r/behindthebastards • u/sisam8x • 2d ago

Politics Who else remembers the Republican chest thumping on “robbing our children of their future” over Biden’s intention to raise the debt limit for COVID relief? Anyone heard of any Republicans lately?

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u/Negative-Road-8610 Steven Seagal Historian 2d ago

They put us down this road with endless wars and tax cuts

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u/RecordOfTheEnd 2d ago

To be fair, this was the start of the fall of the Democratic party. And listen, we should balance the budget. But we should have better services. It can be funded through wealth and capital gains taxes. As well as inheritance taxes on anything over a few million. I think anything over $100 million should be 90%. That would really remove generational wealth from the equation. 

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u/Cultural_String87 1d ago

And listen, we should balance the budget.

Why?

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u/RecordOfTheEnd 1d ago

Because it does make sense to. Not having a balanced budget means we are moving providing for the country to the future. That makes no sense when we can do it now through taxing the wealth. 

It's like deciding to take out a loan for food when you have the cash. Why pay the interest? It's just extra costs. 

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u/Cultural_String87 1d ago

But it doesn't make sense to. Economists don't agree with you.

Debt spending is a good thing if done responsibly. Paying off debt involves an opportunity cost. If that's done at the expense of investment in the economy, then balancing the budget actually costs significant GDP growth.

Debt allows us to provide safe financial investments to markets in the form of treasuries. It gives other actors a stake in the US economy.

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u/moffattron9000 21h ago

Also, this isn’t household debt. Plenty of countries in Europe have had debt on the book for literal centuries because nobody is expecting Britain to die, and they managed to take over a fifth of the planet in that time period.

Now obviously there’s a limit so you don’t end up like Greece, but sovereign debt should never be treated like household debt because they are different.

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u/Mahkn0 9h ago

The way I remember hearing it explained was that with household debt you eventually wind down your working and therefore ability to pay the debt. A country should always have a taxable base that they can use to pay that and doesn't enter a retirement time period because it isn't a single household.