I didn't join Just Plain Politics until 11/22/2017. So, who is being lazy now? I never heard of the article "Growth in the Time of Debt" so you are introducing a big straw man to argue against when I never made any arguments based on it and the authors did not "fool me" because I never read them. It was apparently a non-peer reviewed edition.
Your arguments are based on it, though. It's good to research your position so you can realize and learn that your position is garbage.
So, some history for you on "GROWTH IN THE TIME OF DEBT" because I don't believe you've never heard of that paper because I know I've referenced it specifically in debates with you at least a dozen times. So now you're not only being a lying piece of shit, but you're being a pretty bad one too.
That paper was commissioned circa 2010-11 to give austerity fans like you the justification they need to cut spending during a recession. The argument made was that increasing government debt as a percentage of GDP to at least 90% would result in slowed economic growth, or even contraction. Now, setting aside the absurdity that cutting spending doesn't contract an economy (even though it plainly does), the premise that government debt results in economic contraction among consumers is a load of malarkey because no one decides whether or not to buy a home based on what the federal deficit is. The only time high debt
could affect the economy is if it affects interest rates, but we've had consistently low interest rates for the last 11 years. Now, the austeri-stans pointed to that paper, GROWTH IN THE TIME OF DEBT, as proof that high government debt translates to poor economic growth.
HOWEVER they only reached that conclusion by deliberately leaving data out, and by deliberately fixing an Excel spreadsheet because the initial results didn't support the conclusion. That's why it wasn't peer reviewed, and that's why austerity "papers" rarely are.
I cited the Congressional Budget Office projections for future growth based on increasing debt.
What you cited was a "COULD". You even copied and pasted it yourself. And we can also simply look back at the last 80 years of data, post-WWII, and see time and again, that high levels of debt don't correspond with weaker economic growth.
THAT WAS WHAT THE WHOLE KERFUFFLE WITH ROGOFF/REINHART WAS ALL ABOUT.
I'm amazed you didn't know about it. Actually, not amazed...skeptical. Skeptical because I know I've brought it up in debates with you before.
Furthermore, the one key part of all this is something you don't even mention:
Moreover, estimates of the corresponding long-run coefficients are all negative, implying that countries that incurred persistent increases in the debt-to-GDP ratio over long periods also experienced lower output growth.
You forget that Democrats are the party of deficit reduction, not the GOP...and you forget that increasing spending doesn't ncessarily mean an increase to debt-to-GDP
if revenue is raised from tax increases, just like it was at the end of 2012.
So you are framing your argument along a false set of circumstances; that there are persistent increases to the debt-to-GDP ratio, and not persistent
declines like we saw during Obama.
I'm not arguing for persistent, increasing debt-to-GDP ratios at all, so it would appear the
straw man is all yours.
Hard to see how raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for spending programs like Medicare For All would result in
persistently higher debt-to-GDP ratios.
See, what you did was leave that very important part out of everything you're saying. So it's not a matter of "too much government debt means bad economy", it's a matter of "persistent increases in the debt-to-GDP ratio means bad economy
in the long term, maybe."
That's not much of a position to have.
