Print money

Once again the subject of the national debt is in the news and since everyone agrees that social security. Medicare and Medicaid will not be cut the big area open for cuts is defense but in today's world that is also off the table. All the programs in the discretionary part of the budget are sacrosanct and cannot be cut because politically you cannot take away a benefit that people have been receiving. Only 30% of the budget is discretionary and half of that is defense leaving only 15% to cut. These include areas like health, education and veterans benefits. Who will run for office promising cuts in these programs. This leaves us with raising taxes. The problem with raising taxes is that the government will not use this additional income to offset the debt but they will just start new programs. The answer to this mess is simple. Just print more money. That has worked for many years. The only way this can fail is if interest rates get too high. This can be prevented by keeping inflation low. We are now at what economist call full employment so wages will rise and wage/price inflation can result. This can be slowed by increased productivity which comes mostly from innovation. If the economy would move toward nuclear power this would result in lower cost for energy which means lower cost for everything. One big example of innovation is thorium nuclear power. That is currently on the back burner because politicians are pushing wind and solar and they oppose nuclear.