In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
You're still not getting me. I'm still completely open to bringing in the best and the brightest from around the world. We just have to be careful that we are not getting dangerously reliant on importing teachers.
I know its a difficult concept to grasp as a Americans who are told from the moment we are able to understand human speech that we live in the best country in the world and it will always be that way, but imagine what would happen if we didn't improve our educational system and a further economic swoon makes leaving a foreign country to teach in the U.S. less attractive. Imagine a world dynamic where we have substantially less clout economically than we do right now. We could be in serious, serious trouble. Others may disagree and say that this is an impossible or extremely unlikely scenario, but in my opinion if our educational system continues to decline, its going to be an inevitability somewhere down the line. 50 years, 100 years, I don't know, but somewhere down the line.
The bottom line is our education system is lagging behind. I merely brought that up as an example and I'll avoid doing so in the future because it invites these kinds of diversions, and that's not my point at all.
phew. how did we get here, this all started off about the fiscal crisis. time to regain focus.
On November 21 2012 18:17 Sub40APM wrote: And despite having 'more rigorous' pre-college education systems it is not at all clear that either China or South Korea have been able to perform better than the United States in measures of either economic or psychological well being. I just dont buy the claim that "Chinese students did better on international standardized tests than Americans" automatically leads "Americans are going to be worst off because of it." And quite frankly I even question the performance of an average foreign student compared to an average American ones; perhaps the people from non-America that are encountered in a college setting literally represent the top 1%.
To more specifically address this part of your statement, I would please ask that you don't crop out a good 3/4's of my post. I acknowledged that "education proficiency =/= 'psychological well-being" but you chose to ignore the part where I mentioned that east asia's (more specifically SK) systems for dealing with mental health issues are not adequate. That's just one other factor that plays into it. China for example has the enormous problem of the gender gap. I could go on and on. Education is not a 1 to 1 ratio for general well-being, but it is a major factor. To deny that having Americans currently at a disadvantage educationally compared to kids in Finland, Canada, South Korea, and China is not a significant problem, well then I think you're pretty much at odds with the entire academic world. Your final point neglecting measures such as the ISA results I linked, I'm not even going to bother addressing again, because you cite nothing to refute it, and rather just submit conjecture as sufficient proof, which it is not.
On November 21 2012 17:27 Souma wrote: I actually agree with sam here. I had pretty decent education and to be honest, I feel like we rush kids into careers way too early. For me it's more an issue of maturity and "finding yourself" than it is knowledge though, though knowledge is a great plus. The thing is, however, students can already delay their graduation and spend five, even six years in university if they want to. iirc super seniors are getting more and more common. But really, I wouldn't mind if we extended high school by a year or two, but if we did that we'd have to revamp the entire high school system (should do it anyway).
If only it were possible to send all students abroad for a year.
Last post on education then I'm done for the moment so we can focus on more current events. There was a TED talk I really enjoyed by Ken Robinson. If I recall correctly he focuses primarily on Britain, but much of it is readily applicable to the U.S. Concerning career paths and "finding yourself" his point is that our education is a bit backward in K-12 when it comes to this issue.
If I were to point to a model that intrigues me the most as far as improvement goes, I'd point to Finland. It's a model of efficiency. Whereas South Korea achieves highly by pushing a regimen that would seem radically strict and inflexible to most Americans, and indeed has significant drawbacks concerning the amount of stress that students have to endure, Finland on the other hand excels with a work load that is exponentially less rigorous in terms of hours studying and homework done.
At the same time Finland, as that article suggests, has no private schools. A concept that won't catch on here in America for the foreseeable future. That said, there is a lot to be gained from looking at their model. We can't copy/paste it into American society but I think there are definitely areas where we could gain greatly from reforming to a system similar to theirs.
Can anyone explain why politicians are so concerned about the deficit and debt? Why is it so important to balance the US budget? What is the long term problem created by massive debt that people keep referring to? Is it just a fear of inflation and currency speculation? Sorry for so many questions, I just don't really understand this point.
On November 21 2012 19:52 Nikk wrote: Can anyone explain why politicians are so concerned about the deficit and debt? Why is it so important to balance the US budget? What is the long term problem created by massive debt that people keep referring to? Is it just a fear of inflation and currency speculation? Sorry for so many questions, I just don't really understand this point.
