Its not just governments that are printing money, so are companies. No private business ever uses its own cash reserves to increase production or invest in new capital. It always borrows.

And consumers are continuously persuaded (through advertising and subtle social pressure)to spend more than they earn, usually on luxury items or consumer goods. Nobody asks what a car or house costs, they just want to know what the payments will be. Now, everybody needs housing and transport, but what we pay for what we buy is more often determined by how it will impress our neighbors and massage our ego than how much it will contribute to our productivity.

Besides, there’s nothing wrong with printing money. When you go to a bank for a loan, they don’t have the cash either, they print a check for you and you buy stuff with it. Banks always have more money loaned out than they have in the vault from their depositors. Banks are the biggest money-printers of all, except they don’t print currency, they just transfer phony money into your account. Now, if you use that phony money (by writing checks on your account) to build a factory or hire employees, that’s a good thing because it creates new wealth for you AND for the bank in the future (interest). But if you use that money to go on vacation or buy a fancy car, or a yacht, (or an aircraft carrier) nothing good comes from it. Now, I’m not saying aircraft carriers don’t sometimes come in handy, but they don’t actually produce anything, do they?

Debt is a way for using future wealth to invest in solving today’s problems, or to create wealth in the future. But when you spend it on something that provides no productive benefit, you are stealing from the future and it never gets paid back. Nevertheless, the bill WILL come due eventually.

When you borrow money to feed and house people, or educate kids, or treat the sick, protect the environment or to invest in useful business or public works, it pays for itself in the long run. When you use it to improve the standard of living of people who are already rich, its….well, like fishing with dynamite. Of course, they will never tell you that.

Yeah, I know its an oversimplification, but look what happens when we ignore the obvious.