Wednesday, June 17, 2020

As tax revenue drops, the government runs on borrowed printed money for the most part, I guess. It seems to work so far.

I think it's to the point where they are borrowing a lot from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve can just print money, basically. It's sometimes called Quantitative Easing. We technically owe that money back, but seems like it's never paid back. The federal debt just keeps growing and it almost never gets paid down.

When Clinton was president, there was a brief few years of budget surpluses that were used to pay down some of the debt. They made a slight dent in the pile of debt. Since then, the pile just keeps growing.

The consequences of printed money is inflation. More dollars chasing the same number of goods and services. Inflation hasn't been a problem except in a few areas, such as home values rising faster than the rest of the economy. That is a problem. Home price inflation is one of the sectors of the economy where inflation from printed money appears leading to a housing affordability crisis over recent years.

More generous government spending on things like subsidized rents would be one way to help working people keep up with these asset bubbles.

In some ways, this could be a vicious cycle tho. Asset bubbles rising and then more government spending to keep up with the rents and mortgages related to the inflated value of the assets. Throwing good money after bad; so to speak.

We also borrow from various lenders, such as China, but I recently read that China has been gradually selling back it's US treasuries to various other investors in the world financial pool. China's share of US debt is gradually declining, so I read.

I the long run we need to realize that money is a tool rather than a god. Inflation can be a problem, but these days it's mostly just numbers on computers. A matter of moving the decimal point over and going on; like a $50,000 house going to $500,000. Since that has happened, maybe a $2.50 loaf of bread can go to $25? An $8 minimum wage can go to $80 per hour?

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