[asgard1024]

Nation is very different from a household. There is lot more people, they are anonymous. You need money to track who owns to whom, in household everybody knows. The worker specialization is much more relevant in the national economy. There is labor and trade and different political interests. I could go on and on.

Addendum: It might be true that in the nation as in the household, you should be aware if you are entering an external contract with someone, like borrowing money. But the question of internal debt between the citizens of the nation cannot be reduced to household economy, there is no such thing as an austere husband lending money to his wife.

[winstonewert]

Obviously, a nation is very different from a household.

But they aren't different in the way that the post I was responding to suggested, that a household couldn't possibly overspend for future benefit whereas a nation could.

[asgard1024]

No, that's not what the quote was about, the quote was saying that their economies should be managed the same way. Your interpretation of that quote is much narrower and in particular, it only applies to foreign debt.

[winstonewert]

I don't know what quote you are referring to as no quotations are involved in this discussion.

The post I was responding to said:

> Growth means that economically you can outspend > your "budget" every year and still come out ahead > because that spend this year makes next year's budget > larger."

I pointed out that's not different between a household and a nation, both can do this.

Yes, nations are very different from households. And yes, you shouldn't run their economies the same way. But to make that point you really need to point to criteria that differ between households and nations, and not to things which aren't actually fundamentally different.