. Marching down to the bank to ask them to reduce their debt (i.e. your account) is just not very sensible. This makes the attack on social safety nets (eek! Social Security is running out of dollars!) all the more shocking. The government will run out of dollars when the Bureau of Weights and measures runs out of inches.