I, for one, never said anything even remotely close to that.
You're right and I apologize. I got a little carried away - no, I got a lot carried away, mostly by the other quote and it was wrong to attribute to your post the same sentiment I did to it.
We CAN borrow as much as we want; the vast majority of our debt is owed to OURSELVES. I never said we could do it with "nary a consequence." Eventually, there will be a consequence. But it's not right around the corner. Debt is paid by GROWTH, not wanton cuts, and in a recession or slow recovery, borrowing spurs growth.
I do however disagree with this - or at least the conclusions drawn from several very general accuracies. If the premise is that we are borrowing from ourselves - and in one sense, that *may* be accurate - but if that is the premise, that "we can borrow as much as we want" because we are just borrowing from ourselves, that statement can't possibly be true - UNLESS we have unlimited capital ourselves. And of course, we don't.
Yes, the majority of the debt is - technically - debt we owe "ourselves." However it is not "we" who are spending "our" money. It is not "we" who are borrowing from ourselves to spend on ourselves. It is the government; it is our politicians who are doing that. They solicit and collect money from us, under a proviso that said monies will be paid back to us, with interest.
In fact, it's impossible for someone to borrow money from themselves except they redefine the meaning of the word "borrow." We might, say, have a pile of savings into which we dip for monies to spend however. But that isn't "borrowing" unless those monies be earmarked for some other purpose - and even then such "borrowing" is only a technicality.
Yes, growth helps pay for debt, but as debt increases growth [necessarily] decreases. So NO, borrowing DOES NOT spur growth - SAVE (and this is important) SAVE in the specific circumstance where such borrowing goes to increase the machine, the processes that enable growth - e.g. a company borrowing to buy a new piece of manufacturing equipment, or expand their operation such that what they produce can increase, etc. But even then, growth is predicated on there being clientele who have the resources to purchase whatever such processes produce. Wanton spending predicated on wanton borrowing does nothing to spur growth if all we are doing - and that IS all we are doing - is redistributing the monies borrowed.
And yes, the consequences for such an irresponsible fiscal policy are not immediate. But that only explains why our government gets away with their irresponsible borrowing and spending - because the consequences aren't immediate.
