#187 - Should We Stop Worrying About National Deficits?

Open to Debate

Education, Society & Culture, News, Government, Politics

4.5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Governments around the world have spent unprecedented sums — trillions of dollars — to combat the economic impacts of coronavirus. But just what does rising government debt mean for our future? A new crop of economists – adherents to Modern Monetary Theory – have a bold proposition: Don't worry about it. Stephanie Kelton, James Galbraith, Todd Buchholz, and Otmar Issing join us for a debate on national debt in our third episode of "That's Debatable," our new series presented in partnership with Bloomberg Media and sponsored by IBM. A note from our sponsor: There’s nothing to lose from gaining a fresh perspective. IBM Watson® was built to help us look at an issue from all sides—from cultural debates to customer reviews. Using advanced natural language processing, Watson is making sense of data from a range of topics to help give us more informed perspectives, so we can make more informed decisions. See how Watson informs a human debate at ibm.com/debatable Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Monso Business Banking. It just works. So you can too. Join businesses like Target
0:05.7	to Wishing by opening a Monso Business account.
0:07.7	What I love about Monso Business account is how easy everything is. It can be filtered,
0:13.1	it can be tagged. We thought we'd have to manage our business around our banks, but that's
0:17.3	not the case for Monso.
0:18.4	My name is Shun. I am the Founder of Target Trition.
0:21.6	Apply in minutes at Monso.com slash business. To apply you must be a sole trader or director
0:26.6	of a limited company, UK Businesses only, terms and conditions apply.
0:30.6	Mark Twain famously told us that it's often easier to fool people than to convince them
0:37.1	that they have been fooled. And the American people are often fooled into getting confused
0:42.1	about government deficits. The word itself sounds like a problem.
0:46.0	Yes, well, boy, I wish I believed in the tooth fairy. I wish I believed that Elves
0:50.6	still lived. And I wish you could scoff at government debt. I've got a historical question.
0:57.2	Was Alexander Hamilton a fool?
1:01.6	Hey, everybody. And welcome to That's Debatable, a television series brought to you by Bloomberg
1:06.5	and by Intelligent Squared. I'm your host and your debate referee, John Don Van.
1:11.2	And today we have four economic powerhouses who will be debating for and against this resolution.
1:17.2	Stop worrying about national deficits. I want to say thank you to our sponsor, IBM,
1:24.0	for helping to make all of this possible. So let's meet our debaters. First, I want to welcome
1:29.7	the team arguing in favor of the resolution. Stop worrying about national deficits. He is an
1:35.9	economist and a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. James Galbraith
1:41.2	is the author of many books, including inequality, what everyone needs to know. He's debated
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Open to Debate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Open to Debate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.