Debt as a % of GDP is not constant, and is on track to grow "far beyond any previously recorded level", according to the Budget Office. [1]
1,220 karma · joined May 4, 2007
Your point about the government being 'we the people' is fair, but the general population experiencing increased economic activity does not pay off the debt unless the government is disciplined enough to use that activity toward that purpose. Also I'll quibble that the phrase "We the People" in the US Constitution is a statement that We, the actual humans of this country, are deciding to create a government to serve us. The government is a creature created by the people, but it is not the people.
But plenty of economists looked at the economic hole left by the 2008 financial crisis,
and concluded the stimulus policies on the table weren't nearly big enough to fill it.
The size of the hole is all that matters.
Whatever level of deficit spending is required to fill it is the right level of deficit spending.[1]
We need the government to be out there borrowing money because of the long-term investments it's making in our economy[2]
1) The government is special because it can go to extreme measures to repay loans if necessary (i.e., print more money or raise taxes)
2) The reliability of the government means that it can borrow at a low rate (say, 3%) and make investments that are worth far more than that (say, 10%).
Put those together, and the government's borrowing amounts to a net benefit to society.
This argument reminds me of the 'then a miracle occurs' comic [3]. It doesn't hold water because
1) The extreme measures are very harmful - they cause high inflation and hardship amongst taxpayers.
2) Even if we accept that government investment makes a good return (a highly questionable assertion), that return does not go to the government. If the government borrows money to build a new road, then there is no doubt some economic benefit, but the government does not receive that benefit, and they are on the hook for the repayment anyway. So government spending does represent a pure cost - not an "investment". And in any case, interest payments represent investment that can no longer happen.
I would also point out that back when we ran briefly ran a surplus in the late 1990s, economists were not exclaiming about how terrible this was, or how paying off the debt represented a missed opportunity or a catastophe in the making. Everyone agreed at that time that surpluses were good, and that paying down the debt was good. The current "this is fine" thinking smacks of economists who have a predisposition to accept and justify the status quo, whether it is objectively good or not.
So all of that is to say that I'm with you - government debt is bad. We are in danger of some combination of insolvency, default, or very high inflation. And once we enter that spiral it will be impossible to get out of it without permanent damage to the economy and the global standing of the US (such as it is).
[1] https://theweek.com/articles/618419/why-americas-gigantic-na...
[2] https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/bonds/us-debt-econo...
[3] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sidney+Harris+comic+miracle+occurs...
I'm sure there is a whole library full of legal precedent around "who is liable, and when". My earlier point was really that "Machines are not accountable" does not mean "Machines cannot make decisions". It really means "We need to think about who is accountable when this machine makes a mistake.
I'd suggest a lesson that might be less agreeable to IBM, Microsoft, Google, et al:
"The makers of software must be accountable for the mistakes made by that software."
This seems quite small, even without the aid of modern IDEs. Is there any evidence that such a limit exists?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/10/supreme-c...
And a slightly older article (before the decision) hoping that it would turn out the way that it did:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/12/chevron-d...
I do not expect Congress to atomically approve or disapprove every regulatory action. That is a straw man. I expect them to write clear laws that state what agencies can do, what they cannot do, and how they should do it.
The case before the court is a good example of how the opaque and unaccountable nature of a federal agency allows them to serve their own self-interest at the expense of the citizens they are supposed to protect. Specifically, Congress specified in law that "authorizes the government to require trained, professional observers on regulated fishing vessels". But their law did not specify who would pay for these observers. So under Chevron, the agency got to decide. And, shocker! They decided they did not have to pay for it.
This ruling stops that specific abuse, and hopefully many others. The actions of federal agencies is not generally a thing to be desired.
The case before the court is a good example of how the opaque and unaccountable nature of a federal agency allows them to serve their own self-interest at the expense of the citizens they are supposed to protect. Specifically, Congress specified in law that "authorizes the government to require trained, professional observers on regulated fishing vessels". But their law did not specify who would pay for these observers. So under Chevron, the agency got to decide. And, shocker! They decided they did not have to pay for it.
This ruling stops that specific abuse, and hopefully many others. The actions of federal agencies is not generally a thing to be desired.
Why didn't those super powerful vacuum-fillers carry the day in the Civil Rights Movement, or when marginal income tax rates were 90+%, or when the EPA was created? Because they don't have the power that everyone thinks they do (maybe even they think they have, themselves).
Why not? Why can't Congress write complete regulatory statutes? Isn't that literally their job? Yes, it is. "Chevron defense" has been a way for Congress to shirk its duty for decades. If the law is ambiguous, courts must resolve the ambiguity. That is exactly what courts are for. To say that it would be better for an opaque, appeal-proof bureaucracy to have the final say was a ludicrous step on the path to our ever-growing executive tumor.
The tone of your quotes from Kagan give the impression that federal agencies are "responsible" and able to use "discretion". But agencies are political animals, subject to the whims of the current president, who can potentially change every four years. Courts are much slower to change, and much less vulnerable to the political whims of the current administration.
So many people are polarized and focused on winning presidential elections so they have their hands on the levers, that they never question whether the levers should be there in the first place. Perhaps politics would not be so polarized if the President did not have so much power, and the stakes were not so high.
I'll take the opportunity to plug a fantastic podcast on the history of English, creatively named "The History of English Podcast".
Now it turns out that it was (mostly) a farce all along. Most recycling ends up in landfills, and the recycling process has terrible pollution side effects of its own. The shocking part of it to me is that it has taken us forty plus years for this to even approach mainstream conversation. The idea that "recycling is a sham" sounded like a conspiracy theory up until recently.
The level of effort that has been put into marketing recycling, just to enable ever-increasing consumerism is staggering.
I think his point is that the FDA finds that there is no evidence to support this claim. What evidence do you have that this claim is true?
A good company charges money to solve a problem. The company only needs to be as big as the problem. Anything beyond that is just an exercise for investors. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but it should not be viewed as the only way to be successful.
Having said all that, I don't think Charan's assertion is "controversial" at all. In fact it seems to be the default assumption in virtually every publicly traded company.