Listener Alicia in Berkeley had a question following our recent broadcast of(Why) Money Matters来自爱达荷大学的嘉宾Graham HubbsShe writes:

My question is if the government prints money which is just pieces of paper to buy goods and services (through employment program) does not that money then take on an intrinsic value? How does that impact your guest’s theory of the deficit? And isn’t there a problem once the cost of servicing national debt exceeds GDP?

We put the question to Graham and he had the following answer:

这里提出的问题可以，而且我认为应该彼此分开。当政府“印钱”时，无论是通过实际印刷钞票，还是通过在电脑上敲击键盘增加储备，它都创造了一些有价值的东西。这种价值是“内在的”吗?This depends on what the relevantintrinsic/extrinsic distinctionis. The kind of value that is internal to its mode of production is its value to discharge debts to the state. If the relevant state is sufficiently politically and economically strong, what is produced will also have market value—that is, it will also have exchange value, which will allow it to be used to purchase commodities. For further reading on this topic, I recommend Part III of Alexander X. Douglas’sThe Philosophy of Debt．The early chapters of David Graeber’sDebt: The First 5000 Yearsare also potentially helpful.

至于债务/GDP比率的问题，历来是经济学家担心的问题，但最近的宏观经济状况和现象正在挑战这一旧问题。多年来，日本的债务/GDP比率一直很高，而且似乎没有崩溃的危险。On this issue, I recommendthis article byStephanie Keltonthat was just published in theFinancial Times．

Thanks, Graham, for taking the time to answer that question. And thanks to Alicia for asking it.

If you have a question that did not get answered during one of our episodes, feel free to submit it to us atcomments@philosophytalk.org我们可能会把它放在博客上!