The FED

You hit the nail in the head. One of the benefits to come out of recession and contraction is to shake out weak players and wipe off of debts (called deleveraging). Now when you print money during a contraction, you are actually going against the prupose of economic cycles by Creating more debt to protect a bad debt.
And who pays? Everyone else who see their purchasing power erode.

GDP can only be as large as the amount of money there is.

Think of it this way.
Assume there is 15 Trillion Dollars worth of money in circulation.
But, if there is not one transaction in economy. i.e no one buys or sells a thing, the GDP will be 0. 15 Trillion dollars will just be sitting there.

Actually, you do not need money to complete a transaction. In past and even today, barter works just fine in many situations. Money supply is not GDP. GDP is sum total of all transactions that take place. There can be transaction without money, but there can be no GDP without any transaction.

5 ways GDP gets it totally wrong as a measure of our success
Some examples:
Quality of output (particularly services) not reflected

Nor is self-service, volunteer work or free access provided (ie internet)

Distribution of wealth not considered,

Nor is well-being of individuals in terms of education, opportunity, health, security and environment

Cuts in government spending towards public education have resulted in skyrocketing tuition costs and student debt, which now surpasses the total amount of credit card debt. To forego a college education will mean reduced opportunities (the income gap between those graduating from college and not has tripled since 1980).

I really do not understand what is the point you are trying to make.
Coming to college education. If college education is such a wonderful thing as you seem to be suggesting, why cannot the students who have acquired college education after borrowing money, can earn enough after college to pay their own debt back.

Something does not add up!!

Will you agree with me then that college education is a waste of money because college education does not make a person capable of earning enough to pay the cost of education (or the loan)?

Point is that Fed Policy taken to boost GDP has ignored the toll it may have extracted on the economic and social well being of the population as a whole.

In the past, when college tuition was not so high, it offered a much better ROI to grads. Due to cuts government spending on basics, the financial burden on younger generations weighs heavily on their prospects of starting a family, get a mortgage, etc… which in turn slows economic growth (construction, jobs). No, I don’t agree it is a waste of money (it should be supported by society). However, the unaffordability is strangling the next generation.

Two obvious possibilities:

a. Utilitarian’s possibility is those who can’t wasn’t qualified for college education if the college education have not been water downed.

b. Enlightenment possibility is college education teaches people to understand life, is not a vocational institution for a career.

You are welcome to agree with whatever you like so long as you do not do with my money. Sorry.
If a person does not acquire capability to return the money back. college education is waste. It is purely a lifestyle choice. I should be not forced to subsidize someone else’s lifestyle expenses.

What about administrative staff at universities increasing 10x faster than student population growth? That’s your massive increase in tuition costs. It started when the government made student loans easy to get. Tuition costs exploded, since it was easy to borrow the money for it.

Just look at employee to student ratios at universities. You quickly realize why tuition costs what it does. Meanwhile, class sizes are bigger than ever and fewer classes are taught be tenured faculty. Students are paying more yet but being taught by graduate assistants and adjunct faculty.

Administrators have taken over and made themselves rich at the expense of students and faculty.

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How do you get the economy from $15T to $20T? You have to print the $5T of money.

Sure, but do not put the burden on taxpayer to achieve that enlightenment. If a person does good job at high school, a higher degree is not really needed unless in pursuing a highly specialized field like medicine or technology. But that should also happen only if a person becomes capable of returning the money.

You become $15T to $20T by creating more valuable goods and services, which comes from innovation and productivity. Printing money is neither innovation nor productivity.

If handing out college degree could make people smart, most third world country would come out at the top because they do a good job in giving degrees.

Coming to rising cost of college, you have identified the problem very well. Now please suggest how to fix it without increasing my taxes. Or someone else’s taxes.

Ok, I do agree that a college education may turn out to.be a waste in some cases which I would not want to subsidize either (e.g… for-profit programs). Problem is that high paying jobs are much more selective than before, so that even qualified grads may be left saddled with student debt for many years. To support education is to support innovation and growth, but now much opportunity only applies to the few at the top.

Easy. You eliminate the administrative staff who aren’t needed for the school to function. Even better, you replace many of the roles with student volunteers who will get work and leadership experience to help them later.

Fed economists say @manch is wrong. Government deficits and debt do matter, and you can’t just spend whatever while calling it investing for the future.

Unlike the GOP I don’t subscribe to MMT and think federal deficit and debt matter.

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Lol, clearly you didn’t read who advocates for MMT. You consistently say the government should fund things. When asked how to pay or it, you say the debt doesn’t matter. It’s an investment. That’s literally MMT.

You didn’t know I am against the Trump tax cut? What do you think cutting the taxes will do?

Debt matters, that’s why we need to be judicious in how we use the money. “Debt doesn’t matter” in the sense that if the things we invest in has higher return than the interests we pay, then yes, go ahead and borrow to invest. It’s not unlike taking out a student loan. If you are borrowing to fund a CS degree from Stanford, by all means go ahead. If you are instead borrowing 100k to fund a fine arts program at a no-name private college, are you nuts?

In the last 50 years which party is the one of financial probity? What does the data say?

The data says be pretty much always have a deficit. Congress is who approves the budget, and Democrats have dominated control of Congress since 1932.

You realize it’s the Democrat Great Deal programs which are killing the budget. It’s spending on social programs that’s skyrocketed as a percent of GDP. Meanwhile, tax revenue keeps hitting record highs even after the Trump tax cuts.