your heart is in the right place but you really don't know what you are talking about

gov surplus isn't like a household surplus we can always pay usd denominated debt

macro isn't just micro scaled up

I know that it is a long-term thing, you have to pay off over a long period of time as to not cause issues. 😛

the us even pretending to run surpluses is what causes most of our problem, it lead directly to offshoring everything to china

no, you dont have to pay it off at all, that's not the purpose of the national debt

I used to live in New Zealand, which purposely doesn't pay off the debt, as to not mess up the economy, even though it could probably pay it off outright.

no country using a modern fiat currency can pay off their national debt, it's literally impossible

Well yep.

that's not a bad thing, that's just a feature of monetary economy as opposed to commodity based barter economy

Though you can still keep it to a low level.

What is low as a percentage varies by country.

no real need to do that either

it's a non issue, really depends on unspent national income and how much employment you want

The US would really have to mess up to end up like Greece of course.

completely different situation, greece is part of a monetary union with other states, they cant devalue or use monetary policy at all

if you owe debt in a 'foreign' currency, all bets are off

EU is a monetary union but not a fiscal union, ulike the US where california taxes are spent in alabam, as well

Well of course, though my point is that what you can do varies by country.

there is no point there, the us can't 'end up like greece' same way denmark cant either. they stayed out of the euro for exactly that reason

Greece had widespread government inefficiencies and corruption that led to that mess.

nah, greece situatin is directly related to the Euro and the monetary union

germany and some others run a surplus, so the other euro countries are stuck because they dont have a fiscal union and they are limited by rules as to what they can do via debt

greek situation was 100% predicted in 90s

Euro zone is a vendor financing scheme for germany, there is nothing the greeks and similar countries could do

Think we are talking about different things. I am talking about a government budget surplus, and the debt directly related only to that.

gov budget surplus is terrible goal under fiat monetary system. the greeks were done no matter what they did as long euro zone has no fiscal union

we arent talking about different things

you just dont understand what you are talking about

i understand why you think the way you do though

just forget all that shit about gov balanced budgets, its non sense when talking about soft currency economics

```gov budget surplus is terrible goal under fiat monetary system``` No it isn't, it is a long-term achievable goal. Only if you try and achieve it all at once do you mess up.

negative

that is going to cause a depression, because gov decifits is how unspent income gets back into the economy(though it can be spent unwisely)

in a barter economy (including gold standard and receipt money), its somewhat possible

but fiat monetary economy is totally different

Eh...multiple countries run at surplus, with gdp growth.

if they have trade surplus, they can, for a while, but entire economy cannot do that

that's how oyu get greece