[DB]

“Obamacare is stupid but because of the dead losses and inefficiencies it involves, not because it is a transfer. Transfers as such do not create or destroy wealth, or cause loss.”

Dude, that is economic ignorance in the first order.

Money is a tool like any other tool. Some people know how to use that tool and create things of value beyond the value of the tools used to create it. Others do not. When you take away the tools from the people who know how to use them and give them to people who do not, the result is a loss of productivity and a loss of future wealth. Your claim is the lamest thing I’ve heard a Freeper say in a long time.

[JasonC]

Money is not wealth. It is a tiny subset of it. Second, I mentioned secondary effects on incentives but they are second order, not first. People here do not know basic accounting and think a debt is a negative net worth. They haven't thought of a combined balance sheet in their lives. They think government spending is emitted into the ether and disappears, and debt issued to finance spending is spent without anyone loaning it, and that it amounts to a negative net worth for the entire society.

They sincerely tell me, endlessly, that America is "broke" and cite as proof the existence of debt of any kind. When I tell them Americans have $55 trillion in net worth they stare in incredulity and cannot wrap their minds around it. They think Americans have a net worth of minus that amount somehow, without asking how that is even possible. Something or other to do with money and that mysterious Federal Reserve.

The first order of business with such ignorance is to start with the basics - that nothing can be owed from without being owed to, and similarly nothing can be transfered from without being transfered to.

They endlessly tell me that "unfunded liabilities" for entitlements prove Americans have negative net worth, without ever asking what Martians are supposedly going to receive these benefits.