When I study the writings of professional economists I sometime have to shake my shaggy philosopher's head. Try this passage on for size:
$16 trillion is the amount of Treasury debt outstanding at the moment. The more relevant figure is the amount of debt the federal government owes to people and institutions other than itself. If, for some reason, I lent money to my wife and she promised to pay it back to me, we wouldn’t count that as part of the debt owed by our household. The debt owed to the public is about $10 trillion these days.
What a brainless analogy! Suppose I loan wifey 100 semolians. She issues me a 'debt instrument,' an IOU. Has the family debt increased by $100? Of course not. It is no different in principle than if I took $100 out of my left pocket, deposited an IOU there, and placed the cash in my right pocket. If I started with exactly $100 cash on my person I would end the game with exactly the same amount.
But I do not stand to the government in the same relation that I stand to my family. Suppose I buy 100 K worth of Treasury notes, thereby loaning the government that sum. Has the Federal debt increased by $100 K? Of course it has. I am not part of the government. Whether the government owes money to U. S. citizens or to the ChiComs makes no difference at all with respect to the amount of the debt. The citizens plus the government do not form a "household" in the way my wife and I form a household. Citizens and government are not all one big happy family.
The analogy is pathetic.
The author would have you think that "the more relevant figure" is $16 trillion minus $10 trillion = $6 trillion. False, because based on a false analogy.
This shows how ideologically infected the 'science' of economics is. Only a leftist ideologue could make the collectivist assumption that I have just exposed. The Marxian "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a viable principle at the level of the family, but it is pernicious nonsense on stilts when applied to the state in its relation to the citizenry.
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