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A comment on US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly $2 Trillion. Parent comment

Re:US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly... by qubex on Saturday October 17, 2026 @12:20PM (#50132409)
That is an amazingly flawed idea. By that reasoning, only a neutral budget is acceptable, and a positive debt surplus a boon. Unfortunately, the opposite is empirically true: the only places running total budget surpluses tend to be undemocratic shitholes because they need to promise nothing and do not rely upon the consent of the governed to loan them savings and pay them taxes.

That is quite beside the point that sovereign debt is considered one of the safest places to store savings and by diminishing the stockpile of debt with a budget in surplus one is diminishing the economy’s ability to save at a low risk level.

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Re:US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly... by goalieca on Saturday October 17, 2026 @12:30PM (#50132490)
I’ve been in municipalities and provinces running healthy surpluses and the economy booms during those times. People do better and schools are better run and so on. And for that matter, Canada boomed after the government fixed the budget in the late 90s. We went south again when the new government showed a complete lack of respect for money.
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Re:US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly... by dpkirchner on Saturday October 17, 2026 @12:42PM (#50132617)
Were those municipalities and provinces receiving any money from the federal government and is that how they had surpluses? That's certainly how it works here in the US.
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Re:US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly... by phil21 on Saturday October 17, 2026 @01:41PM (#50133198)
Not how it worked in my home state growing up. The state intermittently ran budget surpluses and were net givers to the federal budget. Still are today.

I’m also not entirely sure how relevant that is due to states (and provinces) not printing their own currency though. Very different situations.

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Re:US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly... by goalieca on Saturday October 17, 2026 @09:52PM (#50137067)
Very little tbh in the ones that did well. The provinces that do well end up feeding and transferring money over to others.
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Re:US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly... by qubex on Saturday October 17, 2026 @12:34PM (#50132540)
Ah.

So you don’t understand the concept of sovereignty then.

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