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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I think you just made my point, but harder. Debt is actually great for “the lenders,” i.e. whoever buys treasury bonds. If the government wants to spend money on something, they have to issue a bond. The bondholders are paying for it. If you run out of bondholders, you have to increase the interest offered to make it more appealing than other investments.

    It’s not just “moving numbers on a ledger.”

    That would be essentially the same as printing more money,* which is what leads to hyperinflation and the collapse of economies. The higher the total debt, the more taxes go into paying interest on debt, rather than services (the nurses and water engineers mentioned above). There is a whole other discussion on where that spending on services spending should be prioritized.

    Where does that Tax money go? Obviously it’s a payment to bondholders, which are generally wealthy individuals, corporations, or nations, but can also be held by the US Government (maybe that’s what you mean by “moving numbers on a ledger?”).

    Who owns US Debt? [pie chart]

    Edit: source

    *The Fed does change the money supply through interest rates, which can generate inflation.














  • No worries, a lot of people don’t know this, but I am always happy to teach.

    In the original text, “stranger” which was introduced/standardized in the KJV English version the word is גר or גרים plural, or sometimes נכרי. In the Greek, it’s ξένος, ἀλλογενής, or παροικέω (NT). The Septuagint shows that this was understood as the same. Fun fact, the Greek word is also where we get the English word Xenophobia - fear of foreigners/immigrants.

    The first use is in Gen 15:13: God said to Abram, “Know surely that your descendants will be גר in a land that is not theirs…” The modern English word for living in a land that is not one’s own is “immigrant.”

    It goes on. Ex 12:49 specifies that There shall be one Law for [both] the native-born and for the גר הגר among you. Again, the modern English word for someone who lives in a place where they are not born - “immigrant.” The same is echoed in Num 15:16. Ruth, upon leaving her homeland and becoming a sharecropper in Judah exclaimed to the native-born Boaz: “How have I come to find grace in your eyes, when I am a נכריה?” Is that not the iconic immigrant story?

    In all, the word occurs in some form over 100 times in the Hebrew Bible. In truth, the semantic range is a little broader than I portrayed it in my original comment. It can, depending on context, also mean “foreign,” “convert,” or even “traveler.” Regardless, it is surely silly to translate it as “stranger,” which in modern English generally means anyone who is not acquainted to you. But that’s how is was translated a few centuries ago when English was quite different, so it seems like we are stuck with it.