While Jonah Goldberg was asking why have a debt limit at all, Michael Kinsley took it to the next stage: If the national debt doesnt matter, why have taxes at all? Particularly when you no longer have to print money, you can just quantitatively ease yourself into it. Once we raise the old debt ceiling, well be pretty much at the point where the U.S. government is spending $4 trillion but only taking in $2 trillion: For every dollar we raise in taxes, we spend two. No surprise there: The poorest half of the population pay no federal income tax. Theyre not exactly poor as the term would be understood in almost any other country, but in federal-revenue terms theyre dependents, so in order to fund government services for the wealthiest poor people on the planet we borrow money from a nation of subsistence peasants where pigs are such prized possessions they sleep in the house 
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