Tag Archives: “Fix the Debt”

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

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 10 comments

This is the concluding post in a four part series on the “Top” reasons why the national debt should matter. In Part One, I considered “Fix the Debt’s” claim that high levels of debt cause high unemployment and argued that 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 Debt’s” theory. In Part Three I showed that the other four reasons advanced by “Fix the Debt” also had very little going for them. In this part, I’ll give reasons why the national debt does matter, and why we should fix it without breaking America, or causing people to suffer.

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, bernie sanders, CBO, CPC Budget, debt-to-GDP ratio, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, John Conyers, medicare for all, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, Peter G. Peterson, “Fix the Debt”

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

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 4 comments

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.

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Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged $60 Trillion Coin, austerity, CBO projections, debt-to-GDP ratio, deficit reduction, deficit spending, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, HVPCS, interest rates, MMT, modern money theory, national debt, Peter G. Peterson, Social Security, unemployment, “Fix the Debt”

The Five Worst Reasons Why the National Debt Should Matter To You: Part Two, the Record Since 1930

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Joe Firestone | 13 comments

By Joe Firestone

In Part One, of a critique of the most important of “Fix the Debt’s” reasons for “Why the National Debt Should Matter To You,” I asserted that high debt levels haven’t caused high unemployment in the United States, and that, if anything causation was in the other direction. I didn’t want to disturb the flow of the argument there with a relatively lengthy survey of some of the numbers in the historical record since the 1930s. But let’s test the idea that High debt causes fewer jobs and lower wages in the United States by looking at that record now.

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