this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
868 points (92.1% liked)
memes
10165 readers
3541 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- [email protected] : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- [email protected] : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- [email protected] : Linux themed memes
- [email protected] : for those who love comic stories.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You can't sneak negative trade balance into an argument about public debt.
A nation with no debt has the ability to take on more debt than if it already has debt.
You can have debt for circulation while maintaining a net surplus in all accounts. For example Norway has a per capita debt of $42k USD while maintaining a surplus of $295k USD per capita.
It's similar to how a company like Apple holds debt of $108 B USD while maintaining a $162 B USD surplus.
Which is why the trade balance is crucial when talking about financial assets. Because then all of these are financiall assets in foreign countries.