Barrapunto

intentar reducir lo mínimo ls propia deuda,

El estado y especialmente el estado británico siempre puede reponer ese dinero que se mete en cajas de cartón o que se va a lejanas tierras. Aunque también puede ofrecer su propia caja de cartón, la deuda pública, para que quien quiera pueda guardar ahí su dinero con mejor rendimiento.

¿Dónde cree tu amigo que va a parar ese dinero de los iPads? ¿cree que el gobierno chino tiene un almacén en dónde guarda containers llenos de libras esterlinas? ¿que realmente el dinero viaja físicamente a China, Corea o Japón? En realidad esas libras "chinas" se encuentran en bancos británicos o en forma de deuda pública británica.

Sobre la globalización y demás, hace más de doscientos años Adam Smith [gutenberg.org] ya se dio cuenta de que

I thought it necessary, though at the hazard of being tedious, to examine at full length this popular notion, that wealth consists in money or in gold and silver. Money, in common language, as I have already observed, frequently signifies wealth; and this ambiguity of expression has rendered this popular notion so familiar to us, that even they who are convinced of its absurdity, are very apt to forget their own principles, and, in the course of their reasonings, to take it for granted as a certain and undeniable truth. Some of the best English writers upon commerce set out with observing, that the wealth of a country consists, not in its gold and silver only, but in its lands, houses, and consumable goods of all different kinds. In the course of their reasonings, however, the lands, houses, and consumable goods, seem to slip out of their memory; and the strain of their argument frequently supposes that all wealth consists in gold and silver, and that to multiply those metals is the great object of national industry and commerce.

The two principles being established, however, that wealth consisted in gold and silver, and that those metals could be brought into a country which had no mines, only by the balance of trade, or by exporting to a greater value than it imported; it necessarily became the great object of political economy to diminish as much as possible the importation of foreign goods for home consumption, and to increase as much as possible the exportation of the produce of domestic industry. Its two great engines for enriching the country, therefore, were restraints upon importation, and encouragement to exportation.

La riqueza o la pobreza de un país no está en su superávit o su déficit, sino como decía Smith en "sus tierras, casas y objetos de consumo varios". Si un país tiene un cuarto de su población inactiva se está empobreciendo, independientemente de si el gobierno consigue cuadrar sus cuentas o no. Lo mismo si cierra hospitales, no mantiene sus infraestructuras o no financia adecuadamente la educación.