Not saying that the US isn’t in fiscal crisis, I’m not at all qualified to say either way, but: Comparing government balance sheets to household finances is a age-old conservative folly designed to encourage the working class to support smaller government in order to reduce taxes on the rich - in other words, encourage the turkeys to vote for Christmas (or in this case maybe Thanksgiving?).
The fact is that government finances and household finances are not at all the same thing, for many reasons I’m not qualified to explain, but a couple of obvious ones:
Households can’t choose to tax the rich to increase income.
Households can’t print money.
Households can’t secure low-interest loans that extend beyond their lifetimes (i.e. issue bonds).
Households don’t typically find spending increases income (i.e. Government workers pay taxes, infrastructure investment drives growth which increases tax revenue, etc etc).
The UK Conservatives used this line of reasoning around 2010 and it’s led to 15 years of growth stagnation with no real improvement in the debt situation.
Not saying that the US isn’t in fiscal crisis, I’m not at all qualified to say either way, but: Comparing government balance sheets to household finances is a age-old conservative folly designed to encourage the working class to support smaller government in order to reduce taxes on the rich - in other words, encourage the turkeys to vote for Christmas (or in this case maybe Thanksgiving?).
The fact is that government finances and household finances are not at all the same thing, for many reasons I’m not qualified to explain, but a couple of obvious ones:
The UK Conservatives used this line of reasoning around 2010 and it’s led to 15 years of growth stagnation with no real improvement in the debt situation.