And going the other way, hard to imagine a scenario leading to standing that way either. Unless and until the debt ceiling is breached, what damages could anyone suing to abolish it claim? I suppose Congress could sue on grounds of it encroaching on their prerogatives, but of course they themselves created it and have the power to abolish it, and I don't think institutions get standing to sue themselves. Perhaps if the ceiling was breached and creditors weren't paid, those creditors would have standing to sue... but of course by that point it's a bit late.
Had NPR on and, for the first time ever, my son didn't insist I change the station and was actually curious about the news. The story was the ongoing budget negotiations. He's 10, so I tried to keep the explanation as simple as I could while still being accurate - DB et al can let me know how I did. I explained that congress had mostly decided they wanted to spend 3.5T on the budget, but one of the senators only wanted to spend 1.5T. My son thought that this sounded like a lot of money and asked how much the government got from taxes.
Thinking of DB, I said I wasn't sure, but that it was less than 3.5T, but that this wasn't that important because unlike regular people, the government creates money. My son asked if this would create inflation (I was surprised he'd heard of this -- guess they start teaching economics early here in NJ public schools).
I said that it could, but the way to think about it is that money is just another thing people buy and sell, so it's about supply and demand. If lots of people want houses, for instance, but there's not a lot of houses, the price of houses goes up. And if there's a lot of houses but not that many people want a house, the price goes down.
And money's the same. If there's a recession and no one is working, there's a lot of demand for dollars but not enough of them. So if the government makes more dollars it's probably not going to create inflation. But if the economy's doing well and everyone's making lots of money at their jobs so they have plenty of dollars, then if the government makes more dollars, there'll be more dollars than people actually need, so the price of dollars goes down, which is what inflation is. The tricky thing is that it's not very easy to know how many dollars people actually need to make sure there's the right amount of dollars.
Had NPR on and, for the first time ever, my son didn't insist I change the station and was actually curious about the news. The story was the ongoing budget negotiations. He's 10, so I tried to keep the explanation as simple as I could while still being accurate - DB et al can let me know how I did. I explained that congress had mostly decided they wanted to spend 3.5T on the budget, but one of the senators only wanted to spend 1.5T. My son thought that this sounded like a lot of money and asked how much the government got from taxes.
Thinking of DB, I said I wasn't sure, but that it was less than 3.5T, but that this wasn't that important because unlike regular people, the government creates money. My son asked if this would create inflation (I was surprised he'd heard of this -- guess they start teaching economics early here in NJ public schools).
I said that it could, but the way to think about it is that money is just another thing people buy and sell, so it's about supply and demand. If lots of people want houses, for instance, but there's not a lot of houses, the price of houses goes up. And if there's a lot of houses but not that many people want a house, the price goes down.
And money's the same. If there's a recession and no one is working, there's a lot of demand for dollars but not enough of them. So if the government makes more dollars it's probably not going to create inflation. But if the economy's doing well and everyone's making lots of money at their jobs so they have plenty of dollars, then if the government makes more dollars, there'll be more dollars than people actually need, so the price of dollars goes down, which is what inflation is. The tricky thing is that it's not very easy to know how many dollars people actually need to make sure there's the right amount of dollars.
pretty good explanation, I would say.
The only thing I would have added was an explanation of how much (or little) 3.5TR actually is and to put it into a relative perspective. Explain that it's over 10 years. That over the same ten years, we'd be spending close to 10TR on defense, out of total fed spending of roughly 50TR. So 3.5TR is only about 7% of total spending. Explain that the total economy over that ten years is over 250TR, at least. Stuff like that.
The only thing I would have added was an explanation of how much (or little) 3.5TR actually is and to put it into a relative perspective. Explain that it's over 10 years. That over the same ten years, we'd be spending close to 10TR on defense, out of total fed spending of roughly 50TR. So 3.5TR is only about 7% of total spending. Explain that the total economy over that ten years is over 250TR, at least. Stuff like that.
smart kid you've got there!
Ha, we'll see how much actually landed. He was probably just humoring me.
And going the other way, hard to imagine a scenario leading to standing that way either. Unless and until the debt ceiling is breached, what damages could anyone suing to abolish it claim? I suppose Congress could sue on grounds of it encroaching on their prerogatives, but of course they themselves created it and have the power to abolish it, and I don't think institutions get standing to sue themselves. Perhaps if the ceiling was breached and creditors weren't paid, those creditors would have standing to sue... but of course by that point it's a bit late.