FQ.08.02: Favorite Quote for This Week

Our national income accounts do not directly show the benefits of that very large part of knowledge creation represented by new and improved products ... Yet such new and improved products constitute a large part of the increase in economic welfare from year to year, accounting for increases in life expectancy, physical appearance, sense of well-being, range of activities available to us, and so on.
—Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2

Comments

[Neocon Spinner]

Great work on the Sean Hannity post Steve. Keep the spin coming...

You might want to respond to Glen Beck's dose of realism. Also Respond to David Walker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-16u9x3tfE

[Steve]

Neocon:

I already did respond to the scare message. Read this post from the past:
http://tinyurl.com/ys3v7s

[MattJ]

Hi there; I have a question about the budget and deficit that I haven't been able to find the answer to, and I hope you can answer it or point me to the answer.

In a year that the budget is 'balanced', does that imply that expiring treasury bonds for that year are all paid off or all rolled over? In other words, would 30 years of balanced budgets basically pay off all of our national debt or would it leave us with the same absolute debt that we have now?

Thanks for that link to the Hummel website on money; I look forward to spending a lot time there.

Matt

[Steve]

MattJ:

A balanced (unified) budget, the only budget that really matters monetarily, would mean the government is neither increasing nor decreasing the amount of debt held by the public. I don't like that scenario, because I think it is a case of (a little) too much taxation; however, some love that scenario almost as much as they say they love surpluses. In any case, a balanced budget in a growing economy would result in a falling ratio of debt to GDP (...or, more to the point, a falling ratio of net interest payments to tax receipts).