03-07-2021, 07:59 AM
(03-06-2021, 11:18 AM)David Horn Wrote:(03-05-2021, 04:16 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: As a pattern, public debt tends to be paid off in a 1T. The government has wartime assets to sell, living standards improve enough so that people end up in higher tax brackets, and such new spending as there is tends to have revenue attached in the form of taxes.
Public debt is not increased in a 1T, but no debt actually gets paid. Instead, growth and inflation reduce the impact of the existing debt.
After the Civil War, public debt really was paid down. Every budget surplus to some extent pays down debt.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.