Quote:
Originally Posted by stevo
But what I do know is that tax money is going to have to pay for the deficit spending one day. Today, tomorrow, it doesn't matter as much as how much we'll have to pay in taxes. In other words, by the look of it either the tax rate is going to go up or the tax base will have to expand, while at the same time the politicians remember that the money is already spent.
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I really do not understand the dynamics of the national debt. In my household budget I understand when I am carrying too much debt and have to ease off or increase income to pay for it but the government seems to have more options to deal with their (our) dept.
For instance what if we decide to forgive our debt to ourselves or what if we just continue to increase it and never pay it off? If we can forgive the debt that other countries owe us why can't we forgive the debt we owe to ourselves?
I guess I have no feel for how much government debt is too much, it could be 2 times the present amount or 100 times or 1000 times, when do we start to get into economic trouble? Why can't each generation continue to increase the debt and just pass it on to the next and so on.., and it never gets paid back?
I guess I also don't really understand money, it' seems to be just paper whose value fluctuates against other countries' paper (many of which have huge national debts as well).