So in the UK the tories and media keep saying the national debt is the highest its been since the ww2 (which is true of pretty much any year since the 80s). And that we need to raise taxes, tighten our belts etc to pay back what we borrowed to get us thru the pandemic.
Now I know this kind of treating a countries finances like household finances and talking about national debt like its credit card debt is disingenuous and just used as a way to justify squeezing people more than they are already.
But what I don't know with enough authority to be able to talk to people about it is why this is the case? How is national debt different and wtf is it? Who do we owe it to and do we even need to pay it back etc?
Ofc I know the whole thing is bullshit anyway any only exists to preserve the current power structure but let's leave that for now.
Be good to hear thoughts from someone who knows things.
Yeah that's not how debt or imperialism works at all. Most of debt is owned to private actors and branches of government, not other states. Who are they gonna bomb, JP Morgan? The US has to and does pay up debt constantly. But also it accrues new debt via issuing bonds. It's not like owing to a loan shark where the loan shark bangs your door and tries to force you to pay, but if you've become like a mobster or something you can tell him to fuck off. The US constantly pays debt while also getting more in debt, it's what pretty much every country does, and if they default it is not at all good.
do more research, till then stfu
Oh my god your link literally proves my point, it is literally the subtitle to your article.
you claimed corporations are owed the debt. in reality it's the citizens and foreign governments.
I said private actors, not corporations. Citizens are private actors. Foreign governments only own a small part of the debt.
a third is the largest part of the debt.
Fractions: How do they work?
they work like this
Jfc I have no clue what you are trying to prove here, if you cut a slice from a bread and then cut the rest of the bread up into much thinner slices, then the original slice isn't most of the bread. It's really simple.
No one has ever proposed your theory because it is extremely silly and obviously false. By far the largest part of US debt is owed either to other branches of government, or to private actors. Then a comparatively small part of debt is owed to foreign governments. IT DOES NOT MATTER at all if all foreign governments combined own more than other actors do separately, they still own a minority of US debt, and of that minority most of it is owed to close allies of the US, and most of it is also paid up (including debt to enemies of the US) constantly, while more is being accumulated, because foreign governments generally own US BONDS just like every private actor who owns a US bond and the US pays all of them, or else they will default. Your idea of national debt is completely false. It is not at all the reason the US buys so many bombs, that happens so that the US maintains the role as a global hegemon, exapand its sphere of influence so that corporations have more and more available space to expand into, and maintain the petrodollar. It has nothing to do with preventing other places from collecting their debt, it's simply not how national debt works.
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right, foreign governments, a third, that's the largest portion, while the rest can just be credited. it's why the US invests in bombs.