Free markets are a chaotic system, that's for sure. But it made the US the wealthiest country in the world, and hundreds of thousands of poor people tramp thousands of miles for just a chance to be part of it.
> historical precedent that the best way to organize an economy is by
letting it run itself. It doesn't need to be organized, as free markets are self-organizing.
Despite the ever frequent refrain of "governments aren't households, they can't default on debt,they can always print, the debt doesn't matter", the question you asked is the entire logical argument for proving this isn't the case. if they could do it, they would do it. The truth is there are a vast number of interrelated reasons that mean while although it is technically possible, in a majority of circumstances it is not on the table as people rightfully worry about a huge number of potential consequences some of which are obvious to casual observers and many of which are not.
> What I don't quite understand is why don't they just print a few more trillions?
To a certain point, as the USD is the global currency, we can do that. (And we did during the corona pandemic.)
After that point, printing money causes people to lose confidence (since it's just paper, and not money) and find another currency. Then you can't print any more without causing the currency to devalue.
This would be very bad for 2 reasons:
1) As the global currency, the US benefits by about 1% to our economy. You could argue this pays for our military expenditures.
2) We would have to make debt payments to support the currency. After a certain point, that becomes impossible.
FYI: the CCP is trying to replace the USD, and will exploit weaknesses in how we manage the USD.
Maybe you're young, but I can remember 20% inflation/stagflation back in the day. It was a very uncomfortable feeling for people to lose control of the value of their savings and prices for imports. You want to avoid that at almost any effort.
Pundits for decades have said that the fundamental weakness of democracy is that voters can vote themselves free money. This is what the Biden administration is actually doing now.
I am very thankful that finally somebody is doing something about the economic anarchy this country has suffered for so long. Given that there is so much theoretic and historical precedent that the best way to organize an economy is by looping as much money as possible through the political capital of the country.
What I don't quite understand is why don't they just print a few more trillions?