This might seem like a silly question uponfirst glance but in fact you are correct in asking these questions. In short, people often compare the budget spendings of a country to that of a household. Obviously being in debt as a household is not a good thing. You will need to pay it back plus interrest meaning you will effectively have less money to spend on other things. In an extreme situation you could even go bankrupt. However a country is not a household and borrowing money as a country doesn't quite work the same as borrowing money as a household. A good article giving some perspective on this issue would be this one in the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html
Why people care so much about this? I don't really have an answer, other than the fact that people make the above comparison and thus arrive at the conclusion that resolving debt is the most important issue at current times.
Imo one of the above posts had it right stating that there are far more pressing issues at the moment for America. Such as unemployment. As noted people are putting their entire lifes on hold because they can't find jobs after graduating college, and have been doing that for the passed few years mind you. Pushing America over the cliff at this time you risk adding a few more years to this status quo possibly resulting in, effectively, loosing an entire generation. Which is not only bad for the economy of America in the long term but also a personal tragedy for all of those involved.
On November 21 2012 19:52 Nikk wrote: Can anyone explain why politicians are so concerned about the deficit and debt? Why is it so important to balance the US budget? What is the long term problem created by massive debt that people keep referring to? Is it just a fear of inflation and currency speculation? Sorry for so many questions, I just don't really understand this point.
I guess I'll throw in my hand at giving a cliff notes of why this became a big issue, but I'd encourage further research, and not to just take my word for it.
After the 2007 Financial Crisis Americans got really freaking angry after we realized how irresponsible some banks had been in creating the economic cluster fuck that caused a major setback for economies not just in the U.S. but around the world. But lets not kid ourselves, we were more pissed about the effects on the U.S. rather than the grand picture. This anger manifested itself in a number of ways.
Some groups, like Occupy Wall Street directed their anger more towards corporate behemoths and the banks that were "too big to fail" and received government aid because without it we would have been even worse off. OWS isn't all peachy when it comes to the government's role and there was a certain general anti-establishment vibe to it, but in general things were more nasty between this movement and the banks & companies.
Other groups, the most notable one being the Tea Party, directed their frustration with the inability of the U.S. government to effectively manage the economy and promote general fiscal responsibility.
There are convincing arguments that the complaints of both of these parties were valid. After all, its widely agreed that banks were irresponsible in how they handled sub-prime mortgages. At the same time the government failed to properly regulate these things.
As the years went on and the sub-prime mortgage scandal and 2007 Financial Crisis faded in the rear-view mirror the Tea Party and other constituents similarly aligned naturally turned their focus to the Federal Deficit. For good reason, the government operating in the red to the tune of $1 trillion + every year isn't a good thing by any means.
In 2011 it became the focus of a major political foray, even though it wasn't like America was at risk of imminent collapse if it wasn't dealt with. The pretext was that House Republicans were tired of this being an issue that was "kicked down the road" and not dealt with. After winning a resounding victory in the 2010 mid-term elections there was the interpretation in the House that Republicans had a mandate to pursue deficit reduction with an unrelenting furor.
Basically, without diving into the exact details of the 2011 crisis, that's the short cause/effect of why we got here. Like I said, its far more complicated in reality, and I encourage you to do more reading, but that's the bare essentials as far as political context goes.
The debt crisis in 2011 was only a debt crisis because politicians a) held hostage a previously routine vote that had dire consequences if not passed (aka the debt ceiling vote - which if not oked could mean U.S. default and world economic catastrophe), and b) were not able to reach a compromise quickly enough to completely avoid the effects of the panic that ensued (U.S. credit rating dropping a level).
It's pretty interesting in the realm of things that have happened in recent U.S. politics because it set a previously unheard-of precedent for the level of risk a party was willing to assume in order to achieve their political goals. This is why it was a big deal. In 2011 all the chips were on the table, and Dems and the GOP narrowly avoided busting the entire U.S. economy. Now, with the fiscal cliff the stakes are still significant, though not quite at the same scale as 2011. Its funny that "fiscal cliff" sounds so much more foreboding, but really the debt ceiling crisis was the bigger fiasco. If sequestration is a "fiscal cliff," then failing to raise the debt ceiling was "an endless pit opening a rift into the gates of hell."
