Government Debt And Public Debt

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It is known to all that government main revenue comes from taxation. But in fact, there are many ways that the government can earn more money to stimulate the economy or to improve the welfare of the country. The government can create more money by printing more of it. This can expands the economy but also result in inflation (not always). Another alternative way is to borrow more money. If government spending exceeds taxes revenues then there is a deficit that can be financed by borrowing money from both within the country and from overseas. This loan is called “Public debt”.
Public debt, which is also sometimes referred to as government debt or national debt, is the debt owed by a central government. It is an indicator of how much government spending is financed by borrowing instead of taxation. There are two main type of debt: Internal debt and External debt. Internal debt is the debt owed by the government to lenders based in the same country while external debt is the debt owed by foreign lenders. We can separate the purposes of creating public debt into five reasons:
1. The government suffers a loss in trade balance and still has a high spending. So they have to borrow more money due to limited sources of government income.
2. The government is having a problem with the failure of collecting its revenue. This means that the government has more expenditure than the revenue.
3. The government borrows to invest in economic development and social infrastructure.
4. The government needs to borrow in an emergency cases where the country is facing a specific situation that have increased spending at a high level in a short period of time such as the occurrence of natural disasters, war or violence.
5. The government borrows in o...

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...been invested in productive projects or assets, such as education or improving schools which creates human capital in the future, building or repairing infrastructure like roads and highways or any other projects that yield a rate of return greater than the cost of the debt. So in this case, the government debt does not put cost on future generations whether the government borrows from within the country or from overseas.
On the contrary, if the government spends the money on consumption for the present generation to consume now. This will definitely put cost on the future generations. To make it easier to understand, if someone ask to borrow your money to buy ice-cream cone and he or she eat it all –all gone. You did not get anything in return and you also have to save more money or to earn money to substitute that money that your friend owed you. Is that fair? No.

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