Political Science

[Howard]

Huh?

It's pretty standard in economics that debt per is not bad. Nobody really gives a royal shit about national debt per se, unless it gets to too high a level.

Did you read what I was responding to?

 

[shira]

Here's a bit of political science for you:

Found it here: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Feynman

I wonder if anyone would like to argue that the national debt doesn't matter and that it's of no significance to the future of the U.S. economy.

I mean if you had credit card debt, and you went to see a financial advisor, they'd most likely tell you to use your income to pay down the debt before investing your money elsewhere.

So is national economics different than personal economics?

Your focus on the Milky Way seems rather arbitrary. Since you're talking about "astronomical" numbers, how about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Matter_content

The observable universe contains between 10**22 and 10**24 stars (between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion stars). To be slightly more precise, according to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, "[by] a conservative estimate.... the currently observable universe is home to of order 6 x 10**22 stars"

Since 6 sextillion is about 20 billion times larger than the national debt, does that mean that deficits don't matter at all?

 

[rchiu]

ha, if you ask a democrat if it matters under Obama, it'd be it doesn't matter. But if the debt was under Bush or Reagan, it'd be the end of the world.

That's political science for you.