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national debt
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Ottobah Cugoano on British Slavery, National Debt, and Speculative ... jmphil.org Jan 24, 2025 24 facts
referenceIn his book 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century' (2014), Thomas Piketty suggests that identifying the specific creditors of national debt is crucial for understanding and correcting policies that have contributed to the current crisis of inequality.
claimAdam Smith viewed plantation slavery as a significant threat to his model of commerce, as it linked the stability of national debt to the vicissitudes of speculative finance.
claimEighteenth-century London faced widespread starvation, disease, poverty, and despair that the government could not rectify due to the burden of millions of pounds of unpayable national debt.
claimCharles Davenant first described the concept of gross domestic product in 1695, the same year the Bank of England was formed to broker national debt.
claimQuobna Ottobah Cugoano theorized that national debt functioned as a mechanism for corporate control of government policy, implicating British taxpayers who benefited from slavery as consumers or investors.
claimDuring the 18th century, financiers attempted to humiliate critics of the national debt by dismissing their concerns as mere superstition or naivety.
perspectiveAdam Smith argues that no regulatory correction is needed for national debt or speculative finance because the associated risks and pains will ultimately prove either sustainable and profitable or unsustainable.
claimOttobah Cugoano asserts that capitalism has never existed without racist violence and resource theft, commercial capital has never existed without financial speculation, and corporate wealth has never existed without national debt.
quoteOttobah Cugoano wrote: "[H]owever wide [the British] have extended their territories abroad, they have sunk into a world of debt at home, which must ever remain an impending burden upon the inhabitants…The national debt casts a sluggish deadness over the whole realm, greatly stops ingenuity and improvements, promotes idleness and wickedness, clogs all the wheels of commerce, and drains the money out of the nation…And those who hold stock at home, are a kind of idle drones, as a burden to the rest of the community."
claimAdam Smith suggested that slavery would have become obsolete without constant, costly government assistance fueled by national debt.
claimPamphleteers such as Davenant and Eglinton raised concerns about the national debt that were not addressed by the metaphors used by proponents of the debt.
claimApologists for the Atlantic slave trade and national debt in the 1690s argued that these systems were necessary evils that should be eliminated only after the current state of emergency passed, effectively creating a perpetual state of emergency.
perspectiveQuobna Ottobah Cugoano argued that it is morally and politically necessary to examine the economic origins of national debt, which he claimed were created for and by the architects of Atlantic slavery, to understand national complicity in labor abuse and ecological devastation.
claimQuobna Ottobah Cugoano argued that national debt and speculative finance were aberrations in British economics that contributed to the financial and moral degradation associated with human trafficking and forced labor.
claimOttobah Cugoano argues that financiers have historically used the mechanism of national debt to create human and natural disasters from which they can extract wealth.
claimOttobah Cugoano's Thoughts and Sentiments builds upon and responds to Adam Smith's assessment of British slavery, national debt, and speculative finance as threats to unregulated capitalism.
perspectiveThe author argues that arguments defending financiers who profit from national debt in the 18th century are remarkably similar to those made by 21st-century financial schemers in mortgage-backed security trading or cryptocurrencies, who claim financial innovations allow everyone to get rich without victims.
perspectiveThe author argues that national debt poses a fundamentally different and potentially catastrophic problem for a country's population compared to voluntary financial agreements between two independent entities.
claimThe financial profiteers of slavery, and of the national debt incurred to expand and defend slavery, may include much of the generational wealth passed down from the British eighteenth century.
claimThe British government's involvement in chartering Atlantic trade infrastructure and financing wars led to significant national debt by the late 17th century.
claimBy 1834, the British government and its creditors viewed the national debt not as a problem to be solved, but as a mutually beneficial relationship of trust and allegiance that undermined stable domestic commerce.
claimSir Robert Peel argued that national debt should not be feared, claiming that money raised by the government is like grain deposited in the earth, which yields an increase productive of national plenty and prosperity.
claimSir Robert Peel insisted that national debt should be viewed as a loan from one family member to another within the same household.
claimIn the 'world of debt' described by Ottobah Cugoano, the British government prioritized paying debts to financiers over providing for the needs of its people, forcing landowners and taxpayers to sacrifice commercial profits to service this debt.
How the Government Subsidizes Wealth Inequality americanprogress.org Jun 25, 2014 5 facts
measurementUnder current law, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the national debt would begin to increase as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) starting in 2018.
measurementThe Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that primary deficits—deficits excluding interest costs for the national debt—would total $1.931 trillion from 2014 to 2023.
claimRepealing step-up in basis and low tax rates for capital gains and dividends would keep the national debt on a downward path as a share of GDP through the end of the five-year budget window analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office.
claimPrimary deficits or surpluses measure whether current tax revenues are sufficient to pay for current federal programs, excluding interest payments on the national debt.
claimThe Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that for the three years following the report, federal deficits would be low enough that the national debt would fall as a share of gross domestic product (GDP).
How governments address climate change through carbon pricing ... nature.com Apr 15, 2025 3 facts
claimGovernment position contributes to the prediction of carbon pricing intensity to the same extent as diffusion, carbon intensity of the economy, and national debt.
claimEconomic growth and falling national debt are associated with more intensive carbon pricing.
claimEconomic growth and falling national debt are associated with more intensive carbon pricing policies.
Conversations with Jamie Stern-Weiner about debt, slavery and our ... davidgraeber.org 1 fact
accountPresident Andrew Jackson made the only serious effort in United States history to retire the national debt, which required the elimination of the Bank of the United States.