55% of the US National Debt Is the Result of Repaying Debt with More Debt

Re:55% of the US National Debt Is the Result of Repaying Deb... by damptowel on Thursday July 19, 2018 @01:23PM (#17568515)

> You're drawing a false equivalence. A dollar (or a gold bar) does not represent a specific amount of goods or services that any specific counterparty is bound to deliver. So in general no, money is not inherently debt.

This is confused. A dollar is a debt/credit dual created by central bank and private finance operations.

A dollar is a unit of monetary accounting, a physical dollar is a token representation of a debt/credit entry inside an accounting ledger.

A bar of gold is a commodity denominated in a monetary value. It is not a token representation of a state enforced contract.

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Re:55% of the US National Debt Is the Result of Repaying Deb... by mindslight on Thursday July 26, 2018 @06:15PM (#17621788)

Yes, a dollar does represent a coupled obligation of someone out there to collect it (or another dollar) in order to satisfy their debt. I do agree that a dollar is therefore debt-based money.

What I was refuting was OP calling all currency in general "debt" based on it having little "intrinsic use", and therefore only useful for what it can be traded for.

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