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I've noticed that a number of politicians show signs of sociopathy.
I think that's a key difference.
the government is made up of some of the greediest fucks alive who're upset when that money is in the hands of someone that isn't them
Personal, business and government spending are all entirely different things.
Using one to think about the other makes very little sense.
Their spending is someone else's income that is then taxed that is then spent that is then taxed.
Responsibly used some government debt is good. It helps growing the wealth of it's people both now and in the future.
Irresponsibly used it's a headache for the next generation.
Government debt and household debt are not the same thing. The politicians know better but they know people don't. So they really lay it on thick to equate the two things.
Your debt isn't creating jobs or industries. Government debt does. You're not able to sell your debt. Government can.
I think technically, there isn't a ceiling for how much debt a country can take on as long as it's growing. It's not great, but also I don't think it's as bad as people think
You're trying to use logic to understand it but you also have to understand that the only actual logic about it is the logic we've intentionally applied to it, by choice. Money only has the meaning we give it.
It makes more sense when you realize it's all fiction. It's just a game we play our whole lives because so many of us are very competitive and the ones who aren't still have to compete against the ones who are, and at the highest levels of national policy they're not even playing the same game anyway. They're using it to metagame against other countries.
This comes at it from a slightly different angle but explains the difference between us and the government in how money and debt have to be managed: https://youtu.be/sAKr55O7qaU
Because if you run out of money, there's a consequence....
You have a checkbook‽
Because if you can make the currency you pay back the loan with worth less than what you borrowed, you gain. That's why they want some inflation.
Problems happen when you keep borrowing more and more each year, and also do stupid shit that shakes the faith of those lending you money in your ability to pay it back
Because the government doesn't have a bank account, they have tens of thousands of them all with different rules, and they don't spend the same money they taxed
Money is just numbers at this point, and so Congress comes up with numbers to fund everything they want to do, they come up with formulas to tax various things, and the two sets of numbers have no real relationship to each other
To add to this, some spending is done in chunks for the year or doled out every month.
Some money may be given back to the government if it isn't spent.
Some money is purposefully cryptic in its spending for national security reasons.
There are a lot of things that make it difficult to accurately track things against the entire government, which is why auditing individual departments/agencies is how it's usually done. However, even then it should be better than it is.
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
17 points (100.0% liked)
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