It’s not my debt

Here’s an interesting video concept:

I like the idea, although in a sense it is slightly misguided. In the video it seems as though they are suggesting that if you are over 18, it is your debt (because you can vote), which I don’t necessarily agree with. Those people who are over 18 still shouldn’t have to pay that debt because if you have the option to vote but choose not to, then you aren’t really obligated to pay the overwhelming debt. 

There’s also a more nitpicky sense in which it’s not entirely correct to suggest that “we are shifting the costs to our children” because the money is not spent in the future, it is spent by the state now and therefore stops somebody else spending that dollar. The myth of deficit financing–shifting costs to our children. 

What deficit financing does do is create a wealth transfer from future taxpayers to future government bondholders. When the bills come due, some of our children and grandchildren will, through higher taxes, have their income coercively transferred to others of our children, those who hold the debt.

Still, the point that it’s wrong to coercively take money from other people stands. What we have now, is a situation where the rich politically connected people are being subsidised by everybody else. They just say things to make us believe that these bailouts are necessary “otherwise the costs down the track will be even greater”, but that’s just either them lying or being misinformed – new companies sprout up where old ones died down, new uses for those resources and new jobs for the employees are found. That is, as long as you allow the process to happen.