"Ultimately, when a media pundit or Janet Yellen predicts the end of the world if debt doesn't continue to skyrocket ever upward, they are simply calling for a continuation of the status quo.
And what does the status quo mean? It means a world in which the US government continues to spend trillions of dollars it doesn't have, made possible through monetizing massive amounts of debt and forcing taxpayers to devote ever more of their own wealth and income to paying off an ever-more-huge chunk of interest.
It also means more government spending, which—regardless of whether it's funded by debt or by taxes—causes malinvestment and, through the redistribution of wealth, rewards the politically powerful at the expense of everyone else. In other words, its keeps Pentagon generals and Big Pharma executives living in luxury while the taxpayers are lectured about the need to "pay America's bills."
Read the entire article as it appears originally at Mises.org
Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has BA degrees in economics and political science, and an MA in political science from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.