Paying Down the National Debt: A Good Idea, or Not?

[jeffbi88888888]

well, it is a interesting illustration. However, I do feel it is equally important to teach our kids the principle of integrity, honesty, dont borrow what you can not return, do return what you borrowed..... I can not imagine any adult will tell their kids to borrow his/her classmates or friends and encourge more borrowing..... I guess this mentality got us into trouble in the first place.

[Iaganatzi]

A nice simplistic idea, but far from relating to the real world, and lacking several critical figures and facts. Good effort.

[reniam]

I was going to comment on how silly this video is but, looks like plenty of people got here well before me.

[Nintendomanwill]

If you buy government bonds you will receive low returns due to the low interest rates employed to expand credit and raise demand, in the government's destructive attempts to counter the business cycle by making yet more booms.

And those returns which you gain in US $ will become progressively more worthless due to credit expansion

The national debt is a money pit which is going to have to be paid off either through inflation or through high taxes. You're fucked, as are we all thanks to govt

[vyus9]

no mention of rising debt service costs, the rate of return on debt or the money we borrow. just a simple-minded explanation that assumes debt can be maintained forever. it can't. we pay it off every 1 to 30 years.

try paying off your credit card balance with another credit card, see how far you go. the only difference between you and the govt is the govt can print/borrow its own money. Check out US inflation sicne 1930 if you want an example of that.

[coasteys]

hey mistermoneyman make a comment because obviously your idea and video is wrong

[tjbrooks]

Interesting. Except remember that the bonds are both a financial asset to the holder, and a liability to the tax payer. So only counting it as an asset is a mistake. Our Net position is the one to look at, though there are distributional consequences.

The point he make on the social security trust fund is a good one, but mysteriously he then confuses the issue when he talks about 9 trillion in assets. Remember those same children inherit the tax liability.

[MOPEDBRAD]

This guy is smoking crack.

He bases his ideas about paying off the debt on the ill-conceived notion that treasuries gaining value through accruing interest is a good thing.

The fact is simply that the more money there is, the less it's worth. This is the basic concept of supply & demand. In a system where more dollars compete for the same amount of goods, the goods cost more dollars.

I wouldn't take any financial advice from this guy, as he is obviously living on another planet.

[strolchi10]

If you owe someone (ore believe you do) this person has Power offer you! Our whole economy is built on this money out of dept system it is not fair if one thinks the simply using the power to create money out of nothing there is no real good behind it so the get the real good you get paper! You have to work for it youre work is real Good ore they take youre house if you cant pay anymore so they always win and they can call in at any time of there choice! Its a fraudulent system!

[strolchi10]

One solution would be to go back to a constitutional system let congress have the issuing Power back and not the international Banksters! End The Fed Reserve system!! When he said the govt owes it to the govt he mistakes they owe it to the private Banksters of the Fed! The fed is not part of the Govt as he might assume its a private owned banking cartel witch make endless profit on the simple power to create money out of thin air lending to us wit interest attached to it! They owen us!

[strolchi10]

He misses a lot of points in his view! First there is not enough money in the system to pay of the dept the interest is not created with the money! All money in existence is dept someone has to owe so if we paid back all the dept private and govt there would be no dollar ore penny left in the system and we would still owe the interest as it was not created in the process of giving credit! No way all dept could be paid back if the govt dont owe some privates must ore there be no money!

[RonPaulCentral]

Inheriting $9 trillion doesn't mean a thing when if we keep the debt and continue to devalue the dollar to pretend that we can keep up with it, our kids will be paying $15 a gallon for gas and $10 for milk.

$3 trillion in solid money is better than $9 trillion in owed money.

[ahausheer]

Mr. Money Man.

You have some problems with you logic. I assume you are suggesting we should never pay off our debt? If so then our currency would loose most of its value rather quickly. Not paying off your debt is called defaulting. Like what happened with Russia. According to your logic we can all just charge everything to our credit cards and never pay them off???

[chasna2]

The government does not own the bonds held in the trust funds. Those bonds are a liability of the Treasury and an asset of the trust fund and can be redeemed for taxpayer funds when needed. Mister Money Man needs to do some reading of the literature put out by the Trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund.

[filoviriae]

HUH? What's that you say? We can't just print more and give them out? Okay... Why don't we increase the yield for a 30 year treasury bond, let's say from 4% to 67%? Then the 3 trillion dollars worth of bonds held by Americans (mentioned in the video) will become 5 trillion dollars when our kids cash them out! That's still pretty good!!!!! Everyone call Congress!

[filoviriae]

Wow... according to this logic, why don't we just PRINT more treasury bonds and give them out to everyone, especially the poor in America? If we print enough (let's say 21 trillion $ worth of bonds) and distribute all of them to U.S. citizens, then our kids and grandkids will inherit the 9 trillion mentioned in the video plus the new 21 trillion I just proposed, totalling to 30 trillion dollars!!!! That's 30 trillion dollars we just gave our kids! WOW!!!!

[Darone1966]

If you pay down the debt, the vast majority of it we owe to ourselves anyway, then all you have done is to increase the amount of dollars in circulation.

Yes, some of those dollars are held in foreign hands, but they cannot be of any real value to them unless they be brought back home and exchanged for value.

So, what you end up doing is causing more dollars to be available for circulation, making them inherently less valuable for trade (ie: inflationary).

Good job!

Keep the debt!!!!

[humanity6fl9]

i tell you this no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn-j.d.m

[johnsenkenn]

What a bloody intellectual rubbish.

[KHallesy]

We need to pay it off. I have been saying for 10 years that the only way we can do it is to add $1.00 to every gallon of gas and put 100% towards the national debt. No money can be used for anything else period!!! This would pay the national debt and would allow us to give our children a country free of debt. It would cause us to drive less and make us work harder on fuel efficiency and buy smaller cars. Also if people were not able to afford the gas we could give them free bus coupons, etc

[humanity6fl9]

debtor nation logic. thats why we're in the trouble we are in right now! who has ever heard of such a thing. your in better fiscal standing by not paying off a debt. we've just walked through the looking glass.absolute lunacy. the debtor is servant to the lender.when pray tell will this yoke of interest be lifted off our necks.could you please supply us with a cutout version of that aha i get it now your an agent of the federal reserve. say when was the last general accounting of your offices.

[madcatzy]

Great video.

[fishingthewatershed]

Good points. One that is left out is IF the debt is payed down what keeps the politicians from giving it away again for foreign aid, medical and social benefits for illegal aliens, $400 toilet seats for the pentagon, $1,000,000 grants to study marriage in asia, fitting frogs with dentures and cows with diapers, etc... Politicians spend more money than we own. One quick question, how much of this debt is owed to the federal reserve for intrest on their debtors notes?