What were some of the most fiscally responsible leaders in all of history...

Salazar

Nothing wrong with debt as long as the other party believes you can pay it back at some point.

Debt is a great way to fund current economic activity by using future returns as collateral. It helps economic growth immensely that we are able to do this.

>governments just borrow money to cover the end line, they only pay interest (which get's bigger every year)

This isn't true for all countries. Plenty of countries have a surplus they use to reduce their debt. Its just that with the recent economic crisis, few countries were in a position were it was possible or prudent to reduce their debt. (cutting expenses as a government is bad for the economy, so you don't do it when times are bad already)

>If all the dollars outside of the US went back to the US, mass hyperinflation would ensue and the dollar would essentially be worthless.

This whole statement is so fucking nonsensical. Its like saying if all the ice in antarctica would be dropped on top of Washington city, shit would be fucked. It just doesn't make sense and would never happen.

That's a big problem problem with economics. Its so easy for laymen to be alarmed by people who want to spread panic, and everyone thinks they understand economics because they understand how money works in their day-to-day lives.

Calvin Coolidge was basically the only president in history who managed to drastically reduce taxes and achieve a budget surplus at the time by cutting spending.

isnt economy basically lying to ourselves to keep going? all this debt isnt gonna get paid back for real anyway

...

Nha, there's still a lot of very real economic productivity. A lot of useful things are being produced and a lot of people have jobs and people can and want to buy the things that are being produced.
The debt is being paid back, however there is also new debt added. So the net debt balance goes up, but the debts are being paid back when necessary. There's a reason people are still very willing to lend money to for example the US. Maybe at some point the debt balance will be reduced, maybe it wont and there will always be a pile of it that is sort 'rolled over'. But at the end of the day individual money lenders are still being paid back.

That's misleading.
cato.org/publications/commentary/1920s-income-tax-cuts-sparked-economic-growth-raised-federal-revenues
Not to mention we were emerging from WWI as one of the few countries with its infrastructure intact and had greatly opened up trade relations with Europe as a whole due to Wilson's policies.

Except your analogy was flawed and you provided no counter argument whatsoever

>muh ad hominem makes me feel superior than you

Yeah, no.

Qadaffi was taken out because he wanted to go back to the gold standard and get rid of the petro dollar. He was taken out. Actions speaks louder than any retarded mental gymnastics you can come up with to back up your retarded claim.

The government of Hong Kong seems to be the most fiscally responsible government at the moment

alibertarianfuture.com/big-government/taxes-big-government/hong-kong-billion-budget-surplus-gave-back-cut-taxes/

Reminder that debt isn't inherently bad (aside from raising interest rates on loams) if the government pays it off and the us government has a literally perfect credit score

Reminder that unprotected sex with hookers isn't inherently bad (aside from STDs and unplanned preganacy)

When the us stops being solvent you might have a point

true, but it looks like the interests are just too big to be repayable
im the illiterate one from before
would say that is not impossible to try, but taking out a country like usa would take its toll

>too big to be repayable
That doesn't even make sense in this case. Countries with worse credit and higher debt are still getting loans. It's big and will take a while but it will certainly be repaid at some point

why should i repay something if the ability of being able to do so is just enough to keep going as i am? what would make the loaners want to cash on me if im such a good boi?
honest question

Because they charge interest

>everyone takes debts to loan to someone else in a neverending scamming wannabe?
Basically, yeah. Everyone owes each other money, that is why you will never hear about China asking for the money they lent the US back, because then everyone would want their money back from China etc.

but it's all the same if you dont want it back
if this is true then it just confirms it, no one will ask money back otherwise all others will do same and you have to pay your debts too
lets just ignore it and drink together
maybe bomb some developing country

I wasn't making an analogy at all. I was pointing out that what you were saying was nonsensical (as in, it literally has no useful meaning).

Yes Gadaffi was shat on by the US mostly for economic reasons. That has absolutely nothing to do with your alarmist bullshit. If anything it shows the US is very capable of guarding economic stability.

