How to clinch the government debt argument?

[Cuffy_Meigs]

I'm new so if this topic has already been done to death then apologies and please direct me to the relevant thread or podcast.

 

When expressing concern about (particularly government) debt, the conversation tends to go as follows:

 

ME: Man, are we in trouble...

 

RESPONSE: Aw come on. Every country has huge debts. Don't worry there's loads of money, it's government austerity that's the problem.

 

ME: That isn't much of an argument...crippling interest payments...stealing from the unborn etc.

 

                        ...eventually...

 

RESPONSE: Look everybody owes everybody else so it all cancels out anyway. There'll be some sort of reset and it'll all get sorted out. It's just not an issue, relax.

 

So my question is how best to counter this in a way that people can easily grasp?

 

I figure that if all debt is suddenly magically written off then the entire Finance industry loses its reason to exist and everything in your bank account, pension plan, stock portfolio, insurance policies etc becomes worthless. However this doesn't seem to persuade. Any thoughts as to how to convince people that there is actually a problem?

[Crallask]

I just hope they like their stagnating standard of living.

[dsayers]

So my question is how best to counter this in a way that people can easily grasp?

 

I figure that if all debt is suddenly magically written off then the entire Finance industry loses its reason to exist and everything in your bank account, pension plan, stock portfolio, insurance policies etc becomes worthless. However this doesn't seem to persuade. Any thoughts as to how to convince people that there is actually a problem?

 

Have you watched the Bomb in the Brain series? Until you can identify WHY somebody thinks what they do, you might not be able to convince them otherwise. People aren't big into personal responsibility, so the idea that the State is immoral frightens them. They're not going to accept that theft in the name of the State is immoral, so trying to convince them is a waste of time. One of the ways in which the State triumphs is getting good people to waste their time in this fashion.

[Cuffy_Meigs]

Thanks dsayers, I'll take a look at Bomb in the Brain. I think you are right about the moral  confusion and it so hard to change. They see an immediate problem (eg 'the poor') which the government must 'help' and are blind to anything beyond that. Any other view is therefore dismissed as repugnant and immoral without further consideration. 

[LibertarianSocialist]

I'm new so if this topic has already been done to death then apologies and please direct me to the relevant thread or podcast.

 

When expressing concern about (particularly government) debt, the conversation tends to go as follows:

 

ME: Man, are we in trouble...

 

RESPONSE: Aw come on. Every country has huge debts. Don't worry there's loads of money, it's government austerity that's the problem.

 

ME: That isn't much of an argument...crippling interest payments...stealing from the unborn etc.

 

                        ...eventually...

 

RESPONSE: Look everybody owes everybody else so it all cancels out anyway. There'll be some sort of reset and it'll all get sorted out. It's just not an issue, relax.

 

So my question is how best to counter this in a way that people can easily grasp?

 

I figure that if all debt is suddenly magically written off then the entire Finance industry loses its reason to exist and everything in your bank account, pension plan, stock portfolio, insurance policies etc becomes worthless. However this doesn't seem to persuade. Any thoughts as to how to convince people that there is actually a problem?

Those banks accounts pension plans etc. Already have no real value. They are promises for things of value in the future. If I was to tear down the banks, destroy them utterly, the real wealth in the world would remain unharmed. The fruit trees would still bear fruit, the factories would still exist, as would all our infrastructure. All that would change is our behaviour towards what already existed. We might not pick the fruit, we would leave factories idle, the world would come to a halt. We would be so preoccupied with our unquestioning adherence to fictitious legal and social constructs that we might actually believe that the physical world, and not just the web of fiction surrounding it, had collapsed to the ground.

[vforvoluntary]

Austerity is a myth. The countries that have supposedly enacted "austerity" have only made small and incremental cuts to the GROWTH in their debt. Few have actually seen decrease in spending from previous levels. The ones that have cut the most however have tended to improve the most relative to the other countries that have made fewer cuts. Also, these same countries also enacted massive tax increases in some cases increasing taxes by nearly 50%. This is hardly the "austerity" that the left seems to be up in arms about.

 

Debt will harm the economy eventually. If an individual borrows massive amounts of money, eventually he will have to pay it back. The same is true for governments.