On November 21 2012 19:52 Nikk wrote: Can anyone explain why politicians are so concerned about the deficit and debt? Why is it so important to balance the US budget? What is the long term problem created by massive debt that people keep referring to? Is it just a fear of inflation and currency speculation? Sorry for so many questions, I just don't really understand this point.
Why people care so much about this? I don't really have an answer, other than the fact that people make the above comparison and thus arrive at the conclusion that resolving debt is the most important issue at current times.
That is hopefully just a cynical view that you stated as well as the article. People who make these decisions can't actually think a government with a sovereign currency is anything at all like a household can they? That is really depressing and scary.
Also from the article you linked:
Now, the fact that federal debt isn’t at all like a mortgage on America’s future doesn’t mean that the debt is harmless. Taxes must be levied to pay the interest, and you don’t have to be a right-wing ideologue to concede that taxes impose some cost on the economy, if nothing else by causing a diversion of resources away from productive activities into tax avoidance and evasion.
Why must taxes be levied to pay the interest? Is it just a self-imposed restriction for fear of inflation? I just don't understand the desire for a balanced budget at any time, let alone during a recession when it seems to me clearly ridiculous.
On November 21 2012 20:26 p4NDemik wrote: As the years went on and the sub-prime mortgage scandal and 2007 Financial Crisis faded in the rear-view mirror the Tea Party and other constituents similarly aligned naturally turned their focus to the Federal Deficit. For good reason, the government operating in the red to the tune of $1 trillion + every year isn't a good thing by any means.
Why is it not a good thing? Is this really just about ideology and not economics?
There was a real economic concern behind handling the deficit, if you want to get some perspective, I'd recommend reading The Price of Politics. Woodward sets the stage quite well, where the major players all agreed that yes, this was an important issue.
Ideology played a major part though because it fueled the lengths to which the opposing parties were willing to go to in order to get their way, which was what set the crisis in motion.
It's mainly about a lack of knowledge or "stupidity" of the general voter (this is in no way US specific). Avg. Joe whiteout much of a clue about economics or/and accounting sees being "in debt" as a bad thing (aside from the tax benefits it can give you, which varies a lot depending on where you live).
So what does a person that never had much of an education in the financial field know about debt and deficit? He knows what he can see in his own personal live:
Debt: You have to pay it back with interest --> Bad. You got it because you bought stuff you could not really afford --> Bad. Tons of people went bankrupt because they went into debt for their houses --> Bad.
Deficit: You spend more than you have --> Bad.
Now please tell me, is there any easier way to catch votes than to be against something that is clearly "Bad" at first sight?
Btw: I'm actually all for reducing debt/deficit... But right now, for a country, is just like the worst time to do it, right now is more the right time to go more into debt/deficit to get the motor going again.. The problem is, as soon as the crisis is over, people will forget about the debt until the next crisis hits...
On November 21 2012 20:57 Velr wrote: Now please tell me, is there any easier way to catch votes than to be against something that is clearly "Bad" at first sight?
Btw: I'm actually all for reducing debt/deficit... But right now, for a country, is just like the worst time to do it, right now is more the right time to go more into debt/deficit to get the motor going again.. The problem is, as soon as the crisis is over, people will forget about the debt until the next crisis hits...
So you think politicians are only saying this to get votes? That is even worse than being ignorant, that is almost malicious and/or misanthropic.
Why are you for reducing the debt and deficit?
On November 21 2012 20:52 p4NDemik wrote: There was a real economic concern behind handling the deficit, if you want to get some perspective, I'd recommend reading The Price of Politics. Woodward sets the stage quite well, where the major players all agreed that yes, this was an important issue.
Ideology played a major part though because it fueled the lengths to which the opposing parties were willing to go to in order to get their way, which was what set the crisis in motion.
On November 21 2012 20:57 Velr wrote: It's mainly about a lack of knowledge or "stupidity" of the general voter (this is in no way US specific). Avg. Joe whiteout much of a clue about economics or/and accounting sees being "in debt" as a bad thing (aside from the tax benefits it can give you, which varies a lot depending on where you live).
