Home economics and nation-state level economics are entirely, qualitatively different, not just different scales of the same thing, and people who think they're clever by comparing the two are insufferable. Global superpower economies are even more so.
A government collecting more tax revenue than they spend is a sign things are going terribly wrong. Best case scenario it means they were temporarily, inadvertently overtaxing everyone. The government "printing money", and thus creating some level of inflation, is a good thing. Deflationary economies are failing economies.
By far the biggest difference is that to you, money and debt are real. If you don't have enough money, you can't pay for the things you need. If you have too much debt and can't pay, people will show up and commit violence against you. At the sovereign nation-state level ("sovereign" excludes countries that gave up control over their money supply to disastrous effect, like Greece), money and debt are far less concrete. Debt represents "buy-in" on your monetary system: If people and nations are owed money from a country, they have a vested interest in that nation's continued economic prosperity. Money is an infinite resource to a sovereign nation: it can simply print more. Via taxation, they effectively destroy money, since Infinity + 1 still equals Infinity. Thus, money from a nation-state's perspective isn't about balancing the books, it's about controlling the flow.
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Home economics and nation-state level economics are entirely, qualitatively different, not just different scales of the same thing, and people who think they're clever by comparing the two are insufferable. Global superpower economies are even more so.
A government collecting more tax revenue than they spend is a sign things are going terribly wrong. Best case scenario it means they were temporarily, inadvertently overtaxing everyone. The government "printing money", and thus creating some level of inflation, is a good thing. Deflationary economies are failing economies.
By far the biggest difference is that to you, money and debt are real. If you don't have enough money, you can't pay for the things you need. If you have too much debt and can't pay, people will show up and commit violence against you. At the sovereign nation-state level ("sovereign" excludes countries that gave up control over their money supply to disastrous effect, like Greece), money and debt are far less concrete. Debt represents "buy-in" on your monetary system: If people and nations are owed money from a country, they have a vested interest in that nation's continued economic prosperity. Money is an infinite resource to a sovereign nation: it can simply print more. Via taxation, they effectively destroy money, since Infinity + 1 still equals Infinity. Thus, money from a nation-state's perspective isn't about balancing the books, it's about controlling the flow.