[omalleyt]

The US gov’t has a massive incentive to underreport inflation. When they underreport inflation (and people believe it), they are able to:

- pay less in interest on their debt - raise Social Security payments by less - inflate away the real value of the debt principal

The US gov’t has reached a record level of debt. It needs to cause massive inflation to devalue its debts, and it needs to lie about it.

[snidane]

There is no other way to run the world today under democratic regimes. Politicians will never win votes by promising to reduce govt debt.

The only sustainable way to run the world is to underreport on inflation using a flawed metric, which nobody is supposed to understand, such as CPI. And then let the real 8% or so inflation eat the govt debt away while the govt borrows money at <2% interest on treasury bonds.

These adjustments to CPI are not to be understood. They are designed.

[sofixa]

> There is no other way to run the world today under democratic regimes. Politicians will never win votes by promising to reduce govt debt

That's not true. Macron in France was elected ( was second in the first round, and against the far-right candidate, which was profoundly terrible and got destroyed in the big debate, in the second round, where everyone flocked to him to avoid the other winning; so take "winning" with a grain of salt, although his party did win 50+ in the parliamentary elections a month after the presidential ones) on a platform of reform to make business easier, stabilising the budget, cutting unnecessary or overextended government expenditures, privatising some government-owned enterprises and investing the leftovers ( without a deficit) at improving the economy, work prospects for young people, startups, key industries, etc. Considering his work history in banking, then an advisor to the previous president, and later financial minister, doing roughly the same things, it wasn't just empty talking.

Of course that went away when the pandemic hit, and he said multiple times, and i quote, "whatever it costs". It would have been fundamentally stupid on his part not to go back on his platform and leave everything go bankrupt and broke.

[adamjb]

>Politicians will never win votes by promising to reduce govt debt.

Huh, what? Promises to balance the budget or run a surplus are practically a cliche at this point.

[BitwiseFool]

But how many politicians actually follow through on such promises? Do they ever get in trouble for failing to do so? In the United States at least, none of them ever get punished by losing their seat when they fail to cut spending.

[peteretep]

> Politicians will never win votes by promising to reduce govt debt

I mean that was pretty much the 2010 Tory platform, and they won?

Next up, “the people would never elect a scientist to office?!?!?”

[ur-whale]

>Politicians will never win votes by promising to reduce govt debt.

So, in other words, the only way to govern is through demagogy ... what a terribly cynical view of the world.

I also believe it's historically inaccurate. I know of at least two countries for which it is: Singapore and Switzerland.

[hoseja]

Neither are empires.

[orwin]

> Politicians will never win votes by promising to reduce govt debt.

And rightly so. If you understand how money is created, you WANT your government to continue rolling its debt. Money supply is a 0-sum game.

[jerf]

The way money is created in the modern world is not the only way to create money. There's a good chance we're in the last decade or so of "the way we create money" today continuing to appear to work, since we're just running around the same cycle any number of civilizations have run around before us. Even if we do have 'computers' this time.

[quickthrower2]

I’m happy with this if the borrowed money is used wisely!