>true, but it looks like the interests are just too big to be repayable

Interest isn't repaid? Interest is paid, the principal is repaid.

THE DEBT IS BEING PAID BACK. The payments simply are financed by new debt, but this is VERY different from not repaying your debt. You don't hear anyone complaining because they are being paid back.

>why should i repay something if the ability of being able to do so is just enough to keep going as i am?

Because if they don't repay people get mad, their credit score goes down the drain and the whole world economy collapses?

sorry, i dont understand economy, d-dont caps lock at me

I'm sorry for missleading you in my previous post (), while it is true that everyone owes money to everyone and that a country wont take another countries couch for not paying; there are repercussions, a great example of that is what happened/is happening to Greece.

So even if everyone has debt you still have to pay it off, even if you take more loans to do so.

ok, that sounds logic
i will never understand economy tho
is it the weirdest shit humans invented?

It is autistically complicated in the macro-level and it is autistically nonsensical, but it's worked.

Literally ceausescu

The USA had to be begged by euros into entering the conflict

Something called "interest rates" play an important role in debt.

The interest rates are the (always estimated) cost one person (borrower) has to pay to another (lender) for taking his/her money. This cost must reflect many things:
- The lender could have used that money for something else (lend it to another person if possible, expend it or use it in another venture)
- The borrower could default on debt
- The inflation rate, if positive, erodes purchasing power from money therefore its better expend it now than later and therefore a lender must compensate for this loss of purchasing power created by the fact that when lending occurs an expending is being delayed
- And so on...

Low interest rates mean not-so-expensive money for banks and then there could be more people interested in taking loans, HERE is where debt is born.

Countries are aproximately like regular people: They gaze the chance of taking not-so-expensive money, they seize it, e.g. they take and create debt

Nicolae Ceaușescu left the country with 0 debt iirc

Only correct answer

That one dude from Singapore who's name I forgot

Unironically Bill Clinton

>i know i sound like the retarded memes on facebook, but how come every country is in debt? if one takes a loan there should be someone with a surplus?

Something the other posters are not mentioning for some reason is that countries are not the only ones who own national debt. Most of the U.S. national debt is owned by U.S. citizens and organizations, including (weirdly) government agencies. If you buy a "government bond," that is you lending the government money. And people do that because it's a safe investment, because it always pays its debts on time.

And it pays it's debts on time by taking out new debts. It's a strange system, but it works.

>I don't understand deficit spending: the thread

It's a perfectly possible outcome that nations switch away from the petrodollar. Pretty much the entire U.S. foreign policy after the cold war revolves around toppling governments that make plans to stop using petrodollars.

Emperor Anastasius was renowned as having saved a massive amount. Antoninus Pius is another example, as well as Augusutus. Cimon of Athens brought a great deal to the Athenian treasury.

Henry VII of England is known for being notoriously tight fisted in his later years. He personally checked and signed off every item in the English governments accounts to make sure it was worth spending money on (there's a digitised version of one where you can actually see the point where he got tired of putting his full signature and just put H instead).

Then his son spent most of it on a navy, that was royal. What a daft idea!

No.
China isn't asking for our loans to be paid in full because if they did that, America would just print twenty trillion dollars (a la Germany post-WWI). Their investments would be worthless and the world economy would be completely fucked.

So they take it a little bit at a time.

I'm not disputing that the US puts an immense amount of effort into maintaining the 'petrodollar', and the world economy relies on this to a huge extent. I'm saying that the statement 'if all the dollars in the world returned to the US' is stupid.

i'd like to fuck up the world economy
why are chinks so cucked

The reason China can't just "ask for their money back" is the same reason the back can't demand you pay your entire mortgage all at once. That's not the terms of the loan.

Also, I feel I should remind everyone that only ~7% of the U.S. national debt is owed to China.

Norway is doing pretty good with its oil fund too isn't it?

Do you know how inflation works you retard?