How do you propose we pay off the 18 trillion dollar debt cloud hanging over the US?

Try to buy a big mac with gold
Or a dozen eggs
Or a tank of gas

For that matter, if you want to do most anything with gold
You have to start by essentially converting it into a fiat currency

 

There is nothing preventing you, and your friends, from basing your own personal financial dealings on gold
Then at some point you will be gloriously right

Actually, there have been people advocating this approach for a very long time
And, i cannot think of one such person who became wealthy
Or memorably successful using this approach
You may be the first, so carry on

 

I don't think a suspicion that we cannot spend an infinite amount of money without consequences isn't only a trait of conservatives.

 

I'm pretty sure that would be possible, but it might require a chat with the manager. And then there are crypto currencies such as bitcoin that can be used to exchange for goods and services.

 

When i want a product, i do not want to have to negotiate with the manager

As far as bit coin--- that seems far removec from having any intrinsic value
The value of the dollar seems much more stable, predictable, and widely accepted
But if you choose to conduct your business in gold or bit coin
Fine by me

 

You're again very confused. We can spend an infinite amount of money. There is no limit to how much made up money we can create. How much should we spend of that infinite amount of money is what you are talking about. The fact you still can't understand the difference is shocking but not surprising at all based off past conversations.

 

I've no doubt that you're shocked at the concept.

 

The concept that there is a limit to how much made up money can be created? Yea, I am shocked by that concept, lol. Good luck proving that.

 

Heh, I don't believe you've tried to prove anything you've said. I'm well within the mainstream and you're off in la la land.

 

Charging people $19.95 a month to access the Obamacare website would be a good start. Setting up toll roads near Walmart wouldn't hurt either. I would also start a national lottery. If you won, you wouldn't get any cut of the money collected per se, but you would get your own reality TV show from which you could do all the merchandising and endorsement deals you wanted.

 

You're not even close. You're not even talking about educated issues. Your attempt to discredit me was a $8.1 quadrillion Death Star. It was pretty embarrassing. If you want to get educated ask me questions. Otherwise, not sure what I can do for you. You simply have a conservative understanding of the economy. Which is not a good thing. Pretty much you and Sarah Palin have the same thoughts, lol.

 

Actually it does go into a special account, the general fund, and the Treasury issues monthly reports on it. From the general fund the Treasury draws money to pay for all of the expenditures authorized by Congress. When there is a shortfall in the general fund the Treasury issues Treasury securities to supplement the tax revenues but this is controlled by Congress that limits the amount of the outstanding Treasury securities.

The Treasury doesn't receive any funding from the banking system except through taxation.

This is absolute BS as the partial shutdown by the Congressional Republican's in the past demonstrated.

The US government cannot "create" money. It is limited by the Constitution to collecting money from taxation and borrowing money to fund authorized expenditures. Both the collecting of money through taxation and the borrowing of money is limited by Congress.

Ignorance does not provide a foundation for an opinion.

 

There is no account that the Treasury draws money from to spend. They simply type numbers in to a computer or issue checks. The General Fund is just the name they give to their credits. It's like having an excel spreadsheet keeping track of your spending. Your excel sheet can say you have $10,000... but when you spend you're not taking it out of the excel file. It's just a way to balance the system. The Treasury does not need money in the "general fund" to spend money.

90% of Treasury debt is bought by banks. You are 100% wrong here.

Human beings choosing not to spend because they think we don't have money is different than the reality behind whether we have money or not. I just care about reality.

Semantics. The government might not type the numbers in to a computer, but they can dictate how much money they want to create. You have a very limited understanding of the monetary system. Almost high school level. I'm speaking at a very high level of the actual mechanics used. The Fed, Primary Dealers, and Treasury can create an infinite amount of money for Congress to spend whatever they want... and there is never a time in which the Treasury is "out of money". It's a literal impossibility to run out of made up money.

You witness this right in front of your very eyes the last 7 years and you still think there is some magic fund that the government needs to spend money, haha.

 

I've asked you plenty of questions in this thread. Your record of answering them is not great. Not that I expect you to answer anything since you don't know what you're talking about. However it is great fun baiting you into saying stupid things. I mean, you are not disappointing in that regard. So tell me again how there is no limit to the amount of debt we can accrue, interest we can pay, or money we can generate!

 

I've answered every question you have asked. You just don't comprehend the answers. Way above your intelligence level. I'd suggest you drop everything you think you know and just listen to me. But since you're a conservative and you guys hate education I realize that's not gonna happen. In the mean time, let me know when we run out of our made up money. I know conservatives have been talking about it for a century, the limit must be coming up soon, lol.

 

When I was 20-21 years old I use to think like you guys did. Heck, even college level courses teach old knowledge of our monetary system. I came upon a group of educators/economists that said the very stuff I'm saying now and I thought they were nuts. But when you start actually diving in to the details and understanding what goes on at the highest levels of our monetary system, everything they were saying makes complete sense. It's tough to get that light bulb to go off, it took me a while also. I just told them it was nothing but semantics and they are just loons. But, every time I had something to say they had evidence backing up their statements. And pretty soon I realized I was just talking about theory and they were talking about reality. Slowly but surely, I studied and learned exactly what they were talking about.

