Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Government Debt is the source of private savings
by
Iseree22
on 02/10/2011, 08:39:52 UTC
Quote from: Sovereign
Quote
'Others' would argue the former. To me this makes little sense; if household wealth is increasing why would the State need more public debt to fund itself?? Wouldn't the state be collecting so much revenue that it wouldn't need public debt? You would expect that as household wealth increased, tax revenues would increase, and public debt would decrease. But these graphs show no indication of such correlation.

House hold wealth tends to increase with over-all economic growth. Increased public debt tends to correlate with future over-all economic shrinking: Greece example.


I have updated the OP, adding that my assertion holds iff the country issues its own currency. Greece's does not issue the Euro, therefore growth in Greek Public Debt does not increase public savings for Greeks. However, America which has its own Sovereign currency does issue its own currency. The graphs show that despite an ever increasing public debt 'burden' upon the American tax payer they have been able to increase their household wealth on a nominal basis. Emphasis must be given to the fact that household wealth is measured on a Nominal Basis. The creation of public debt has the same role as minting bitcoins, then as the amount of bitcoins increases, then so too does everyones bitcoin savings. However, the value of such bitcoins is an important but separate issue.


Quote from: Sovereign
Quote
Naturally this would depend of on your perspective of the economy. I think that public debt is the source of private money, therefore I think the latter.
Private money? 'Money' has a specific meaning that is different from 'wealth'.

What is wealth measured in? Currency units. Therefore the total wealth of an economy is going to track very closely with the amount of money in circulation.