You may already know about this, but increasing the national debt has been the point. For five decades.

https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santas-strategy-gop-used-economic-scam-manipulate-americans-40-years/

We could simplify that down to:

“Mike Johnson Speaks”

I really miss ten years ago, when I had a faint glimmer of hope that he might not be a complete piece of shit. He really showed his character with the “pedo guy” debacle and has been on a steep downward trajectory since.

The Two Santas Strategy: How the GOP has used an economic scam to manipulate Americans for 40 years

Thankfully no longer the case according to his Patreon account:

https://www.patreon.com/billmessnerloebs

I see you’re familiar with the Two Santas strategy. Link for those not familiar, and you really need to be familiar.

Let’s pretend there are only $100 in our imaginary economy which buys and sells a limited supply of 100 bricks at $1/brick. You ask to borrow $50 to buy 50 bricks, so a lender loans you $50, to be repaid with 10% interest. You work and are paid from the other $50 owned by others. Eventually, you pay back $55 (due to interest). There’s still only $100 in the economy throughout this exercise, just the relative proportions owned by people change.

Alternately, the government prints that $50 and gives it to you (this is a gross oversimplification of quantitative easing). Now there are $150 in the system. The brick sellers know the government has done this and that you have more money, so they bump up their prices to $1.50 simply because they want the most money possible. $1 now buys less, 33.3% less.