News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Will America's debt doom us? by treis on Monday September 23, 2019 @12:41PM (#21050606)
>The government cannot create wealth "for free". It can print more dollars, but in doing so it makes each dollar worth less. No wealth is actually gained.

That's the point. The government isn't on the hook for wealth. They are on the hook for dollars. And dollars, to the US government, are "free".

>Doing that is impossible, though. Reducing the value of a dollar means that you'll need even more dollars to repay that debt than you would have needed otherwise. There is no net gain here.

The amount of debt doesn't go up if the value of the dollar goes down.

Re:Will America's debt doom us? by marcosdumay on Monday September 23, 2019 @02:49PM (#21052167)
> The amount of debt doesn't go up if the value of the dollar goes down.

The interest rate goes up almost instantly when the government prints money. That's not exactly equivalent to increasing the debt value, but it's more than enough to make the "just inflate it away" strategy fail 100% of the times some country tries it.