As goes the US, so goes the world...and we're about fucked!

[Seth]

Can someone give me the economics for dummies version of this? Why will money flowing back into the US for investment cause hyperinflation?

Too much cash chasing too few goods. Supply and demand. Cash is not the same thing as wealth.

[Seth]

Now who looks stupid for not having a bunker full of food and ammunition?

Nobody looks stupid for not having a bunker full of food and ammunition now. Feel free to get back to me about that in three months' time. There's a distinct possibility that David Buckner, the founder and CEO of Bottom Line Training and Consulting, an adjunct professor at Columbia University, and the author of “Permission to Think” turns out to be wrong.

Let's hope so. But if he isn't....no, you're not invited.

[Coito ergo sum]

I thought the US only owed one year of GDP, thats roughly about what I personally owe (as in one years wages)

Don't seem that much to me

You're forgetting that a lot of our GDP is smoke-and-mirrors. For example, the nearly $1 trillion in "stimulus" spending counted towards GDP.

But debt needs to be compared to assets every single piece of property private/public and 300 million people are all possibly assets if needed.

People aren't assets, since they can't be liquidated for cash. They're expenses, and their asset value is de minimus, if anything above zero.

Private property doesn't help because in order for the government to appropriate it to pay off the debt, they'd have to pay fair market value for it. So, they couldn't take my property and then sell it immediately for a profit, or they wouldn't have paid me fair market value. They could only sell it for roughly what they paid me for it.

Public property could be sold off, except that there would have to be environmental and use reforms put in to allow for private use of the public lands.

How much is Alaska worth these days?

What a willing buyer is willing to pay. Is there a market for Alaska out there? Who wants it?

[MrJonno]

Private property doesn't help because in order for the government to appropriate it to pay off the debt, they'd have to pay fair market value for it.

No they don't, they are government. They can raise taxes on anything they want, buy or take anything they want. If they are too overaggressive society might get a bit unstable but guess you need to be careful

[Coito ergo sum]

We could, of course, sell some stuff. Basically we could have a national garage sale.

How about: The White House -- price tag about $325,000,000 -- http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Wa ... 7_zm/1_fr/

That's a good one. We can start there, and then start selling off all the governor's mansions. Founding Father residences, like Monticello and Mt. Vernon ought to fetch a pretty penny.

[Coito ergo sum]

Private property doesn't help because in order for the government to appropriate it to pay off the debt, they'd have to pay fair market value for it.

No they don't, they are government. They can raise taxes on anything they want, buy or take anything they want. If they are too overaggressive society might get a bit unstable but guess you need to be careful

Not here. Our government was constituted with a requirement that they can only take private property for a public purpose if they pay fair value for it. We could amend the constitution, but that would be extremely unlikely, given that number of property owners that would be voting on it.

[cronus]

Gunfire now. See how quickly it turns to shit once the lights are out?

[Seth]

Private property doesn't help because in order for the government to appropriate it to pay off the debt, they'd have to pay fair market value for it.

Well, the government COULD just take private property without compensating anyone for it. After all that's exactly what Stalin did. But the question is even if the government takes private property who is it going to sell it to in order to pay off the debts the nation owes? They COULD sell it to, say, China, but that just turns over the nation to China merely in order to avoid upsetting China, which owns a lot of our debt. That would be political suicide because most people in the US are a) not going to just let the government take their property; and b) they are not going to let government sell it off to China so that the US can become a satellite state of the Communist Chinese.

What will happen long before that is that the people will take up arms, dispense with the profligate and untrustworthy government functionaries that put them in this position, repudiate all the foreign debts we have and dare anyone to do something about it...after going to Defcon 2 and flushing the bombers and opening the silos.

I mean look what Zimbabwe did. It did exactly that: seized private property from white citizens, killed many of them, parceled that land out to people who had no idea how to farm it, repudiated its debts with other nations and ended up with starvation, brutal dictatorship, corruption and hyperinflation.

The real consequence of repudiating foreign debt is that it makes it very difficult to engage international markets in the future. The US has never defaulted on its debts, which is why it's such a trusted international economic partner. It would be an enormous blow to our reputation and would cause a lot of economic trouble, but the US is large enough to be self-sufficient if it needs to be, so it wouldn't be necessarily fatal to the nation.

[Seth]

Private property doesn't help because in order for the government to appropriate it to pay off the debt, they'd have to pay fair market value for it.

No they don't, they are government. They can raise taxes on anything they want, buy or take anything they want.

Well, they can try...

If they are too overaggressive society might get a bit unstable but guess you need to be careful

"A bit unstable?" That's the understatement of the century. Last time somebody tried that on us we fucked 'em up good.

You forget that we are an armed society. And that's exactly WHY we are an armed society.

[Seth]

We could, of course, sell some stuff. Basically we could have a national garage sale.

How about: The White House -- price tag about $325,000,000 -- http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Wa ... 7_zm/1_fr/

That's a good one. We can start there, and then start selling off all the governor's mansions. Founding Father residences, like Monticello and Mt. Vernon ought to fetch a pretty penny.

Well, actually, the best way to erase the national debt is to do what the Founders did to pay for government in the early days: They sold off government land in the west to settlers.

We can start by selling off most of Nevada (where there is plenty of gold and other minerals) to private interests, then sell off forest lands from the National Forests and then dispose of all other unoccupied federal lands like the vast amounts of BLM land out there, and end with all federally-owned property OTHER THAN Washington DC and a small number of "... Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings as well as post offices and post roads.

[MrJonno]

"A bit unstable?" That's the understatement of the century. Last time somebody tried that on us we fucked 'em up good.

Even in America most people pay their taxes without shooting anyone.

It was no taxation without representation, the important bit was always the representation

[laklak]

We could, of course, sell some stuff. Basically we could have a national garage sale.

How about: The White House -- price tag about $325,000,000 -- http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Wa ... 7_zm/1_fr/

Doesn't it already go on the market every 4 years?

[Seth]

We could, of course, sell some stuff. Basically we could have a national garage sale.

How about: The White House -- price tag about $325,000,000 -- http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Wa ... 7_zm/1_fr/

Doesn't it already go on the market every 4 years?

No, we just re-lease it every 4 years.

[Seth]

"A bit unstable?" That's the understatement of the century. Last time somebody tried that on us we fucked 'em up good.

Even in America most people pay their taxes without shooting anyone.

Yes, they do.

It was no taxation without representation, the important bit was always the representation

Well, "representation" means that those elected to the legislative body have a duty to actually represent their constituents, and when they stop doing so the constituents can revoke that permission at will. We just had the first recall election of state-level legislators here in Colorado. They were recalled because they failed to represent their constituents, who voted to revoke their authority to legislate.

Fortunately, those recalled legislators peacefully submitted to the will of the people and left office as they were directed to do, so no force was required. If they had not done so, like so many banana-republic dictators do when they declare themselves "president for life," then it is the prerogative of the people to use whatever force is necessary to remove them from office and replace them. That is one of the primary intents of the 2nd Amendment and its proscription on legislative infringement of the right to keep and bear arms. The public is supposed to have sufficient weaponry to eject a despot or tyrant who refuses to obey the dictates of the people.

Just because someone is elected to public office does not give them carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want to do while in office.

[pErvinalia]

Can someone give me the economics for dummies version of this? Why will money flowing back into the US for investment cause hyperinflation?

Too much cash chasing too few goods. Supply and demand. Cash is not the same thing as wealth.

But you've got lots of goods. A huge pool of unemployed labor; and crumbling infrastructure that needs attending to.