Comments by "Wojtek The Bear" (@wojtekthebear4958) on "America's Debt Crisis Explained | 5 Minute Video" video.

  1. Yep, I see nothing wrong with locking up the rich and taking their money. Who did that again? Oh yeah! Nazi Germany, the USSR, and Communist China during the Great Leap Forward. How did that work out for them? Terribly.
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  2. I would shake your hand if I could, sir! Finally someone gets it, and better yet, you didn't demonize the Federal Reserve!
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  3. You...you seriously don't know how businesses work, do you?
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  4. Congress and the President. Congress makes the annually spending plan for the US government, which is then approved by the President.
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  5. So the current debt is all Trump's fault now? Great!
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  6. Not true at all. About 30% of our debt is to the Federal Reserve. Note: They are definitely part of the government, else they wouldn't remit their profits to the US treasury (https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/01/10/fed-sent-77-7-billion-in-profits-to-treasury-last-year/). This is neither a majority of our debt, nor is our interest paid on this debt somehow the biggest expense to debt the US has outstanding. You're just making bullcrap claims out of ignorance.
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  7. Officially they are part of China.
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  8. Ironically they use Greece as an example of what we could become and claim austerity is the answer, not realizing that austerity is what imploded the Greek economy and really screwed them.
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  9. No, taxes are inherently distortionary if they aren't lump sum, so they do hurt economic growth. That being said, usually their benefits outweigh their costs. In other words, while the taxes themselves hurt growth, the projects they are put towards can be a net benefit.
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  10. It's not actual debt. First nearly 40% of it is held within the government, and a further 30% is held with Americans. Second, the government was going to tax you either way. It's not like they're actually giving you a bill on debt. They're only going to put the tax money they would've gotten towards paying it off. Big whoop.
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  11. That REALLY is not how debt works, and I wish people would understand this. First, China doesn't own a majority of our debt. Not even close. Last I checked they owned something like a third of a third of our debt, and their share is shrinking. In fact Japan owns more of US debt than China, but all foreign owned debt combined isn't greater than 30% of our total debt obligations. Second, our debt is in bonds, which don't work as normal debt. For bonds you only pay interest for however long the bond is issued and then pay back the principle amount of the bond when it matures. They also can't be called up early, so the US can't just go to one of the people they're indebted to, give them a chunk of money, and leave, as that's just not how a bond works. Second, up to 40% of US debt is held within the government. The Federal Reserve owns a huge chunk of it, so does the Social Security fund and other government funds. By the way the last 30% is held by private investors, usually US based, so it's the government owing money to US citizens, who are then taxed by said government.
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  12. Government has nothing to do with consumer debt, and consumer debt is held by banks and companies usually based in America.
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  13. Sadly that's what I think most of Prager's arguments end up being.
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  14. Uh, all foreign nations combined only own 32% of US debt, and Japan is the leader in that department, not China (https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/2016/opds022016.pdf)
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  15. And another 30% to other government entities, mainly the Federal Reserve.
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  16. I don't think they are going to put "This is conservative propaganda" in the front of their videos, especially since it should instead read "This is blatant fearmongering".
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  17. China only holds something like 16% of the debt. 30% is held within government, another 30% is held by private American investors, and the rest is foreign owned. Of that foreign owned debt, a third or so is Chinese.
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  18. thetom12395 Congratulations! You just came up with what could possibly be the worst economic plan in human history! Man, am I so glad you're not an economic advisor. FYI, Einstein, of the three countries you mentioned, China's the only one that holds a material amount of US debt, and even then it's something like a third of a third of all US debt. I can even source that. Back in 2011, when our debt was about $14.5 trillion, China only owned about a trillion (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/foreign-held-us-debt/). That's even less of a portion of the debt than the figure I gave. Also, as most any economist will tell you, our national debt isn't a huge problem, but let's start WW3 anyway, right?
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  19. No, just not. Get your stupid conspiracy theory out of here. The only thing needed for a currency to work is for people to use it. As the USD is the only currency accepted for taxes and other government services, and what they pay for services, it is commonly accepted even outside the US. Affectively these are its anchor. Debt plays no pay in it.
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  20. US does good with it's debt too. It's only 107% of GDP, Japan's is 250% and still operating perfectly fine.
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  21. That's too abstract to mean anything. Fair as in what? Flat? eliminating the income tax? Also at what percentage are we talking here? Just saying "fair" doesn't mean anything in terms of revenue.
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  22. No. The number one investor in the US is the Federal Reserve (owning 30% of US debt). The number one foreign investor is also now Japan, not China (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/12/16/japan-not-china-biggest-us-debt-holder/95512328/).
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  23. Except, you know, the president doesn't set the budget.
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  24. Can't similar critiques be said about most of PregerU's content relating to economics?
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  25. Most of it is either owned by the Federal Reserve or private investors through things like mutual funds, pension funds, etc.
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  26. Do you even know what an unfunded liability is, because the way you're using it makes no sense.
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  27. This is heavily ironic considering the US has a huge net capital inflow, not outflow. How else do you think we sustain our trade deficit without the dollar falling in value? Because foreigners that use that dollar to invest in the US (https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/86/conf/friedman.pdf).
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  28. Actually we don't because it is more efficient for us to promote industries that we are actually good at, like our tech sector and high tech manufacturing for products like airplanes, cars, etc.
