The debt ceiling should actually be lowered.

[RB TexLa]

Left and right can argue over how to pay the price for it, but we have got to stop stealing from future generations. It really is no different than a criminal stealing from them.

[pnwmom]

1. Really doesn't have to happen like that. After WW2, we had a MUCH

higher debt relative to the GNP, and we were able to work our way out of it without hurting younger generations.

It looks scary when you see how the debt limit has risen over the years -- a lot less scary when you compare it to the GNP, which has also risen greatly over the same part of time.

[DJ13]

2. Growth would lower the deficit

Thats what our priority should be before the spending is slashed.

[quaker bill]

3. Intergenerational transfer is a myth.

money is fiction. It is all zeros and ones, keystrokes and mouse clicks. The zeros and ones are destroyed by taxes and re-created by government spending. You cannot steal money that has not been created yet.

There is no large pile of paper currency that matches in value the accumulated of wealth in assets. The stuff you fold and put in your pocket is only money because we all believe it is. It is no different than checks or debit swipes. It is all ones and zeros, and the treasury has the password to make more of them with the click of a few buttons.

[RB TexLa]

4. You must really be a danger to the system, I bet they are tracking you

:rofl:

[Travis_0004]

5. Tell that to the person who is owed the money.

I have some government bonds A small amount, but its mine. That money is very real to me.

Since the US dollar is just Fiat currency, you are right that it can be created and destroyed with a few mouse clicks, but we still have to pay interest on the debt, and creating more money can affect inflation rates. The fed is using QE2 to create more money, but printing money is a bit like musical chairs. As long as the music is playing, everybody is happy, but it can not continue forever.

[quaker bill]

13. and you know this how?

How much "money" was created during the bailout? The correct answer lies in the many trillions of dollars. If the common canard about the supply of money had anything to do with its value beyond the margins, very high inflation should be happening right now. It isn't. There is no 1:1 relationship. On the other hand, hyperinflation can occur without printing much money at all.

To you and I, "money" should seem quite real, neither you or I happen to be soveriegn issuers of a fiat currency. In fact for "money" to work at all, for you and I it must seem quite real. This is the difference between a person or a family and a soveriegn government that issues its own currency.

In our system, all "money" is created and destroyed by government. A individual dollar, at the current low tax burden (lowest in 50+ years) goes through roughly 6 earn to purchase cycles before taxes consume it completely and it is "gone". It is then reincarnated by government spending. This reincarnated dollar is "new" and from that point runs through 6 earn to purchase cycles before it is entirely consumed in taxes. It is a form of virtual recycling.

The dollars not recycled are "saved" by consumers and businesses. Money saved is taken out of circulation and its recycling is postponed. For the stockpile of "saved" money to grow, more "money" must come into existence, or alternately less of it would be in circulation, and inflation/high interest rates would result. More money comes into existence through deficit spending.

A government cannot truly default in terms of a currency it owns and issues. Notions about fiscal discipline and austerity being necessary are in fact roughly as true as the notion that tax cuts for the rich produce jobs. There are odd and unusual circumstances where either might be true, but in the more general case, neither of these notions are dependable and both notions arise from the right wing.

It is important to note who's interest is most at risk due to inflation. It is not and has never been the worker. Inflation is a real threat to bankers because we get to pay off our homes and cars with cheaper dollars. This is why the right wing will work to control inflation with overt fiscal policy set to create unemployment.

[originalpckelly]

15. Yeah, and gold really isn't anything more than shiny shit people choose to believe in.

Perhaps we should go really old school and break out the cowry shells? Or maybe go back to shekels, aka bales of barley?

Maybe we should use salt? Now there's a system of commodity money most Americans could get behind. If you ever run out of money and have a processed meat high in sodium, you could always pay in that.

"Well, the salt's in their somewhere!"

[quaker bill]

16. You are correct

Gold is a shiny metal that people believe in. Lead is a dull gray metal that people don't believe in. Except for belief, these two substances are otherwise pretty similar. Why not titanium, it is roughly as inert, quite rare, more durable, has a higher melt point, and can be colored in so many interesting ways....

Gold is real, its money value is fiction. A broadly shared fiction, but fiction none the less.

Understand that all this only works because you (a non-soveriegn, and non-money issuing person) believe it. Your belief is essential, so thanks for helping.

What you need to believe is different than what a soveriegn money issuing government needs to believe. Money is made and destroyed by mouse clicks and keystrokes when your are the soveriegn issuer. 4 people in cubicles with desktop machines created literally trillions of dollars of "real" money, just exactly as real as any cash or gold you own, over the course of months buying "troubled assets". They did not borrow a nickle from anyone to do it. Please explain how this is not "fiction".

While you are at it, then explain how coming up with less "money" (2.5 trillion) to cover Social Security liabilities is actually a problem or requires borrowing money from anyone. Have fun with that because it actually doesn't.

Austerity is a well ingrained right wing fiction. It is part of a massive economic fiction, like how lowering taxes on the wealthy will produce jobs.

[ixion]

6. k/r

it's going to hsve to stop sooner rather than later. why not now?

[Skink]

7. medicare and SS should pay off earlier.

and should pay better benefits.

[frazzled]

8. You and the crackpot Republican Congressman from Georgia

Seem to be the only people who actually believe that.

It made big news last week when Rep. Broun made the relatively insane suggestion to lower the debt ceiling. Welcome to the batshit crazy thinking that would create havoc for the entire country.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) found a novel way to out-conservative even Tea Party members demanding the debt limit never be raised: he suggested the ceiling be lowered instead.

In an op-ed in the National Review Online, Broun urged members to sign onto legislation that would reduce the debt ceiling by $1 trillion next year, forcing Congress to go beyond balancing the budget and instead find a huge surplus, which experts suggest would be tough given that a sudden $2 trillion plus total cut to federal spending would plunge the economy into a deep recession.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/rep-paul-broun-lets-lower-the-debt-ceiling.php

And to think, this is DU.

[Maru Kitteh]

11. Indeed. Theings that make you go hmmmm. n/t

[Jack Sprat]

9. Stop the wars

Would save a many a life as well as a chitload of money. You can easily reduce the debt 100 billion every 12 months.

[johnaries]

10. The debt ceiling is meaningless. To reduce future deficits we

need to increase revenues by encouraging economic growth. That means MORE spending now. Cuts should come later.

[Jack Sprat]

12. Why are debt and deficits unimportant

until a Democrat is President?

When Reagan became president debt and deficits did not matter.

When George Herbert Walker Bush became president debt and deficits did not matter.

When Bill Clinton became president they mattered.

When George W. Bush became presient debt and deficits did not matter.

Now that Obama is president, now they matter again.


Look at the presidents who contributed to most of the current debt. They are Reagan, Bush Sr, Bush Jr.


Here is a question I have for you.

Why was the debt ceiling raised matter-of-factly under George W. Bush? And now why is it of such necessity?

[Jim Warren]

14. When the many have so little

and the few have so much, it is not the measure of irony that it is the few that demand you buy into the whole scheme of paying them back?