• marcos@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      Well, actually yes, countries paying down their debt is not a good thing.

      But they can switch the debt into a form that doesn’t pay any interest.

      • CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        2 days ago

        As a holder of US debt, I like that it pays interest. It’s what’s so silly about all this debt stuff — we owe the money to ourselves (I mean that broadly, not that only Americans hold American debt, but that the beneficiaries of national debt are the broad base of investors and institutions that hold that debt). The debt is what we use as currency. The idea that carrying no debt is desirable is based on an analogy to a household budget, but households don’t issue fiat currency, and also households carry debt too!

    • cAUzapNEAGLb@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 days ago

      Just as a heads up, you dont need to carry a balance and be charged interest - you can pay off your cards each month, and thus never accumulating interest, and still have an improved score; simply pay the statement balance before the due date

      • Tower@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 days ago

        I’ve seen people have their cards cancelled for doing this. Rare, but not unheard of.

        • twack@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 days ago

          If you’re doing that you have zero need to bow to any single credit card company.

          I don’t even read 90% of the credit card offers I get, I have plenty of cards, and they are all at zero. Go ahead, cancel me. I’ll have a new one in 15 minutes.

      • CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 days ago

        I wish this were true, but I have personally seen my credit score go down when I finished paying off accounts like car loans. A FICO credit score is a measure of how profitable a customer you are, not how likely you are to pay it back. Credit cards are a particularly expensive way to do this, but lemme assure you that taking out a mortgage will do wonders for your score.