[ExI] libertarianism

[John Clark]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 1:22 PM David Lubkin <lubkin at unreasonable.com>
wrote:

* > Is this percentage of GDP *at the time* or of current GDP?*


They say there are no dumb questions so I will ask one of my own; How could
Harry Truman be expected to know what our current GDP is?

*>Since **debts are paid with current money, why does the GDP then matter?*
>

If you really insist on using our current GDP in these statistics then
Truman did a even BETTER  job of reducing the debt as a percentage of GDP
because it's far larger now than it was in Truman's day. A modern
politician could play the same trick and say our current debt is a trivial
percentage of the GDP we'll have after the Nanotechnology Singularity so
don't worry about it. And there would actually be some truth in that
because even without a Singularity a dollar today is worth more than a
dollar tomorrow and that's why people borrow money and that's why interest
exists. But are you sure you want to play that game with economic
statistics? It's certainly not what a fiscal conservative would do.

 John K Clark
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