The Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter To You: Part Three, The Other Four Worst Reasons

By Joe Firestone

In Part One of this series, I considered “Fix the Debt’s” claim that high levels of debt cause high unemployment and gave a few reasons why this is a false claim. In Part Two, I followed with a review of the historical record from 1930 to the present and showed that it refutes this claim throughout this period, and that there is not even one Administration where the evidence doesn’t contradict “Fix the Debts” theory. In this part I’ll continue my examination of the other four “top reasons” why “Fix the Debt” insists that the National Debt should matter to you.

2. Debt means more expensive consumer credit: home, auto, student loans, as well as credit cards.

Growing federal debt can drive up interest rates throughout the American economy. That means higher interest rates for people across the country who may be taking out loans for a home, a new car or truck, to pay down credit card cards or for education costs. Higher interest costs mean they will all be more expensive, resulting in higher monthly payments.

Response: This is a proverbial red herring. Interest rates in the United States aren’t determined by private markets, they’re determined primarily by the Federal Reserve, or by the Fed in collaboration with the Treasury. That is not to say that markets can’t drive up interest rates if the Fed does nothing about it. But if the Fed chooses to take counteraction, then it can determine the term structure of interest rates across the Board.

3. Delaying action on the national debt means it will be much more difficult to protect Medicare and Social Security from abrupt, severe, and widespread cuts in the future on all beneficiaries.

Social Security’s disability program will exhaust its assets in 2016, the overall Social Security trust funds will be exhausted in 2033, and the Medicare Trust Fund will run out in 2026. Some of those dates may seem like a long time away, but if we want to protect beneficiaries who rely on these programs from severe and abrupt cuts – especially the elderly who have used up all their savings and other vulnerable groups – we need to start taking gradual steps now.

Response: All of this is false. It assumes that we will fund safety net programs in the way we do today, by continuing to issue debt, and it also assumes that continuing to issue debt and having higher levels of debt are problems for a fiat sovereign. They’re not! Fiat sovereigns can continue to deficit spend regardless of their debt or debt-to-GDP ratio levels. And if we want to get rid of or reduce debt for political reasons, then Congress needs to guarantee annual funding for these programs in perpetuity and for the Executive to ensure that funds are there by using Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS), to supply the reserves to cover appropriated deficit spending.

Even if these alternatives aren’t available right now, however, it still makes no sense to cut safety net programs now, based on some long-range projections that may never come to pass. If people really will have to suffer later, because Congress and the Executive are refusing to use their power to remove the need for any suffering at all, then why should we, the people just accept that?

Much better to get ourselves a new Congress and a new President who will do what’s needed to remove any need for suffering at all. We certainly should not let today’s politicians rob us now, so we can plan ahead for poverty, when we have as much as 25 years to replace this crew of reprobates with people who will vote in the interests of most of the people, most of the time, and who will take back the gains of the 1% extracted from the economy and the Government through political influence and outright fraud.

4. If we do not address the debt now, federal investments in education, infrastructure, and research will decline.

We currently spend nearly $225 billion each year in interest payments alone on the national debt. And that number will only continue to rise. These payments – which have to be made – reduce our ability to fund critical investments in areas such as education, infrastructure, and research that are vital parts of a strong economy. In addition, the mindless sequester continued to cut spending throughout many of these programs, without making any decisions on where to target the savings and without focusing on the most unsustainable areas of the budget: increasingly-costly entitlement spending and an outdated, inefficient tax code.

Response: Yet another fairy tale for the gullible. Yes, interest payments are at $225 Billion per year. That’s about 1.5% of GDP. During the 1980s that figure was more than 5% of GDP. Why did it go down?

Not because our national debt got smaller; but because the Federal Reserve drove interest rates down, allowing the Treasury to sell securities at lower interest rates. Again, the Fed can drive down interest rates to virtually zero if it wishes to, and can keep the interest bill of the United States as low as it wishes, ensuring that interest on the national debt will never be a threat to the rest of the budget. So, forget about this. Interest payments on Treasuries can never be a threat to the solvency of the United States as long we maintain the present fiat currency system we’ve had since 1971.

But, of course, apart from such action by the Fed, the option of PCS is always open to the Treasury. It can pay back whatever portion of the debt it likes and refrain from issuing any more debt. So, over time, the Treasury can lower its interest costs as low as it wishes if it believes interest payments are becoming either a financial or a political problem.

5. Taking steps to address our deficit now would mean a more robust economy and significant job growth over the next 10 years.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates that $2 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years could grow our economy by nearly an additional 1 percent by 2023. A healthy, growing economy means more good jobs and higher wages for hardworking Americans.

Response: The CBO projections about deficit reduction growing our economy are wrong. First, because CBO projections are mostly wrong. They’re even wrong four months out. For example, compare CBO projections on the anticipated 2013 deficit published in January and May of 2013. CBO failed to project the four years of Clinton Administration surpluses. It failed to project the recession at the end of the Clinton Administration at the beginning of the year 2000. It failed to project the crash of 2008 in early 2008, and even a few months before the crash.

Then it failed to project the seriousness of the recession in January of 2009. It failed to project the Clinton recovery in 1993, or the boom in Clinton’s second term. All these were relatively short-term errors. But, forecasting errors due to false models accumulate drastically over time. So, CBO has nil capacity to project over a period of ten or more years. All one can really count on is that CBO (and all the other well-known projectionistas will be wrong.

CBO’s projections do not take into account the macroeconomic sectoral financial balances. So, it doesn’t even recognize that long-term proactive deficit reduction means reducing Government additions of Net Financial Assets (NFAs) into the private economy. Of course, lower NFA additions over a decade, due to deficit reduction, do not guarantee a contracting economy and high unemployment in 2023. But, in the absence of a private credit bubble, which will bring another crash sooner or later, they make it much more likely that CBO’s projection will prove false.

In short, the idea that $2 Trillion in deficit reduction now will produce a healthier, more robust economy is false. We might have a more rapidly growing economy in 2023, even with deficit reduction, if the private sector, supported by the Fed, blows that big credit bubble. But that growth will not mean a healthy, robust economy. It will mean a sick one on the point of a huge deflationary collapse produced by another debt crisis. And while the new class of Peterson plutocrats might greatly desire such a result so that they can extract most of the rest of the financial resources of the 99%, I think the rest of us would prefer to base our future expansions on the actual additions to private NFAs produced by Government spending that is not offset by tax revenue.

So, we’ve now seen that “Fix the Debt’s” five top reasons why the national debt should matter to you, are actually the five worst reasons why it should matter. However, there are at least three REAL reasons why the national debt should matter, and why we should fix it without breaking America, or causing people to suffer. In the concluding, Part Four of this series, I’ll give these reasons.

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