Being widespread with low population density is a problem in the US. Too expensive to run fiber out to the suburban or rural houses.

Also in the US, being small with high population density is a problem. Too expensive to run fiber in established cities. Imagine rewiring NYC!!

Of course then you have projects like Google Fiber, or more locally for me, Greenlight NC, that ARE DOING IT. So it's all bullshit. It is possible, and not especially difficult or expensive, in both urban and suburban areas, in the US. We just like to tell ourselves it's not possible because we haven't done it yet.

We're talking about in-state tuition at state schools.

At any given point in time, it is. You're right that it changes over time as new goods and services are provided, but at the instant someone says "I'm going to print off a new $100 bill" the value is diluted. It may recover in the future, or not. The value of money may have increased even more in the absence of that printing, or not. Printing the money doesn't automatically add value to the economy, case in point Zimbabwe.

Yeah, you're basically describing an investment now, and like any investor, we should look at the merits of the investment before buying into it. Your idea of the buried gold scheme is obviously a bad investment. It produces no actual value and has no hope of returning the investment so it's a welfare program or charity, not an investment. Great. I'm all for temporary assistance for the unemployed. But why on earth, if you are going to require labor in return for the welfare (which I think is a great idea), would you do something as useless as digging ditches and filling them back up? There is real work that could be done. In the Great Depression they did ditch digging and filling, and they also built dams and roads. Looking back, which should they have done more of in your opinion or would you say the ditches and the dams produced equal value?

I agree with the other person who said debt can be good or bad depending what it's for. If the debt is paid by the next generation, but disproportionately benefits the current generation, then it's unethical debt. Even rolling over debt, the fact that the debt exists decreases the borrowing capacity of the next generation to cover their own needs. Not to mention while rolling over debt you are obviously still paying or accumulating interest so there's a direct cost as well.

As for countries vs small businesses or even family budgets, well, obviously they are not "bigger versions" as in "the same in every detail but bigger". Requiring that level of similarity is useless for pretty much any analogy. But there are more similarities than differences for sure. Living within your means is an obvious one that is similar. The major difference isn't whether they can print money (you can print money but not value), but their lifespan vs the things they buy.

I agree with Stradivarius's point about your argument (Keynes's argument essentially) ignoring the destroyed value of burying the gold. That's a great point.

Another point I'll bring to your attention -- even if someone isn't burying the gold/oil, finding new gold/oil doesn't *just* add value, it dilutes it. Lets say you find some gold, and it turns out you found a billion tons of gold, compared to worldwide historical production of about 150k tons. What happens? Well you're richer, and the people who currently own gold are poorer. So you didn't exactly add much to society, you just reallocated some wealth to yourself through luck.

Same thing happens when the government prints money, buries it, and pays unemployed people to dig it up. You didn't actually add any value, you stole from the people who already had some money. It's like inflation. It's why the concept of "real GDP" subtracts out the effects of inflation, because that type of growth is not real.

It's bad for the future. You're spending a bunch of stuff and then dying, which means at worst your kids will get nothing when you die. That kind of sucks for them, but you are entitled to spend your own money as you see fit.

Government debt doesn't die just because the people who benefit from it die. Unlike your debts which evaporate, government debt is borne by the next generation.

Surely you can see how applying your same philosophy to a country is horribly immoral?

Health-care premiums don't apply, and that's the biggest health related expense for most people. Since the employer portion of insurance premiums is deductible, it makes it that much harder to get your own insurance.

There are countries that have tried austerity and are happy with the results -- Germany, Estonia, Latvia.

Krugman famously disagreed on Estonia last year and was called out by the president of Estonia on Twitter. It was quite funny.

There were numerous articles about Estonia at the time and when I read them, I found myself agreeing with the Estonians. Krugman's argument boils down to measuring the country's GDP at its historical peak and saying that austerity isn't successful if the post-austerity GDP is lower than the peak. The appealing part of his argument is that it's objective. You're looking at some numbers and you can make a decision. The unappealing part is that it doesn't match a common sense view of a country's economic health.

Everybody would agree that if you can achieve the same growth with debt and without debt, you should do it without debt. As another uncontroversial datapoint, everybody would agree that if adding a tiny amount of debt helps you avoid an economic catastrophe, and that the debt can be easily repaid in a reasonable amount of time, then the country should take advantage of the debt.

Beyond those obvious points, there's no clear formula for the benefit of debt. Let's say a country takes on $1 billion of new debt per year, and their GDP is growing by $1 million per year, and if they stopped the debt their GDP would fall by $2 billion but start growing at $500 million/year after that without new debt. Is it worth continuing the debt additions? I guess Krugman would have to say yes because losing any GDP is a sign of failure. Common sense says it's a good deal because you increase your growth so much, you'll catch up to and surpass the high-debt scenario in a few years but have less debt. Of course in real life you can't predict the future with certainty, but it shows a problem in the argument that any immediate drop in GDP is a sign of failure.

No he failed to convince you that other people should be allowed to be selfish. You could still be unselfish regardless of what your tax burden is.

It's like gay marriage. To get someone to support gay marriage you don't have to convince them to become gay and get married, you have to convince them that others should be allowed to and that it won't affect your own freedom. It's tough because freedom is unfortunately a very low priority for people who aren't faced with restrictions on their own freedom.

Let's assume the benefits of a healthy economy are a legitimate want of non-calculators in your mind. (I don't understand why.. you could apply your argument to those as well.)

A healthy economy is one way to achieve the benefits of a healthy economy. That's obvious.

You're suggesting there may be other ways, better or worse, to achieve the benefits of a healthy economy that don't involve a healthy economy. That's possible.

But then you're saying that the person *doesn't* want a healthy economy, just the benefits of it. That's wrong. Just because there's more than one way to get to a certain state doesn't mean one way isn't more desirable, i.e. more wanted.

Yes, you're right, you won't have a high standard of living -- you'll be eating crappy food, your healthcare will be whatever services your school provides (though these days you can stay on your parents' insurance until 26), and you'll have several roommates to make rent affordable.

Isn't that part of the college experience? Looking back on it, the "poor" period of my life was pretty enriching. I wouldn't want to live out my life like that, but experiencing it for a few years was fine... character building you might say.

I didn't graduate debt free -- but I worked and graduated with only $4k of debt, which I thought was pretty good.

India has the 7th largest defense budget in the world at about $50 billion (US). They have a space program. They develop and maintain nuclear weapons.

All the talk about how poor India is and how they need free medicine is bullshit. They could pay for it but instead they choose the route of compulsory licenses and invalidating patents. Instead of working with drug companies to give them a fair profit while providing drugs, they want domestic companies to produce the generics and keep the profits (it's no charity like they would have you believe).

Now is that "bad?" I don't know, it's certainly a good deal for them and has given them an advanced and very capable pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. That's great for them.

BUT.. They don't get to do that and pretend to be on the high moral horse at the same time.

You're telling a story of a business owner who gets screwed by eminent domain. You didn't mention what type of business it is, so it's probably something mundane.

Then you say you want to apply the same screwing-you-over eminent domain to drug companies whose employees work day in and day out to save lives and produce the next generation of medicine. You want to screw those people over because they also make money, same as the mundane business owner you have sympathy for.

You have some fucked up priorities!

You know what's even more simple and obvious -- make everything free, including unnecessary luxuries, and just rely on everyone's good nature to make the system work.

It's so simple and obvious I can't believe nobody has tried that before.

If you see violence as sometimes necessary, it must be accessible to people when those cases of need arise. So why isn't it a right?

It's like saying habeas corpus is only REALLY needed sometimes (when the imprisonment is unlawful) so it's not a right.