Dean's debunking a claim that government debt burdens "future generations." There's no classes in the "intergenerational accounting" story, so no reference to classes is needed to debunk it.
If one wants to consider the distributional consequences of the debt, one has to take into account not only who holds the bonds, but who benefits from the expenditures that the debt finances and who pays the taxes that pay off the debt (federal income tax receipts tend to come disproportionately from the more-well off..) On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Bill Lear <[email protected]> wrote: > Dean Baker writes the following, in his "The Bankrupt Debate Over > Bankrupting Our Children" (2009-5-11 from Truthout): > > At some point, everyone alive today will be dead. At that point the > government bonds that constitute the debt will be owned by our > children or grandchildren. In other words, our children and > grandchildren will be paying the interest burden to themselves. If > future generations both receive and pay the interest on the debt then > how can it be on net a burden to them? > > Isn't it true that "our children and grandchildren" will be paying the > interest burden mostly to wealthy bondholders (the "Wall Street crew" > that Baker decries) since bond ownership is presumably quite unequally > distributed? > > > Bill > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
