On May 18, 2009, at 10:13 AM, Bill Lear wrote:
Dean Baker writes the following, in his "The Bankrupt Debate Over Bankrupting Our Children" (2009-5-11 from Truthout): At some point, everyone alive today will be dead. At that point the government bonds that constitute the debt will be owned by our children or grandchildren. In other words, our children and grandchildren will be paying the interest burden to themselves. If future generations both receive and pay the interest on the debt then how can it be on net a burden to them? Isn't it true that "our children and grandchildren" will be paying the interest burden mostly to wealthy bondholders (the "Wall Street crew" that Baker decries) since bond ownership is presumably quite unequally distributed?
That, plus he's ignoring quantities. They could be paying "themselves" - meaning an inter-class transfer - 2% of GDP in debt service, or 10%. They could be doing something else with that 8%, like coping with climate change or taking longer vacations. What we do today does have an effect on our descendants.
Doug _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
