{"id":34827,"date":"2018-06-06T13:48:16","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T18:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34827"},"modified":"2018-06-06T13:48:16","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T18:48:16","slug":"debt-doesnt-matter-because-we-owe-it-to-ourselves-why-krugman-and-keynes-are-wrong-about-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34827","title":{"rendered":"Debt Doesn’t Matter, Because “We Owe It to Ourselves”? Why Krugman and Keynes Are Wrong about This"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Debt Doesn’t Matter, Because “We Owe It to Ourselves”? Why Krugman and Keynes Are Wrong about This<\/a><\/h3>\n
It is an undeniable fact that debt, whether private or public, must, eventually, be repaid.<\/div>\n
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Creditors have better memories than debtors<\/em>. This elegant line was coined by Benjamin Franklin\u2014political philosopher, prolific writer, humorist and American ambassador to France. Mr. Franklin also was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A true polymath and a man of great common sense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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An entrepreneur assumes he is entitled to an inexhaustible supply of credit and nonchalantly racks up debt. Soon, he will discover that\u00a0creditors have better memories than debtors<\/em>. Credit will dry up. Workers will stop working. Suppliers will stop supplying. Debt, after all, needs to be paid back. Credit and debt are two sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n

They will insist there is something subtle about debt we don\u2019t understand. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe creditor is always a virtual partner of the debtor. He has linked his fate with that of the debtor. Every grant of credit is a speculative entrepreneurial venture, the success or failure of which is uncertain.<\/em>\u201d \u2013 Ludwig von Mises in\u00a0Human Action (Chapter 20 \u2013 p539)<\/em><\/p>\n

Mainstream economists will not deny this. After all, how could they? Yet, they will say we got it wrong. They will argue we don\u2019t get the full picture. They will insist there is something subtle about debt we don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n

We Owe it to Ourselves<\/strong><\/p>\n

The subtlety we fail to see\u2014according to the mainstream\u2014is that public debt and private debt are two different animals. When government owes money to other organizations or individuals, a different rule applies than when a private person or a private enterprise owes money. That rule is:\u00a0we owe it to ourselves<\/em>.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debt Doesn’t Matter, Because “We Owe It to Ourselves”? Why Krugman and Keynes Are Wrong about This It is an undeniable fact that debt, whether private or public, must, eventually, be repaid. Creditors have better memories than debtors. This elegant line was coined by Benjamin Franklin\u2014political philosopher, prolific writer, humorist and American ambassador to France. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[20381,109,195,19708,14991,12584,549,614,1257],"class_list":["post-34827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bart-remes","tag-capital","tag-debt","tag-fee","tag-foundation-for-economic-education","tag-government-spending","tag-national-debt","tag-paul-krugman","tag-taxation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34828,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34827\/revisions\/34828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}