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Comment by AC__ | Hacker News Reader

That's a terrible argument.

You're talking about public debt, which is a small fraction of all US wealth holdings (household + corporate + government), and can be trivially managed. Further, unlike a lot of countries, the US has significant spare taxing capability (it rests in the middle tier globally on taxation). The US could easily raise $200 billion in new annual income taxes on the top 25% and not miss a beat - that single move alone would handle any potential issues from the public debt cost. Or better yet: the US can constrain its spending growth (as it has been), allowing income and assets to continue to outrun the problem.

And of course the US owns the global reserve currency, which enables it to export inflation to the rest of the world as a means to reduce the domestic hit of things like QE (which is why the Eurozone's QE hasn't been as effective). When the US uses the dollar to improve its fiscal circumstances, the rest of the world foots a big part of the bill. While that's sort of like cheating, it's an advantage the US possesses that nobody else does.

Yeah you're right, your argument that the entire globe will absorb U.S. inflation indefinitely is much more grounded.

My argument rests on the fact that the US economy is the world's #2 manufacturing economy, has among the highest median incomes (and median disposable incomes), has one of the most productive economies with one of the highest GDP per capita numbers, does not have a demographic bomb going off (Europe, Japan, China), is capable of being fully self-reliant on energy (which very few nations are), has a boom coming in energy exports via natural gas, continues to have one of the most innovative and dynamic economies, is growing as fast as or faster than competing major economies, owns 45% of all global wealth, has significant spare taxing capacity, US households dramatically reduced their debt to income ratio over the last five years (while most competing economies have seen increases in that ratio), and is the global leader across numerous major industries.

You picked out the one thing that is the easy trump card: the global reserve currency makes it all that much easier for the US.

I must disagree. The US has a shortage of employable workers as evidenced by the current unemployment rate relative to wages; it has a demographic imbalance where too few young people earn enough to support resources drawn by a much larger aging population; and there is no realistic excess taxing capacity for political and economic reasons outside the scope of this reply.

You're wrong. I believe you're referring to this statistic: "... 0.7% of the global adult population, and they account for 45% of global wealth"[1] The U.S., ON PAPER, holds about 1/4(25.40%) of global wealth not half. [2]

[1] - http://fortune.com/2015/10/14/1-percent-global-wealth-credit...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribut...

I'm not wrong in fact.

"Some 39 percent of the world’s wealth belongs to Americans, while Western Europe accounts for another 31 percent."

And that was before the huge asset rebound in the US, and was a drop of 12% due to the great recession.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/americas-domina...

Allianz's 2015 report indicates North America holds 45% of all global financial assets. Unless you're pretending that Canada and Mexico hold 20% of all global assets, your figures are wildly off the mark (Canada is less rich than the US per capita on average, and Mexico is far less so); at a minimum the US holds 40% to 42% of all global wealth.

https://www.allianz.com/v_1443702256000/media/economic_resea...

A sovereign currency issuing government doesn't need to raise taxes in order to spend, and the US government only issues USD denominated "debt" in order to target the overnight interest rate. The "debt" people talk about is not a borrowing operation.

The thing people who harp on debt miss is that it's a zero-sum game, not an absolute competition.

Yes, the US has debt, but if the market believes it's stronger than any of the alternatives... the US dollar still holds value.

The US only has "debt" in USD and pays interest in USD which it creates. It deosn't even really have "debt" in the sense that it hasn't "borrowed" to fund any spending. The bond market just allows USD account holders at the fed to earn interest on reserves and is used as a tool to target the overnight interest rate. Nothing more.

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