"Why don’t we pay money to use the air we breathe?"
Because capitalism and neoliberal politicians haven't yet figured out a way to make air scarce. The world has been attempting to privatize all things since the '80s and the results are more than evident in lowered economic standards for everyone except the very top of income earners.
"Abundance is taking place. However, for the abundant system to emerge, the old system will have to collapse."
And yet, your thinking is locked into the long extinct gold standard and equates the currency-issuing sovereign governments with households. As long as you view the economy in such a manner there is little you can say that doesn't add to the current dysfunction of our capitalist system.
"Accordingly to one of the most respectful hedge fund managers, Ray Dalio, there are only four ways governments can escape debt crisis:"
Sheep should not take dietary advice from wolves.
"The only conclusion we can make on money printing and lowering interest rate policies is that it keeps the party going by driving more debt."
Given that the currency issuing governments dont require debt to enable spending (spending must come first or there is nothing to borrow) and that such governments can afford anything that is for sale and denominated in the currency they create, austerity becomes strictly a political choice not economics. We have poverty because it serves the purposes of the wealthy who have purchased our government away from us. The threat of poverty is insurance of a hungry workforce that will make few demands on employers.
"From a macroeconomic perspective, driving more debt only pushes the pain in the longer term."
Our constitution gives Congress a monopoly patent on the US dollar and mandates that it create (coin) money for the "common welfare" (Article 1: Section 8), making the US dollar "self-funding". Once we realize that the only "net source" of dollars is the spending of Congress, not capitalists or banks, and that it is not revenue constrained it becomes evident that the "national debt" is simply a tracking entity to advise of the current amount of dollars in the private sector, not an ecumbrance upon our future productivity. It is our national savings, achieved from government's past deficit spending, the only store of value our economy has.
Simple sectoral balances in spreadsheet accounting would show us that every negative in one sector is a monetary gain in another. If the government runs a "surplus" (as Clinton did) it can only come at a cost to the private sector, reducing the available currency in the economy that is able to be net saved or net retire private sector bank debt. This forced people to fund their own economy with more private debt and encouraged speculation, which can give the impression of growth as long as GDP expands continuously.
"You can see it by what happened in the Great Recession of 2008. Governments took place, bought the problems with printing money, the reaches kept their parties on, and the world moved on."
The private sector cannot create its own "net" money, so such growth is false and creates bubbles and busts as defaults on private debt rise sharplly in even slight economic downturns. Many economists trace the '08 crash back to Clinton's budget surpluses, not the deficit spending of the Bush adminstration that actually delayed the inevitable. A historic record of deficit and surplus spending as a percentage of GDP supports this, as the last seven times the budget approached "balance" for any time were followed closely by deep recessions or depressions that were only mitigated by injections of public money via deficit spending and automatic stabilizers.
"However, no politician will be able to embrace deflation because it would mean losing power. So, we’re facing an endless road."
They are embracing and perpetuating the irrational fear of inflation, which is not nearly as damaging as rapid deflation. Governments that create their own currencies are "price setters" in their economies, not borrowers. A small amount of inflation is actually beneficial to the vast majority as it serves as a tax on wealth that incentivizes investment in higher returns than their governments offer on bonds.
"But governments will not voluntarily give up control of their currencies. So, it has to happen a coordinated international effort to establish new rules around money."
This is not true. Many governments have given up the monetary sovereignty of their currencies by pegging them to foreign currencies or commodities, ie: the Euro or the gold standard. How is that working for Greece, Ireland, Italy, and many others who cannot fund their own economies and must look to the good will of competitor nations? Their national debts, previously not a real concern, suddenly became very real and forced them to beg for tolorance from larger economies and to take on "real" debt denominated in a currency they have no control over.
"But most politicians keep thinking that their complicity with central banks, commercial banks, and powerful institutions gives them a bulletproof vest."
Because it does? In spite of America abandoning the gold standard and moving to a fiat currency regime since '34 most Americans remain convinced that their currency-issuing government functions just like their household budget and their government must "get" money from taxation or borrowing to enable spending. This massively mistaken assumption (which you are complicit in perpetuating) denies reality, but assures the dominance of Friedman and "trickle down" economics.
This has been at the heart of most economic and social problems our country has wrestled with since the New Deal was abandoned in favor of supply-side econ in the '80s. Marx may have not taken technology into consideration, but Friedman completely ignored the velocity of money and its nature as the simple unit of measure it represents.
