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   pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 16:45:06 JST pettter

   Riley on the Trashfuture podcast made a very salient point on government spending and debt the other day. In short:

   You loan money to entities you believe can repay it.

   Governments loan to themselves (possibly with some extra steps, but basically).

   Governments going into debt is thus a measure of the governments beliefs about the future. More specifically, loaning money _now_ means it thinks it'll have more money in the future.

   That things will be better.

   >

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 16:47:10 JST pettter

     in reply to

     There's a whole lot of neoliberal governments who staunchly refuse to go into debt to, e.g. build or maintain critical infrastruture or pay government workers for important public services.

     The neoliberal death machine is built on "things can not be better".

     Hope is revolutionary, optimism is praxis.

     We _can_ do better. We _must_.

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 17:05:35 JST pettter

     in reply to

     • Cleopatra

     @Cleopatra Well, there's absolutely debt peonage, but I'm going with a simplified narrative to make a point here.

   • Embed this notice
     cleopatra@c.im's status on Wednesday, 21-Jun-2023 17:05:36 JST Cleopatra

     in reply to

     @pettter
     ..You loan money to entities you believe can repay it...

     I don't think that's always true.
     Sometimes the goal of lending is to get someone in a debt they will never repay: any loss of money is well worth it to see them struggling and/or make them kiss your ass.
     (And sometimes the interest on those loans is so high that you really don't want them to ever start paying down to principal)

     It used to be how the west treated Africa, nowadays it's how China treats Africa and the USA.