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  29. Yeah, because what you're culling for his horsehit. Need I remind you that Medicare and Medicaid give health insurance to both the poor and elderly? Without it, they wouldn't be able to pay for their coverage and more than likely die. Apparently you don't care. Also need I remind you that our military spending isn't much considering our GDP? NATO wants nations to target a military spending as a percent of GDP of 2%. Ours is 3.5%. Not much of a difference. Come back when you actually know what you're talking about that doesn't involve the mass killing of people.
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  30. If you honestly think a government can get away with that, then you're not a very smart individual. Investors would freak if they just saw their debt erased like that.
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  31. Because the news media never fought hand over fist to be the first to publish a scandal the government was a part of, like Watergate, Fast and Furious, and anything Trump does.
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  32. Was anything you said not a conspiracy theory? Jeesh, take an economics class.
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  33. That's a little over 3% of GDP. NATO nations are supposed to spend at least 2% of their GDP on military spending.
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  34. No, his tax bill is expected to cause a trillion dollar deficit.
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  35. No, as military spending is only around 600-700 billion. We'd still have a deficit even if we cut it by 100%. Furthermore, US military spending is only 3.5% of GDP, which is 1.5% over the minimum suggest spending for NATO. I'm not saying military spending shouldn't be cut, just that your idea explanation is wrong.
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  36. Ha, no.
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  37. Not exactly true as the President himself has to approve the budget.
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  38. .....the Laffer Curve? This is just intuition. With more money being taxed, people have less disposable income, meaning people are spending and saving less in the economy.
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  39. Governments don't make money from war.
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  40. No they didn't. The agreement in question was for Poland, not Greece. The USSR never signed such an agreement involving Greece. In fact Germany never had any intentions of invading Greece as they were already preparing for the invasion of the USSR. It was only due to Mussolini's jealousy of Hitler's success that caused his (failed) invasion of Greece to add more territory to his Italian empire. Once his invasion crumbled, he required reinforcements from Germany before the Allies were able to use Greece as a staging ground. This took resources away from Germany's preparations to invade the USSR.
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  41. First the pact you're talking about was for post was relations, and it only said that Greece would be in the British sphere of influence, not that they'd be British. Guess what? They were. Greece was a NATO member during the Cold War, not a USSR ally. Second, this invasion came before Operation Barbarossa as I already stated. Major historians also disagree with the fact that without he invasion of Greece Hitler would've won the war against the Soviet Union as that was a claim made by Hitler in the final days of the war, not by historians.
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  42. Actually this doesn't even make sense from an economics point of view. You are right about the smart people though. There are two main factors going into this. One: during economic downturns it is beneficial for the government to increase spending. This almost always results in deficits, which raise the debt. In times of economic growth this is supposed to be reversed so the debt doesn't get too big. This leads to factor two: US policymakers have perverse incentives. While cutting the deficit is a good thing, and would look great in front of voters, doing such would mean that a group of people are losing out, which are also voters. If social security is cut, the older generation is mad. If the military spending is cut, employees working for defense companies as well as veterans would be mad. You get the point. This means it can be pretty hard to actually cut the government deficit.
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  43. That doesn't even make sense. Universities don't make revenue off of buildings. They make revenue off of the tuition students pay, and are subsidized by the state governments.
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  44. Nah, I like it.
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  45. The Federal Reserve isn't Jewish, Mr. Conspiracy Theorist. It's part of the US government.
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  46. Yes, because I'm sure you know more about economics than a PhD Nobel prize winning economist.
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  47. Economic downturns tend to cause debt.
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  48. No.
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  49. That was barely even English. You realize the US ended QE over three years ago, right?
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  50. I would love to tell your English teacher, but I have no way of contacting them. I'm sure if you just show him this conversation right here they'd agree with me though. How much debt can they buy (referring to government debt) before failure? Hypothetically, all of it. Considering the Fed purchasing government debt has nothing to due with the government debt outstanding (that's decided by Congressional budgets), the Fed could buy all the US debt without the economy collapsing. How much money can the government create through QE? Depends on inflation. As inflation was near zero years ago, the government could create a lot before they came close to their 2% target. Now, they can't create much as we're already at said target. Also my point was that it's hard to get all countries on the "QE bandwagon" when the most powerful country in the world economically left the QE bandwagon as its economy already recovered for the most part.
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  51. I did answer you question. Realistically it depends on how much inflation you want to create, or what consumer confidence is. Even with all the QE we did during the recession, inflation was barely even positive. This is because spending plummeted due to low consumer confidence, what would have been deflation (which is terrible) if not for QE. Also you have no idea how government debt works. If the Fed had to step in to buy government debt just to keep everything even, then interest rates would rise (the government's way of incentivizing people to buy their bonds). As that's not the case, it's safe to say people are still fighting each other to buy these bonds as they are considered the safest investment ever to make. They are literally considered the only risk-free bond in finance.
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  52. okay, I'm done here. This is like smashing my had against a brick wall. I mean after clearly stating that the Fed does not issue Treasury bonds (they're called freaking Treasury bonds!), you still insist on saying they do. There's just no getting around this level of ignorance.
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  53. Your part about consumer confidence was what I was getting at.....
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  54. Yeah, that's why the US is on its way to being a net exporter of oil. Because we used it up.
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  55. Lol, what? The Chinese have been selling their US Treasury bonds in recent years. Now the largest foreign holder of US debt is Japan, one our greatest allies (and who has a larger debt problem than we do).
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  56. Oh yeah, yet another conspiracy theory nutjob.
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  57. It's nearly impossible for a country to go bankrupt. This is especially so for the US.
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  58. Word salad alert.
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