[Mister Mister]

.For me, debt comes in late in the conversation

Me:  Government is immoral
Statist:  Governments do some immoral things sometimes, but also can do many good things.
Me:  But everything they do is funded through taxation, which is theft.
Statist:  Taxation is not theft!!!  You consume services paid for with taxation, and vote on how the money is appropriated.
Me:  Even if that is true, a great deal of government spending is financed by debt, which is a promise to tax future generations who haven't voted on anything.
Statist:  Money is all illusory anyway.  Don't you want there to be schools and roads?  Do you hate the poor and sick and old or what?

At this point, as dsayers points out, you can tell they are just manipulating and have no principles.  In rare cases, however, people are actually curious, and might say something like "I never though of it that way.  Tell me more..." <== Keep these people close.

The clinch for the debt argument is not that hard.  A father's debts do not pass onto his children.  No government would generally enforce such a contract, and people would find it abhorrent if they did, and people were consuming things that their children would have to pay for.  So how can this be okay for millions of people collectively?  No, it is not everyone owing everyone else, it is future generations, owing a portion of their labor to bankers who loan money to the government.  Consider that a great deal of public debt is owned by Central Banks, who just typed the money into their bank account to begin with, and you really see the truth - it is just modern financial slavery, of free-range human livestock.  This old video of Stef's cuts to the heart of it.

[fezjones]

 

I'm new so if this topic has already been done to death then apologies and please direct me to the relevant thread or podcast.

 

When expressing concern about (particularly government) debt, the conversation tends to go as follows:

 

ME: Man, are we in trouble...

 

RESPONSE: Aw come on. Every country has huge debts. Don't worry there's loads of money, it's government austerity that's the problem.

 

ME: That isn't much of an argument...crippling interest payments...stealing from the unborn etc.

 

                        ...eventually...

 

RESPONSE: Look everybody owes everybody else so it all cancels out anyway. There'll be some sort of reset and it'll all get sorted out. It's just not an issue, relax.

 

So my question is how best to counter this in a way that people can easily grasp?

 

I figure that if all debt is suddenly magically written off then the entire Finance industry loses its reason to exist and everything in your bank account, pension plan, stock portfolio, insurance policies etc becomes worthless. However this doesn't seem to persuade. Any thoughts as to how to convince people that there is actually a problem?

 

 

the erosion of purchasing power as the currency gets debased by monetizing debt. as long as the government debt increases debt at a an increasing rate (which it has already done to a tipping point),  then the currency is destined to be crash in value because it will be dumped in exchange for stronger currencies in the world.

Social security is already determined to be in complete crisis in 16 years according to the government's own website.  the government will have nothing in the "trust" fund in 16 years lol. idk how much that hole will be, but lol if the government ends up just printing money to pay social security in 2032.

I think all the governments medical programs will face the same issues in less time.  Costs in the medical industry are going to get insane over the next 10 years.  I expect medications and technology to be advancing at such a rate, that every treatment and piece of equipment will be more costs than its weight in gold.  Also the workload on medical professionals, red tape, college costs, old doctors retiring, will make human resources a nightmare, and again the cost on the government entitlement programs crippling.  This will also be pursued by money printing.   The scarier thing will be the government putting in prices controls, and good luck for all the americans under obamacare when you go to the ER and they have no pain killers.

when you get your social security check in 20 years, you will not think "government debt isnt bad" when your fixed income won't be enough to retire.

[KarlJay]

According the the r/K selection theory, this should be an argument you can't win.  IIRC, it has to do with the development of the frontal lobe of the brain and it doesn't change.

 

Someone plz corrected me where I'm wrong, but the rabbits really don't understand the consequences of debt.  They are the ones that will consume all the corn and have no seeds to plant for next season.  It's the wolves that understand why you have to limit consumption in order to survive.

 

Isn't it the case that you'll never convince the rabbit to conserve?  In addition, isn't it true that you can take away an entitlement from a rabbit without them feeling that you have stolen from them?  The debt is seen by them as an income stream to be spent.

 

I've had this discussion many times, on what might be consider less 'thoughtful' message boards, and I've found no way to convince these people of the dangers of debt.  Some have simply stated, "as long as we can print money... we're fine..."

 

IMO, this is why some systems have to crash in order for some people to realize that they can crash.  TBH, if they can't see the danger of the debt without an argument, they'll never see it.