So what does a person that never had much of an education in the financial field know about debt and deficit? He knows what he can see in his own personal live:
Debt: You have to pay it back with interest --> Bad. You got it because you bought stuff you could not really afford --> Bad. Tons of people went bankrupt because they went into debt for their houses --> Bad.
Deficit: You spend more than you have --> Bad.
Now please tell me, is there any easier way to catch votes than to be against something that is clearly "Bad" at first sight?
Btw: I'm actually all for reducing debt/deficit... But right now, for a country, is just like the worst time to do it, right now is more the right time to go more into debt/deficit to get the motor going again.. The problem is, as soon as the crisis is over, people will forget about the debt until the next crisis hits...
I think that's a bit of a pessimistic view upon how a voter thinks, but in general you're touching on why its an easy concept to pitch to the electorate. It's also easy to pitch because it is a relevant concern. Not so relevant that holding the debt limit hostage was the reasonable approach to getting it done, but relevant enough to push for reform now, while we are in a reform-mindset post recession and post 2007-2008 financial crisis.
If I was to critique the Republican's parties handling of the deficit talks, I would say they absolutely picked the right time to bring it up politically for their party. Just in general politically 2011 was the time that the political climate was ripe for talking about the deficit. America was just coming off it's worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and we had a mindset that we were going to look at things across the board and push for better efficiency within the Federal government. The problem was that the tactics used were too extreme, and there were issues on both sides that hampered coming to an agreement. The Obama administration was new to compromise post-Rahm Emmanuel and make a number of procedural mistakes in the negotiations, but from what I have read I find it hard to deny their desire to reach a deal. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi had some friction arise between their respective bodies, but the Democrats were overall solid as far as maintaining relations within the party and being able to deliver votes. Boehner as a leader of the Republican house failed to meet the threshold necessary to truly keep his caucus in tact and focused. If the friction in the Democratic party could be described as cracks, the Republican party had a sizable canyon between the factions within the party and the key players that lead those factions (namely Boehner, McConnell, and Eric Cantor w/Paul Ryan in Cantor's corner).
There were faults on both sides that made it really messy in the end, but it was the right time for the discussion in my opinion.
On November 21 2012 21:46 p4NDemik wrote: It's also easy to pitch because it is a relevant concern. Not so relevant that holding the debt limit hostage was the reasonable approach to getting it done, but relevant enough to push for reform now, while we are in a reform-mindset post recession and post 2007-2008 financial crisis.
This comes back to my original question. Why is deficit reduction a relevant concern? If anything, shouldn't we increase deficit spending during a recession or in times of high unemployment?
On November 21 2012 21:46 p4NDemik wrote: It's also easy to pitch because it is a relevant concern. Not so relevant that holding the debt limit hostage was the reasonable approach to getting it done, but relevant enough to push for reform now, while we are in a reform-mindset post recession and post 2007-2008 financial crisis.
This comes back to my original question. Why is deficit reduction a relevant concern? If anything, shouldn't we increase deficit spending during a recession or in times of high unemployment?
Depends on your economic point of view, if you are a Keynesian then you would increase spending if you could without having the markets increasing your interest rates. If you believe in someone like Hayek then you wouldn't increase spending because you would believe it only makes things worse.
I'm interested to see how much more assertive Obama is in his second term now that he doesn't have to worry about getting re-elected. That is often the implicit excuse for first term presidents as to why they seem to accomplish little. I hope Obama can use his second term to lead, and try to push through legislation that might be unpopular, but is necessary to move the country forward.
On November 21 2012 21:46 p4NDemik wrote: It's also easy to pitch because it is a relevant concern. Not so relevant that holding the debt limit hostage was the reasonable approach to getting it done, but relevant enough to push for reform now, while we are in a reform-mindset post recession and post 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Why is deficit reduction a relevant concern? If anything, shouldn't we increase deficit spending during a recession or in times of high unemployment?
I'll tackle the second question first. We did increase deficit spending at the outset of the recession. This came primarily through the Stimulus bills. This is Keynesian economics at work and it was effective to an extent.
