(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)
Result of Jane Sixpack listening to the Brookings Institute? "Glazing Speed."
Here's what the Brookings Institute Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy says:
Is the federal debt really a crisis that demands immediate attention? The headlines suggest it is, but to understand the debt we must first put it into context.
A new three-minute video from the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy boils down the facts about the outlook for the federal debt by tracing the recent ups and downs (yes, downs) of the projections for federal borrowing over the next decade. You can watch it here:
The animation presents the 10-year forecast for the federal debt made before the recession, how it rose when the recession hit, and how it rose still higher after Congress enacted President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the fiscal stimulus of 2009. Despite the outlook brightening in 2013 with the tax increase on upper-income Americans, and a slowdown in the pace at which health care spending is rising, we’re not out of the woods yet.
As part of the Hutchins Center’s mission of improving public understanding of major budget issues confronting the U.S., the video explains projections of the federal debt made by William Gale, the Arjay and Francis Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy at Brookings, and Alan Auerbach, Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law at the University of California, Berkeley. I hope you enjoy.
Sincerely,
David Wessel
Director, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies
@DavidMWessel
Notice the clever repetition by these sophists of NOMINALLY scary terms - most of them wrongly defined, if at all. Federal debt? Budget Issues? Not out of the woods yet? Federal Debt as the difference between what a nation invests in itself and what it takes in in taxes?
And did I mention federal debt?
And did I mention federal debt?
No wonder this promotes fear, uncertainty and doubt. Yet citizens should be asking WHY sophists say there's a wolf at the door, and NOT how big it is.
At best, such "expert" sophist advice only increases public confusion by continuing to promote use of muddled semantics to discuss something as simple as the spreadsheet called a fiat currency system. With all due respect to David Wessel's civic loyalty, perhaps Deficit Dove is not an appropriate description. Semantic Weasel may be more appropriate. This guy could serve as the Undertaker for the Middle Class. He's all sympathy and understanding, as he nevertheless gently guides the widow's hand to sign over all of the family's remaining assets, to provide for the "properly grand burial" of the deceased Middle Class.
In reality, his condescending words only serve to grossly distort understanding of what are actually very straightforward methods for denominating any and all forms of inter-citizen credit, and hence any and all forms of distributed and Public initiative.
Data without context is meaningless.
And, so is our perception or ideology without cultural agility and adaptive outcome.
At best, such "expert" sophist advice only increases public confusion by continuing to promote use of muddled semantics to discuss something as simple as the spreadsheet called a fiat currency system. With all due respect to David Wessel's civic loyalty, perhaps Deficit Dove is not an appropriate description. Semantic Weasel may be more appropriate. This guy could serve as the Undertaker for the Middle Class. He's all sympathy and understanding, as he nevertheless gently guides the widow's hand to sign over all of the family's remaining assets, to provide for the "properly grand burial" of the deceased Middle Class.
In reality, his condescending words only serve to grossly distort understanding of what are actually very straightforward methods for denominating any and all forms of inter-citizen credit, and hence any and all forms of distributed and Public initiative.
Instead, Jane & Joe Sixpack could and should be urged to pay attention to which local, regional and national efforts are beneficial for our aggregate, and then Just Do It! What matters is our quality (including tempo) of distributed decision-making. We can always denominate any and all of the diverse tasks we agree to do for one another, in pursuit of national goals. So for Fiat's sake, quit confusing people with twisted semantics!
You don't efficiently recruit people to be pragmatically agnostic by endlessly telling them that there is no Devil, no God, no angels ... and that they aren't going to hell.
All that does is imprint in their minds the archaic terms which emerging adaptive pressures demand they forego using as their primary social construct. There's a reason why separation of state and religion evolved. It works.
Separation of ideology and fiat currency operations works too - if people will only keep them separated.
As always, there is a better way - and it is plainly obvious. To help more citizens see that, at least use accurate semantics to orient people to a context that's changed since their old textbooks were written.
And then cease, forever, the use of broken semantics and endless amounts of data-minus-context when trying to build an informed electorate. That's a slow train than never arrives .... in time to matter.
You don't efficiently recruit people to be pragmatically agnostic by endlessly telling them that there is no Devil, no God, no angels ... and that they aren't going to hell.
All that does is imprint in their minds the archaic terms which emerging adaptive pressures demand they forego using as their primary social construct. There's a reason why separation of state and religion evolved. It works.
Separation of ideology and fiat currency operations works too - if people will only keep them separated.
As always, there is a better way - and it is plainly obvious. To help more citizens see that, at least use accurate semantics to orient people to a context that's changed since their old textbooks were written.
And then cease, forever, the use of broken semantics and endless amounts of data-minus-context when trying to build an informed electorate. That's a slow train than never arrives .... in time to matter.
1) There is no REAL federal debt. Only private savings accounts offered by the public through government institutions.
2) There is no "Federal Borrowing". Only expression of Public Initiative. (Who could we borrow fiat from? Cheerleaders? Optimists? OCD patients?)
3) There are no "major fiscal budget constraints". Only aggregate investment of Public Initiative in public services and private saving reserves, to provide distributed liquidity.
4) Fiat is NOT dependent upon how many taxes we collect from ourselves! Taxes only serve to help regulate distributed aggregate demand and express aggregate policy.
Data without context is meaningless.
And, so is our perception or ideology without cultural agility and adaptive outcome.
Is David Wessel joining Erskine & Bowles in launching an Erble Logic Society?
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