Why governments can borrow more than they think. Prof. Bezemer
“There is no simple relation between government spending and inflation”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=346rx5Mc9Ng
Tag: Debt
Why Japan isn’t broke yet
Japan has lots of assets like a massive sovereign wealth fund. When you subtract these assets from their debts, their debt to GDP ratio is 77%, which isn’t that high.
Japan takes money from its people in the form of taxes and then invests in assets like US treasury bonds. Because their currency depreciated over time, their debt has become worth less, while their foreign assets have become worth more.
This has benefited Japan a lot, but may backfire if the Yen goes up, foreign interest rates lower, or Japanese interest rates rise. If Japan has inflation, this could force them to raise interest rates or live with inflation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLwSSGM6tzc
Does Anybody Know How to Solve an American Debt Crisis? | Plain English
For a long time, a lot of people who really just wanted a smaller government pretended to care about debt (or fooled themselves into thinking they cared about debt).
Three quarters of US government spending make the federal government an insurance company with an army. As a percentage of the total spending, waste fraud and abuse is very small. DOGE was a failure because it didn’t understand the US federal government. If you want to significantly reduce spending, you have to stop sending Americans checks (like Medicare and Social Security), or/and have to weaken the military, although the check cutting part is much bigger than the military spending part.
Republican politicians used to lie, or be misinformed, by saying that tax cuts pay for themselves; now they lie, or are misinformed, by saying Trump won the 2020 election (he did not). It’s hard to make a tough compromise under such politics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXKAfcgl7eU
Mark Cuban Says We Could Pay Off The National Debt If Insurers Were Fined $100 Every Time They Over-Billed Or Denied Care
“Mark Cuban is taking aim at the U.S. healthcare system, arguing that widespread billing abuse by insurers and providers could be a major source of federal revenue–if only they were held accountable.
“If we fined insurers and providers $100 every time they over-billed, incorrectly denied care or misrepresented any amount of patient out of pocket, we could pay off the national debt,” the billionaire entrepreneur posted on X last week.”
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/mark-cuban-says-could-pay-173107627.html
How One Banker’s Greed Triggered the French Revolution
America’s rising debt, inequality, and inability to appropriately tax its wealthy, rhymes with what was happening leading up to the French revolution. The French put off their economic problems until the only solution was revolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqFSX7HQjwk
Michael Pettis: Bilateral Tariffs Will Fail To Restructure Global Trade Imbalances
When countries like China focus on heavily investing, initially it works well because they invest in productive things and this grows their economy. However, later, they run out of that many productive things to invest in, in which case they are robbing their citizens of consumption and outcompeting other countries’ manufacturing, but not gaining much actual new productive benefits. This leads to debt.
Bilateral tariffs like Trump is doing don’t work. The U.S. has a huge deficit because it consumes more than it exports. A global tariff could work by making goods more expensive and incentivizing people to consume, now relatively cheaper, domestic products. Bilateral tariffs just mean Americans will import cheap goods from country C and D instead of the heavily tariffed countries A and B.
Getting foreigners to invest in the U.S. hurts the U.S.. The U.S. has plenty of capital to invest and doesn’t need more. Additional investment means driving up the dollar, making U.S. goods less competitive internationally, and hurting U.S. exports.
China has debt to support investment. The U.S. has debt to support consumption. The system is out of whack and needs adjustment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoSNdzfydRU
Decline and Fall of the Conservative Mind | The David Frum Show
DOGE was a massive failure. It was run by arrogant people who didn’t think they needed to learn and understand the subject matter. DOGE misdiagnosed the problem. Fraud and waste isn’t the driver of the debt, legitimate payments to people for Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, and military spending, are the drivers. DOGE also broke the law. The executive cannot legally stop spending that has been passed by Congress and signed by a president.
DOGE did enduring harm to research. We lost valuable people who are hard to get back. The standing of the United States and its power to influence people through the State Department, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and foreign aid have been deeply damaged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gyi8r1zExU
“The real problem isn’t deficits, It’s Neoliberalism“ Top Economist warns
The real problem isn’t deficits, It’s Neoliberalism“ Top Economist warns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ2puKiKBdE
America’s $30 Trillion Publicly Held Debt Is 42 Times Larger Than It Was in 1980
“Don’t be fooled: The debt explosion is not driven by waste, fraud, or foreign aid. Nor is it the result of a lack of revenue. It’s the direct result of reckless promises to retirees, the cost of health care, and an unwillingness to pay the bills honestly. For most of American history, debt fell when wars ended and peace returned. Since 1980, we’ve managed the opposite: peace without prudence and prosperity without restraint.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/30/americas-30-trillion-publicly-held-debt-is-42-times-larger-than-it-was-in-1980/
What Happened to the Republican Party?
Some leaders and elected representatives of the Tea Party really believed in their supposed motivations about government spending, debt, and pork. But for the most part, the Tea Party was a big, damn lie. If all those Tea Partiers really cared about such things, they would be protesting and organizing just as hard against Trump right now.
https://reason.com/podcast/2025/10/22/what-happened-to-the-republican-party/