Comment by s1artibartfast
8 days ago
Still fits within a populist agenda. Not a lot of sympathy for mutual funds and the wealthy holding treasury notes that get inflated away.
I'm not excited that 20% of federal revenue goes pay debt interest to some investors and stockholders. Especially when much of the original debt spending also went into the pockets of stockholders, sometimes the same ones.
Of course, the actual problem is lack of control and debt spending, not the fact that investors exist.
People say that public debt doesn't matter because it domestic, but the recipients and payers are different. It doesn't cancel out when I'm responsible for paying taxes and Vanguard or JPMorgan get the debt interest.
> Still fits within a populist agenda. Not a lot of sympathy for mutual funds and the wealthy holding treasury notes that get inflated away.
Wouldn’t this include average people’s pensions, IRAs, etc, too?
Yeah, national debt is splattered all around the US economy, but that doesn't mean it is uniform, or the payers and recipients are the same in terms of participation, returns, or even time.
Foundationally, national debt is about passing costs into the future, which also creates another huge dichotomy in payers and beneficiaries. Minimal federal spending is on growth, so isn't really about investment as how much value can be extracted from one group to another, largely, but not entirely overlapping group.
> but that doesn't mean it is uniform, or the payers and recipients are the same in terms of participation, returns, or even time.
I’m not sure if I’m following, but a (let’s say) 20% cut to the value of an average retiree’s pension account will hurt much _more_ than the same cut to a diversified wealthy person. This is simply because poorer people are affected more by fixed costs. I don’t see where the populist angle comes in. Shouldn’t the populist angle be about targeting the “elite” specifically?