This is an excellent thread which resonated with me for several reasons! https://twitter.com/t0nyyates/status/1317393590683914241

Firstly, the fact that someone as intelligent and politically knowledgeable as @Aiannucci doesn't know how government debt markets work. That's not a criticism of him - most people don't understand it.

Don't know how we can fix this but I always think the general public needs to know a lot more about debt markets. Debt and deficit figures are often totally misused by politicians and people vote accordingly.

People think government debt as similar to credit card debt (it really isn't) or perhaps a mortgage (better but still wrong). We are conditioned to think all debt = bad.

For a start, at some point we personally might want to retire and pay off our mortgage. The government (in theory) goes on forever and can be indebted forever - provided the debt can be rolled over at a reasonable cost.

Another reason I like this thread is the balance when @t0nyyates looks at how much debt is too much. My summary: the limit is much higher than we used to think, but it is not infinite like the MMTers think.

And it is probably much higher than where we are now, and certainly a lot higher than the 80% debt/GDP level that we were conditioned to believe during the austerity era (thanks Reinhart & Rogoff et al).