<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">“If” is why.<div><br></div><div>SR Ballard<br><div><div><div dir="ltr"><br>On May 10, 2020, at 7:28 AM, John Clark via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, May 9, 2020 at 11:08 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> <i></i></span><i>I could feel much more comfortable with a “zero sum” or positive budget.</i></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"></font><font size="4">Why? In the last 2 centuries we have dramatically improved our wealth generating machinery, aka our productivity, so as long as the borrowing is not larger than the rate of wealth generation improvement it would make perfect economic sense to borrow a hard to make dollar today if I can pay it back with a easy to make dollar tomorrow. And that's why, except for the Clinton years, the USA has been running a budget deficit every single year since 1835. And in the entire history of the nation you will not find a time less appropriate to worry about the budget deficit than right now!</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4">John K Clark</font></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><br>
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