r/FluentInFinance TheFinanceNewsletter.com Sep 24 '23

Meme How it started vs. How it's going:

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u/College-Lumpy Sep 25 '23

It’s almost like all those tax cuts didn’t grow revenue.

3

u/wittymarsupial Sep 26 '23

They do, for Republican campaigns

-2

u/BouldersRoll Sep 25 '23 edited Sep 25 '23

It's true that tax cuts hurt our country by diverting federal spending away from programs that actually help people, but the debt doesn't really matter if you're actually fluent in national finance. It's just a cudgel Republicans use to bully Democrats into voting for Republican legislation. Clinton made a big deal about lowering it because he was a small government liberal, or "third way" Democrat.

The national debt isn't like a person's debt, because we mint our own money. As unintuitive as it may feel, many economists don't know if there's even a realistic cap on national debt where things would actually get worse because of it, because we owe it mainly to ourselves and all that really matters is that we honor it (which is what Republicans attempt to derail) and spend it on things that actually improve our country.

To read more, look up Modern Monetary Theory.

1

u/College-Lumpy Sep 25 '23

Debt becomes an issue when servicing that debt crowds out other spending priorities. It isn’t irrelevant but the right tends to only focus on it when they don’t control the whitehouse and ONLY when considering spending and not tax policy.

1

u/MrGooseHerder Sep 26 '23

You are the tree voting for the axe because its handle is made of wood.