Conservative Economics 101: Compare EVERYTHING, including US Fiscal policy, to the way your household finances work.

For all the people who claim we, as a country, shouldn't be borrowing more money right now at basically 0% interest rates, in order to kickstart the economy, update our highways, put in a national fiber optic high speed internet network backbone, and other huge, shovel ready type projects to put the whole nation back to work.... And who make this determination that can't afford the debt we have already, by making comparisons between the USA's "dire" fiscal situation to somebody's household finances who have similar levels of debt, obligations, and revenue only shows people that DO understand the big picture better how far off-base and ignorant to reality you really are.

People who make this, and similar arguments completely ignore several important factors. I will stick with the home-finance analogy to put it in perspective. How is that a household still couldn't afford to manage their debt, even with as high as it would be compared to the household's income, when the following are still true, nonetheless:
 
A) This household holds the keys to its own income. In a pinch, Congress can vote to give the US a pay raise. Sure, its through higher taxes, which give most of you heart attacks, because you completely ignore the much, much higher tax brackets that were the norm for the vast majority of our nation's history. --But whether its through tax increases or not, the fact remains that for the analogy to hold, you have to grant that the person who takes care of this "household's finances" can decide how much income they make. This alone makes the typical household analogy moot. But lets go on anyway.

B) The fiscal head of this household is ALSO allowed to decided what bills they will have. Besides the servicing of the debt, and entitlements, ALL other spending is technically voluntary. So a huge chunk of the budget can be altered as needed if push came to shove. Sure it would hurt a lot of people, industries and businesses--particularly the republican war machine and defense spending, which is 100% voluntary and mostly unnecessary--but the fact is, we can decide that we don't need a lot of these bills if, once again, push came to shove.

C) ...And Finally--this is the elephant in the room. What person who has the legally sanctioned, and totally law abiding right to print as much money as they want, *out of thin air* still CAN'T AFFORD a mortgage payment and can't afford their household debt?

I understand the dynamics involved with fears of inflation that make these points a little more complex and sticky then I've maintained in just a few paragraphs.... But everyone who tries to pretend that its as matter-of-fact simplistic so as to be able to think of the US budget in terms of their own household budget, as a means of determining whether they are qualified to assess our fiscal policy, is rally just showing their amateurish grasp of economics. Whats worse, is to further try to instill the same conceptual ignorance in others by using folksy, down-home analogies that put things in terms of mortgages, and bill-paying, and credit card bill affordability! This is the CONSTANT problem in the conservative/tea party argument about how the USA can't afford ANYTHING, and we need to SLASH SPENDING so much it further harms the economy, and so on and so forth.

There is no easy analogy for understanding world economics by comparing it to your household finances, or your kid's lemonade stand, or anything else. Economics as they pertain to a country with a budget of our size is a subject that resides in a class all its own. It cannot be simplified to simple, 3rd grade level comparisons.