> There actually literally is a free lunch. Debt owed to the government by itself isn’t real.
False.
It may not be the same as debt owed to other parties, but not paying it still has consequences for things like money supply.
Otherwise, why would the government not just lend endless amounts of money? Even the Chinese government knows they can't do that.
> It doesn’t matter how much you think China is in trouble financially, at the end of the day they still manufacture a third of everything in the world.
Their output doesn't really matter when it comes to their financial situation. You can produce a lot and still be in trouble. And it's not me that is calling out China's problems, China is talking about it as well.
I never said anything about lending infinite money, don’t straw man me.
The constraint is on real resources, which China has plenty of, regardless of how much debt they have.
The financial situation is an accounting detail. China could decide to write off all debt it owes to itself tomorrow, and literally nothing would change.
> I never said anything about lending infinite money, don’t straw man me.
You did say...
> There actually literally is a free lunch. Debt owed to the government by itself isn’t real
Which I think is reasonable to interpret as lending infinite money.
> The constraint is on real resources, which China has plenty of, regardless of how much debt they have.
I'm not even sure what you're saying here. Constraint on what? Money? Economic growth?
Assuming you mean money, it doesn't make much sense. Ok, China has lots of real resources. In order to pay down debt, they need to turn those resources into money. They can certainly create the supply, but they also need demand.
It's like Canada saying they have infinite resources in their timber. "We'll just cut down the wood and sell it". Well there isn't infinite demand for timber, so in fact, having a lot of resources doesn't mean you have endless money.
> China could decide to write off all debt it owes to itself tomorrow, and literally nothing would change
Absolutely not true. Look at the real estate developers. China is working hard to get them out from under the crushing debt they have. If, as you claim, they could "write off all debt, and literally nothing would change", why didn't they.
The answer is that China is mostly a market economy. Writing off debt has massive consequences bothing domestically and internationally.
This is the trade off China made when relying on the free market for growth. If they want to leverage the free market, then they are held to the free market's rules (which they are currently dealing with).
Can you imagine a world where a government could spend infinite money without any problems? If you can’t, then why would someone else think that? If you thought my understanding of macroeconomics was different from yours and you were genuinely curious, it would have been a good idea to start by asking questions. Or if you thought I was an idiot you could have just ignored me. But you chose to assume an obviously ridiculous premise to my comment and reply based on that. That’s the definition of a straw man argument.
If you still care to know, the constraint on government spending is real resources (and whether they can be usefully utilized of course).
I don’t know about the real estate situation in China, and I don’t know if it was financed by private debt or public debt, so I can’t comment on it.
That debt issued by a central bank to its government to productively utilize real resources is not inflationary and not really “owed” to anyone. It’s an accounting detail.
In response to you saying that there is no free lunch since debt is always owed to someone.
> That debt issued by a central bank to its government to productively utilize real resources is not inflationary and not really “owed” to anyone. It’s an accounting detail.
This sentence doesn't make sense. "Debt issued to it's government"?
I presume you mean government debt issued to the central bank, whereby the central bank prints new money as a part of the loan?
It absolutely can be inflationary (see US inflation during Covid) if the money eventually makes it into the economy (e.g. by paying workers).
And yes, debt is always owed to someone. Whether that someone is the central bank doesn't mean it's a free lunch - not paying back the loan has consequences to the economy.
Putting people in prison for weed, something China does as well, is not the same as imprisoning people for blog posts (something China does the US doesn't).
It’s not only a logical negotiating position, it has legal implications.
Way back in the 50-60’s the government put in laws around “usual and customary price” in an attempt to rein in medical costs.
What providers were doing is charging cash customer $10, then when an insured patient came in (back when insurance paid 100%) they charged $100.
So a law was put into place to define what a “usual and customary price” is. The provider could not charge any customer more than this.
Like most well intentioned laws it created perverse incentives to jack up the public price as high as possible - if someone paid it, great, otherwise offer a discount.
Or, rather than trying to keep your hands sterile which is a futile exercise, doing what the military teaches - keep your hands away from your face (eyes, nose, mouth) and don't scratch your skin.
The reason you care about germs on your hands is because they make you sick when you stick them in your body orifaces. Otherwise, those germs don't matter.
High quality? I’ve ridden in several. It’s an all plastic deal with a flimsy feel. The ride is horrible and from the reviews I e read the handling is terrible.
Handling on basically all EVs except maybe what porsche is doing is terrible. And American cars are all plastic and flimsy, and this includes Tesla. But they're also much more expensive.
> The Chinese EVs were particularly atrocious in their handling.
I disagree, again, pretty much all EVs handle like shit because they're very heavy and have a ton of torque. It doesn't help that most American cars are very large and particularly tall, which makes handling even worse. The reality is that a sedan will basically always handle better than an SUV, no matter what, even if it's a piece of shit sedan and a 100K Cadillac SUV. At least, on pavement.
> And sure some American cars are plastic and flimsy
No, like, all of them. You can't buy a Tesla with an interior that isn't mostly plastic. GM is still doing that bullshit where most of their components are binned from 20K shitboxes. There's SOME exceptions, but they're rare. And you'll find that what Xiaomi and some other's are doing is not plastic. They have leather interiors and stuff, this is all very easy to verify online. I'm not telling you anything that isn't trivial to find out.
Whether or not they're credible to you, they're still the #2 ranked general medicine journal in the world, second only to the NEJM.
> USAID isn’t an aid organization, it’s a front for CIA efforts internationally
This is a conspiracy theory that can be trivially refuted by simply following the money. You can do this because their budget is public, unlike the budget of the CIA. The stuff you're citing from a half century ago isn't relevant to the work they've been doing when Musk said "Time for it to die."
What USAID actually was was a vital tool of US soft power and influence globally, and if you believe that it's important to wipe out the last remaining vestiges of the United States' perception as 'the good guys' then by all means it was very important to stop their work immediately.
> Whether or not they're credible to you, they're still the #2 ranked general medicine journal in the world, second only to the NEJM.
Their ranking is based on how often papers are referenced in total, not the validity of any one paper. As I said, they been criticized for serious lapses in publishing fraudulent papers.
> The stuff you're citing from a half century ago isn't relevant to the work they've been doing when Musk said "Time for it to die."
I'm sorry what? It's the same organization? The fact that USAID was funding paramilitary organizations during war tells you USAID has nothing to do with aid.
> USAID actually was was a vital tool of US soft power and influence globally....if you believe that it's important to wipe out the last remaining vestiges of the United States' perception as 'the good guys' then by all means it was very important to stop their work immediately.
So you're saying unless the US can project soft power and influence (which is ALWAYS to the US' benefit, it absolutely is not altruistic) it won't be viewed as the "good guys"?
I thought the last few decades of the US losing key industries to China was a lesson everyone learned?