[username90]

> National debt is for the most part a good thing, since it's a measure of the amount of a national currency is in circulation

Why do you say this as a Scandinavian when all Scandinavian are fiscally responsible and don't take on more debt every year? Taking on debt isn't a good thing, you can have currency without having any debt as a nation, they aren't related at all. People arguing for that are just trying to manipulate you into believing they are on your side.

[Scandiravian]

I think you're skipping over "for the most part" in my post

Are you talking about private debt or governmental debt? They are, as stated in my first post, two entirely different things

[username90]

Government debt.

https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/government-debt-to-gdp

For example Sweden where I live has reduced their government debt to GDP ratio pretty consistently the past 25 years, and I haven't noticed any problems with it. People saying that we would have problems if governments balanced their budgets are just big fat liars.

[Scandiravian]

I think calling other "big fat liars" is a sad approach to a discourse. I don't know who the "people" you refer to are, so unless you specify that, I can't comment on it. I can't remember making a claim like that

In fact reducing national debt through taxation is an effective way of reducing inflation. Reducing national debt does not mean the economy will fail.

The economy is not a binary system ("success", "fail"), so the more interesting question to me, is whether Sweden's economy would have done better if they had chosen a different economic policy

[username90]

If a politician funds all their initiatives via debt instead of taxation in order to get popular support and thus push the problems down to the line that is a pretty shitty thing to do, but it is fine sometimes you have to do it and there is a tradeoff. But when they then argue "Taking on debt is actually a good thing, don't blame me for doing it I had to do it! Everyone does it! Paying off debt is actually a bad thing to do for governments!" they crossed the line and I can no longer consider them as good people. So I used those words since that is what they are, shitty people deserve shitty treatment.

[Scandiravian]

I'm sad to hear that you automatically label people you disagree with as "shitty people" and they "deserve shitty treatment". It eliminates the possibility for dialogue, empathy and learning

You essentially block yourself of improving yourself by realising you might be wrong about something

It sounds to me like you think of a national economy as a household budget. Taxes are income and welfare is expenses, you take loans from banks, which have interest and needs to be paid back or you get punished

It's a nice and simple explanation, which also happens to be 100% wrong

Government debt have no interest and there's no creditor who needs to be paid back. Whenever the Swedish government prints 100 crowns, it goes 100 crowns more into debt

Whenever it gets 100 crowns in through taxes it resolves 100 crowns of debt

National debt is not the same as private debt. They're two completely different things, that unfortunately have kind of similar names

National debt is simply the amount of the national currency in circulation. To be "debt free", Sweden would have to remove every single crown from circulation, which obviously is not a good idea for the economy

Additionally - the government does not use taxes to fund spending. Swedish crowns are essentially worthless to the Swedish government, because they own the money printing press and could make infinite money if they wanted to

If parents setup a system for their kids, where they get small paper notes for doing chores, which can be traded in for the daily WiFi password, the notes have no value for the parents and the WiFi would work without the kids paying chore notes, but they're still useful because they facilitate the "doing of chores" and have value to the kids because of the "WiFi tax"

In other words the purpose of taxes is to create demand for the currency to match the supply the government is creating by printing more money. By having a demand for the currency, the government can use it to pay people to do "chores" it wants done by simply turning on the money printer, then collecting taxes at a later date

[username90]

> National debt is simply the amount of the national currency in circulation.

> Government debt have no interest

No it isn't, this is such a stupid dumb lie, why did you fall for this? The big fat liars really got to you. USA paid 500 billion in interest on their government debt last year, "Interest free" my ass.

https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.ht...

And about my harsh language, your side on this is like the "smoking doesn't cause cancer" propaganda funded by tobacco companies. Some must have strong incentives to want to increase government debt, otherwise such crap wouldn't be spread around.