In fairness, it kinda did as long as other countries were buying the vast majorities of our treasury offerings.
We had that privilege until ~2014 …
I understand the ending was always inevitable…and we’re in the late stages. But there for a generation+ we were able to get away with it due to American exceptionalism (and a global agreement that the dollar was the reserve currency).
Except that it didn’t. It did not grow, it shifted currency to our biggest export and gutted domestic production. It literally shrank the real economy in exchange for importing massive amounts of cheap shit. But since the GDP is just an arbitrary number that goes up if you print money and politicians think consuming stuff is growth, they can make it appear that way.
The reality is the opposite. Printing money has robbed us of our stability, our production capacity, our competence and skills, and our savings. We are vastly worse off because of it.
Our generation and after is worse off. Our grandparents and parents benefited from the windfall.
That was my point, time preference matters. It worked out tremendously well for 2+ generations of Americans. They don’t really appreciate that it came at the expense of future generations yet … though it is getting harder to ignore.