Now to frame the context of the deficit reduction and 2011 debt crisis talks. By mid-2011 the Stimulus had essentially worked. It hadn't given us a four-year rapid 180 degree turnaround like we all imagined in our wildest dreams, but the U.S. had seen six straight months of solid, continuous growth to our Gross Domestic Product. In the recent election cycle its easy to forget these things with all the negativity, but for the most part we were in a slow but steady recovery. So by 2011 any Stimulus talk was out of the question - the previous Stimulus bills had already stopped the plummeting GDP and were slowly nicking away at the high unemployment numbers. Economic talk aside, politically it wasn't feasible either. Both parties would have caught complete hell from their base if they wrote more checks at that point. (well most of their bases, there are always the religiously faithful out there)
Finally to your main question - Why is deficit reduction a relevant concern? In 2008 before the true extent of the economic damage was known and before stimulus spending (and not to forget the Bush tax cuts, which were a major contributor to the overall deficit) the U.S. federal debt was roughly 40% of it's annual GDP. This was pretty much the average for a long time - the 40-year average on that ratio was 37%. So before the Financial crisis we were going on ho-hum as usual. After all the devastation and the necessary influx of government cash to staunch the bleeding, that ratio ballooned rapidly. In just three years after that estimate in 2008, by the end of the 2011 fiscal year the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the ratio would be up to almost twice that number - 70%.
Alright, still, just numbers - why does this matter? This was the highest ratio of debt-to-annual GDP since WWII. Debt can be a real concern, especially for the U.S. So much of world trade hinges on the value of the U.S. dollar and the ability of the U.S. treasury to back the U.S. dollar. I'm not a economics major, but if spending were to say continue without being discussed as an issue, the U.S. debt would start to reach such a high level that creditors would worry about how safe it actually is to buy bonds. There would be a certain point that the long-term interest on the debt, in combination with the debt itself would just be too much for the U.S. government to ever pay off.
I wish I had some kind of % of GDP number to give you that would be the threshold, but as I write this it escapes me. Again I want to point to The Price of Politics I know somewhere in there it gives a more complete picture. I want to say Geithner put 2025 or 2030 as a date at which this could happen, assuming the current deficit at the time of like $1.6 trillion remained in perpetuity. The key target during all the negotiations was to get the annual deficit % of GDP (this is different than debt % of GDP, don't get confused) down to 1-2%. That was the ideal acceptable level of deficit. I mean ideally we want a surplus of course, but in its absence this would suffice. The U.S. GDP in 2011 was like $15.1 trillion so if we're going to remain extremely cautious concerning economic growth and say that it doesn't go up at all, ignoring all the marginal growth this year, then the target dollar amount for the annual deficit would be approx. $150.9 Billion.
I hope that gives a sense of why there was a reason to care about it and what the goals need to be. Again, one more time I just want to say that what we refer to as the Debt crisis in 2011 was not incurred because U.S. default was right around the corner prior to negotiations, rather it was years away, but a real concern nevertheless. What defined it as a crisis was rather the reluctance of the house republicans to vote to raise the debt ceiling, and the ensuing logjam on capitol hill to negotiate Republicans off the edge of the cliff. One party essentially latched a sort of Jigsaw-esqe timed contraption to the head of the American economy and both parties barely came together to stop it from fucking us all.
Reading the book, there is literally a chapter where Tim Geithner, the head of the U.S. treasury, discusses the current state of affairs when it came down to crunch time. Basically the U.S. treasury regularly sells bonds on Thursday every week (? I'm pretty sure) and since Congress had yet to raise the debt ceiling we were basically out of liquid assets (or cash). To put it in more blunt terms - if people who were interested in buying U.S. bonds weren't convinced we had our act in order they wouldn't buy and we would go into default, and then the earth would turn upside down as we knew it. Woodward's style is very matter of fact, and kind of boring, but when he's recounting and quoting these conversations it's still a worthwhile read if you are interested in learning on the subject.
Mayby this will clear up a bit of the discussion and serve as a bit of a note to the above. There are two ways to look at the debt issue, do not confuse the two! Mayby you should be more specific with your question?
One is a more mechanical approach ("What will happen when you, ceterus parabus, raise the debt of a country") the other one is more specific to the current situation in the US. In the latter case a large part of the problem is political. Very short summary here http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-from-news/249734/what-s-this-us-debt-crisis-all-about. Perhaps p4NDemik can give you some insights into whether or not this is a fair or reasonable summary of the current events regarding the US debt and the debt ceiling. I myself have not read the book he is suggesting, or any of Woodword's books. His books are often described as very dry so I sort of shied away from them.
