Hacker News Reader

Comment by bcrl | Hacker News Reader

I don't recall any instances of Microsoft hitting a "debt ceiling" and ceasing payments to employees and other parties on a regular basis every few years. Twitter might be a better comparison.

View on HN

Microsoft doesn't have:

- The worlds largest military budget

- More aircraft carriers and aircraft than the rest of the world combined

- Is also not nuclear armed (and the only folks to actually nuke anyone in anger)

- Their own printing presses for the worlds reserve currency

- Sovereignty over the rating agencies physical location.

Microsoft's governance when it comes to financial matters still seems better to me.

Microsoft can go bankrupt. It's not clear the US can.

The US can default on (choose not to repay) its debt obligations.

Can it? According to the constitution, specifically Ammendment XIV, "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." Does that mean the US cannot legally default on its debts?

That part of 14th was to validate northern civil war debt and exclude Confederate debt.

The 14th does not override Congress' authority to tax and spend ... or not spend. Article I, Section 8.

I think even if you’re right in theory (which I believe you are), the problem is in getting the Supreme Court to agree. And even if they do, by the time the issue makes its way through the courts, the damage would already be have done.

Except the problem is that Congress has already authorized the spending.

What it hasn’t authorized is how the executive should raise the money Congress has told it to spend.

There is no limit on government borrowing besides the debt limit which comes very directly in conflict with the U.S. government’s constitutional mandate to pay its debts.

In nearly every other country the constitution would very clearly supersede the debt limit congress has created, but it’s not clear whether that’s a reliable heuristic in the U.S.

> how the executive should raise the money

Only Congress can raise money through spending bills.

Raising money != spending it.

Ideally they are a paired activity, but issuing debt can be done with no corresponding spending. And spending can be done with no corresponding (exactly) debt or taxes.

And taxes are gathered by the executive, and the amount of taxes actually gathered is also independent of either body (as they’re a function of tax rules and executive effectiveness * economic activity, etc.).

You are correct, the government cannot default on its debts (assuming they were legally authorized). Justin Amash recently wrote a very helpful blog post [0] about the debt and this is his interpretation of the amendment. Recommend reading the whole thing but the most relevant portion would be myth #4.

[0] https://justinamash.substack.com/p/the-debt-ceiling-isnt-wha...

Debt obligations denominated in USD?

In theory, the US government would never go bankrupt as long as they can print more money. Which they always can, the dollar isn’t backed by gold anymore.

US was bankrupt in 1895. JP Morgan set up a bailout.

https://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-1895-crisis-and-1862-...

Now that dollar is fiat, there would be no reason for US to go bankrupt. New unbacked dollars can be issued.

Only because they have unilateral control over their financial matters. If Microsoft could only spend whenever Apple approved of their spending, things would look quite different don't you think?

Eh, Congress, The Executive, and the Judiciary are all in the same government. All are ultimately accountable to the will of the people (who will, if pushed hard enough, hang them all - or find someone willing to do it for them).

Letting folks be convinced otherwise is exactly how we got in this situation.

Everyone who has worked in a large corp has experienced finance refusing to pay for something unless you jump through some specific hoop.

Many have experience with budgets being curtailed (despite earlier promises), bosses having to kiss up to the finance folks to get PO’s paid, etc.

And dealing with executive infighting, or having to appease investors or shareholders, etc.

The issue we’ve got is folks have been convinced that this isn’t us trying to all work together and find a compromise we can all agree on (even if we’re not happy with it), but rather an us vs them zero sum game of annihilation. And the latter is an extremely dangerous mindset to be in, but beneficial to specific types of predators.

If a companies shareholders were somehow convinced that the CFO should just not pay due bills or payroll unless the CEO caved on his pet project, we’d see the same thing. Except outside forces would intervene pretty quickly, and you’d have to be insanely dumb as a shareholder to think it was going to end any other way.

The US has nukes and the most effective military in the world (near as anyone can tell), ain’t no one want to get involved in that…. Except folks who already are our enemies, anyway.

But they could push an update to hide the taskbar by default

We must close this taskbar gap at once!

I’m clicking but nothing’s happening

Sure, if they want 50,000 agitated IT workers to storm Redmond and slay them and put their families' heads on a row of pikes outside of microsoft headquarters, they could do that.

Also, Microsoft doesn’t owe the majority of its debt to its own shareholders.

Further, Microsoft doesn’t have the legal right to demand their shareholders and every employee etc hand over any money Microsoft asks them to hand over, if it really wants to pay off its debts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com