By borrowing out excess and spending it in ways which didn’t compete with the private sector for profits, he grew the economy, mostly through military spending.
This encapsulates the objection I have with your view, or expression, of our monetary system. We “must” rid our perception of the mechanics of borrowing in any segment of our monetary system if we hope to use the power the people have to determine their own futures as independent from the whims of the wealthy and banks. Spending is the opposite of “borrowing”, not dependent upon it. The government creates money when it spends and destroys that money when it taxes or borrows.
Borrowing is not a requirement for spending because the currency being “borrowed” only exists in the banking system when spending in deficit. Deficit spending “funds” borrowing and taxation, not the other way around as in our personal finances. The perception that the currency-issuing government must go, hat in hand, to the wealthy to beg for funding, or overburden the already meager reserves of the middle class, is at the root of the opposition to most beneficial programs.
People see them as zero-sum since any benefit realized comes at some price to those who may, or may not, be benefited. It is also much easier to garner support for safety nets that benefit the poor and automatically stabilize the economy if the middle-class worker doesn’t feel they are “paying for” them, raising questions about “deserving”
Obviously we don’t try to store it, nor do we appreciate being deprived of it, by a system seemingly designed to siphon it out of the majority of the community, as debt, to back the savings of those well established within the system.
The context of money as debt simply confuses the majority of people who can’t divorce themselves from their own understanding of the word. The debt is only a tracking entity to account for money in the economy that isn’t balanced with the “real” debt banks create. This will be impossible to convey to anyone unless we can elect politicians that are honest and not afraid to use their position to educate. The concept of unlimited money available to the government even if it doesn’t collect or borrow a dime is just too far fetched for anyone to believe if it doesn’t gain some traction among politicians.
I’ve talked to bankers who acknowledge every aspect of the mechanics, but passionately deny the overall macro implication of those, and they deal with them every day. Belief and conditioning are too strong as influences to easily counter, which is why even politicians that do get it (Bernie, AOC, Tulsi, Warren) don’t make it part of their campaign.
The Achilles heel of democracy is democracy.