Another note about p4NDemik his previous post. In a sense this treshhold that you speak of, where people are no longer willing to buy American bonds, is the so called debt ceiling. (fair? comments?)
Finally a note should be made that it is impossible for anyone o give you a real one hundred percent satisfying answer on the subject. Economy isn't an exact science so the mechanics of debts in an economy aren't clear, and when it comes to politics you will have so many different viewpoints and explanations.Deciding which of these is correct or the most correct is a daunting task.
A third headwind to the recovery--and one that may intensify in force in coming quarters--is U.S. fiscal policy. Although fiscal policy at the federal level was quite expansionary during the recession and early in the recovery, as the recovery proceeded, the support provided for the economy by federal fiscal actions was increasingly offset by the adverse effects of tight budget conditions for state and local governments. In response to a large and sustained decline in their tax revenues, state and local governments have cut about 600,000 jobs on net since the third quarter of 2008 while reducing real expenditures for infrastructure projects by 20 percent.
More recently, the situation has to some extent reversed: The drag on economic growth from state and local fiscal policy has diminished as revenues have improved, easing the pressures for further spending cuts or tax increases. In contrast, the phasing-out of earlier stimulus programs and policy actions to reduce the federal budget deficit have led federal fiscal policy to begin restraining GDP growth. Indeed, under almost any plausible scenario, next year the drag from federal fiscal policy on GDP growth will outweigh the positive effects on growth from fiscal expansion at the state and local level. However, the overall effect of federal fiscal policy on the economy, both in the near term and in the longer run, remains quite uncertain and depends on how policymakers meet two daunting fiscal challenges--one by the start of the new year and the other no later than the spring. [...] Even as fiscal policymakers address the urgent issue of longer-run fiscal sustainability, they should not ignore a second key objective: to avoid unnecessarily adding to the headwinds that are already holding back the economic recovery. Fortunately, the two objectives are fully compatible and mutually reinforcing. Preventing a sudden and severe contraction in fiscal policy early next year will support the transition of the economy back to full employment; a stronger economy will in turn reduce the deficit and contribute to achieving long-term fiscal sustainability. At the same time, a credible plan to put the federal budget on a path that will be sustainable in the long run could help keep longer-term interest rates low and boost household and business confidence, thereby supporting economic growth today.
On November 21 2012 19:52 Nikk wrote: Can anyone explain why politicians are so concerned about the deficit and debt? Why is it so important to balance the US budget? What is the long term problem created by massive debt that people keep referring to? Is it just a fear of inflation and currency speculation? Sorry for so many questions, I just don't really understand this point.
... Because debts need to be paid back, with interest. States don't need to pay them back because people operate as if they (States\governments) are immortal, but they do need to either pay interest or allow inflation to make everyone poorer.
I suppose you could operate a government without any taxation by just funding expenditures with inflation (lol Roman Empire), but that still isn't free wealth. The government would need to use inflation to erode the private sector's purchasing power to make room for public use, that is, paying in newly printed dollas.
On November 21 2012 19:52 Nikk wrote: Can anyone explain why politicians are so concerned about the deficit and debt? Why is it so important to balance the US budget? What is the long term problem created by massive debt that people keep referring to? Is it just a fear of inflation and currency speculation? Sorry for so many questions, I just don't really understand this point.
... Because debts need to be paid back, with interest. States don't need to pay them back because people operate as if they (States\governments) are immortal, but they do need to either pay interest or allow inflation to make everyone poorer.
I suppose you could operate a government without any taxation by just funding expenditures with inflation (lol Roman Empire), but that still isn't free wealth. The government would need to use inflation to erode the private sector's purchasing power to make room for public use, that is, paying in newly printed dollas.
I think someone forgot to read the OP, or the rest of this thread for that matter. If you would like to disagree with all of the above you are of course free to do so. At the moment however you are only stating cliches. Many of which are innaccurate and / or contradict the above and, worst of all, are often incoherent. As an example you are presenting us with the following, supposed, dichotomy:
"but they do need to either pay interest or allow inflation to make everyone poorer"
At the very least one should have to admit that these aren't the only options from just the above posts.
EPT