Once you understand how it works, you understand what I'm talking about. As long as you guys believe the government should run the countries finances like you're taught in personal finance, you will never figure out why government debt/spending is necessary for the private sector to function in our economy. There is no limit to how much money the government can spend. Congress tries to create human induced limits like the debt ceiling, but as we've seen through the decades, that is a meaningless arbitrary number. There is absolutely no limit to how much our country can spend. There is no fund that our government uses to spend, they'll never have to rely on China buying our debt, private sector buying debt, etc, etc. They have an infinite amount of money.

And my new favorite is the world reserve currency nonsense. That has literally nothing to do with our monetary system and our ability to spend whatever we want.

 

note you're just saying "once you study it".

That's not an argument. But your idea that the government can spend as much money as it wants is true. The zimbabwean government has spent quintillions! and just look at how great that's turned out for them.

 

Argentina ran out of made up money. Maybe you can answer how that happened.

 

I still can't figure out how you cannot comprehend this. At this point I think you are just trolling. You are confusing economic conditions with the monetary system. Argentina has not run out of money. I don't get how you cannot understand the difference between spending too much to harm the economy versus the fact you have an infinite amount to spend. You conservatives are really shocking when it comes to being able to understand complex topics. You basically have the intelligence of Sarah Palin and think you have all the answers, it's hilarious.

 

How am I confusing economic conditions with the monetary system?

 

"Argentina ran out of made up money. Maybe you can answer how that happened."

Argentina didn't run out of money. Their economy collapsed to the point where spending more money would not help. Like I have said this entire time, you are confused. We have an infinite amount of money to spend, does not mean we should spend an infinite amount and does not mean there aren't negative/positive consequences to how much we spend. I've laid it out on a silver platter for you, usually I would charge quite a bit for this knowledge. And you still can't grasp it. The United States will never run out of USD and will never have a problem paying off interest payments on it's national debt. Not sure how that is so hard to grasp. I always think you are smarter than this, but maybe I'm giving you too much credit.

You have the same argument they had in the 30s. It's that embarrassing and far fetched. There is no limit to how high our debt/spending can go.

 

Great argument. There are a lot of similarities between Zimbabwe and the United States. Haha. At least you finally admitted the simplest concept I've been talking about this entire time in the fact the government can spend as much as it wants. That's hard for conservatives to comprehend. They always believe we are running out of money, lol.

 

The US can *spend* as much as it wants, the question is whether or not we can actually produce what we spend in relative GDP. While before I was concerned about our Debt-GDP at 100%, I realize now after thinking about it that our Debt-GDP is at 100% with only 20 % capacity...That's to say the reason the US is in debt is because we're underperforming, not because we're overspending.

If the US doubled it's current capacity rate, who knows how many billions in real-time money we could generate if we doubled the amount of entrepreneurs, capitalists and business people in America. In other words, it's time to start injecting capital into the market again. But unlike with 'Trickle-down", it can't go to those who already have capital that defeats the purpose.

We need the biggest injection of capital to Middle-Class Americans in US History. The economy would boom tremendously if we could engage in massive Student Debt forgiveness, Credit Card forgiveness, etc. A major uplifting of the burdens in the US Economic System. The domestic growth would be OUT of this world. It would make the 4% Christie talked about look as meager and small as it is.

I'm talking 25-50% annual domestic growth, it's literally THAT possible since we're starting from the ground floor of only 20% capacity.

 

Agree completely. We need a massive fiscal expansion. Trillions and trillions of dollars dumped in to the private sector/middle class. Infrastructure, education, science, jobs, etc, etc. Unfortunately that is impossible with right wingers. The only chance we will ever have to spend WWI/WWII kind of money is if we start WWIII. Which is sad. It will take multiple generations to get educated enough to understand how economies work. So we have no hope with the current generation of conservatives and their offspring. Hopefully a large % of them can get educated enough outside of their households.

 

Part of the reason it's difficult, is that people have a tendency to link their domestic budgets, with government budgets. But there's one big difference between the government and the individual: The Individual makes his/her money proportional to either his/her labor or his/her productive ventures. The government's "money" is afforded to itself, by itself with no strings attached. Before you had explained it to me so succiently, I too was among these other thinkers because I had believed the US Government needed to maintain its budget to remain faithfully credible.

But what I didn't realize, is that even if the dollar had been taken off the Gold Standard, the dollar was still backed by something tangible: US Domestic goods and production. Right now, the reason the US Economy is struggling(relatively speaking) is that the US is heavily consumptive and we aren't nearly producing enough to keep up with that Consumption.. Along with shipping jobs overseas, and it becomes a major killer to the US Economy.

Spending in of itself, isn't wrong. It's HOW we spend. We can choose to spend to consume, or we can choose to spend to invest. Right now, the US Economy(and Americans in general) are still in "spend to consume" mode, which is NOT how the heavy hitters play this game. The economists and big time millionaires at the top of the food chain "invest", which another way to put it is they engage in the Art of Duplication.

When we "spend to consume", that one dollar is translated as one dollar. When we "spend to invest", that one dollar can become five dollars. The even bigger challenge, of course isn't so much consumption or investment. But the fact that, if you're a Middle class American you are almost FORCED to spend to consume. After all, you need to live right? But those with a cushion, or even making a good bit more than they take out, can use those savings to further duplicate and have far greater earning power.

Good government policy needs to give a cushion to Middle Class Americans, who otherwise don't have it. And then, we need to work on translating those Middle Class Americans into future entreprenurs, which will give rise to an even higher standard of living, and of course much higher earning power for all Americans. When the money is controlled by a few, only a few prosper. When it's controlled by many, all people prosper.