Originally posted by: Boilerman
My entire argument is the one that you refuse to answer. Dollars are finite, and it's easy to say "Have the goverment pay for Granny and to pay for winterizing the Texas power system". Too many Americans believe that government money is magic money that no one is responsible for the debt and the interest payments. That's why we borrow billions of dollars each day.
I find it curious that the very people who talk about "sustainability" never consider the lack of sustainability when it comes to goverment debt. Our economy is doing fine, but at what cost in debt? For every family of 4, we pay $6000 annually in interest. Imagine if that family had in extra $500 per month in spending money. We're using a credit card to take a trip to Europe, and then we use another credit card to pay off the debt on the trip. It's a house of cards.
At some point in time, our credit rating will drop further, our interest rates will increase, and we'll look like Greece. Any concept of paying for Granny to visit the doctor for an annual checkup will be gone. It's not far away. Difficult decisions must be made, and few on this site are willing to even consider this.
Your children and grand children will be the price for our borrowing. I will be fine, and I suspect that my kids will be fine. Beyond that, ask Greece how things are working out.
1) We owe this debt to ourselves. It's not the same thing as consumer debt. It's a subtle distinction that I'm sure escapes you. If you're worried about interest payments--almost all of that money goes back into the economy.
2) We have a combination of historically low interest rates AND the highest credit rating of any nation in the world. Other countries buy T-bills at much less than 1% interest. It would be silly NOT to borrow under these conditions.
3) You are obviously confused about what "sustainability" means. It's not an economic term.
4) Let's look at Texas's problem from a purely fiscal standpoint. What were the costs of FAILING to winterize Texas's electrical system? And what will be the cost when this happens next year? You're just spouting your bizarre conservative philosophies when you don't consider that modernizing Texas's power grid could actually save money in the long run.
5) Dollars, actually, are NOT finite. But so what?
6) Once again, we need to finance a number of things, including infrastructure improvements, and we can do it while paying very little. The current T-bill rate is 0.03%, or three one-hundredths of one percent. That means we can borrow a billion dollars for an annual interest rate of $30,000!
You're a conservative, so I'm sure that you style yourself as knowing all about economics. Well, it's time to toss conservative philosophy in the toilet where it belongs. We can borrow money, despite your fears, essentially for free. That makes NOW the time to get things done that have big price tags--the next stimulus, infrastructure modernization and repair, a sustainable energy grid, and so forth.
Another economic concept that is almost certainly beyond you is something that is nonetheless pretty basic. If a government borrows and spends money and the resultant increase in GDP is greater than the interest on the money, then it is a profitable strategy. I would expect that the things I mentioned would grow the economy by more than 0.03%.
Similarly, Texas might have to borrow money to bring its power grid into the 21st century, but the very low interest paid--a state bond offering, for example, would probably go for 2.5% APR or less--would make it worthwhile to avoid recurrences of the recent disaster. And don't try to tell us that it won't happen again for twenty years. The science, which Republicans hate but is real nonetheless, says that these polar vortex winter events will become more and more common.
People much smarter than you have to calculate the economic damage from these events, as well as their frequency, and then determine if borrowing money to mitigate them is worth it from a fiscal standpoint. Since we're talking conservatism here, we'll totally ignore the costs of human suffering. It would make sense to fix the problem purely from a fiscal standpoint. It would cost more money to do nothing. That's what's wrong with conservatism--the default setting is to resist progress.
I would like you to carefully consider the above, but since doing so would challenge your cherished conservative beliefs, I doubt you will. Please don't bother to reply in either case--I really think this stuff is beyond you.
