The dissertation is devoted to the study of public debt as an objectively necessary element of the system of expanded reproduction of social capital under the technical progress, as an instrument of redistribution and creation of additional demand for the excess commodity capital.
To detect the disparity between the volume and structure of society's production and the volume and structure of society's income, it is important to divide capital into fixed and circulating capital. The assumption that the part of capital transits its value to the product which it helps to produce in 2 or more years (which is fair for fixed capital) creates the methodological prerequisites for the study of debt relations in the system of proportions of social capital reproduction. On the one hand, the existence of a debt, on the other hand, the existence of savings are necessary due to the specifics of the reproduction of fixed capital. If there are not enough incomes in the system of proportions of social capital reproduction for the purchase of aggregate commodity capital, they can be created only through redistribution, which in a stateless economy can only be debt. In an economy with a state that performs socio-economic functions, the mechanism of redistribution takes the form of public expenditures, which are financed by taxes and public debt.
The inclusion of the public expenditure as a factor of aggregate demand in the study of social production proposed by J. M. Keynes allowed us to transit research to a higher level of ascent from the abstract to the concrete and created the preconditions for the study of public debt as a tool to influence the proportions of social capital reproduction. Public debt acts as a form of export of capital beyond the existing demand volume and structure, as the creation of additional demand and additional opportunities for capital accumulation.
The study of the reproduction of social capital has allowed us to detect the necessity for credit relations between the subjects of the reproduction system, which is associated with both the specifics of the fixed capital reproduction and economic inequality, that complicates the realization of social commodity capital.
It is determined that public debt and household debt allow increasing the marginal propensity to consume and the investment multiplier. At the same time, the redistribution, which is carried out through debt, is carried out on the principles of payment, term, and repayment. Thus, this redistribution is not a real solution to the contradictions of the social capital reproduction, but only a change of its form.
The connection between public debt and modern money and the mechanism of its creation is elaborated. The scientific idea of modern money is improved, which allows us to interpret modern money as a commodity that has universal use-value, which differs from commodities that have particular use-value in the specifics of its production and circulation.
The understanding of credit money as a transitional form in the evolution of money form is substantiated. Credit money is genetically related to the process of changing the dominant form of money, the new form of money first emerges as credit money and in the process of evolution replaces the previous form of money. At the same time, existing scientific approaches consider credit money as an essential characteristic of modern money. This is one of the reasons for the existence of a modern mechanism for creating money as debt obligations and the growth of public debt, which is not necessary. The introduction of a non-credit mechanism for money creation is proposed.
It is shown that inflation helps to reduce the public debt burden.
It is argued that the growth of public debt leads to the violation of the credit principles.
On the basis of empirical data and theoretical conclusions, it is argued that public debt is not necessarily a "burden for future generations", because the growth of public debt does not necessarily entail an increase in the tax burden.
It is determined that the particularity of Ukrainian public debt is high service costs with a relatively low public debt to GDP ratio. It is shown that the extremely high interest rates may be at least partially explained by ineffective public debt management. It is necessary to prohibit acquiring of income from Ukrainian government bonds by any persons authorized to perform state functions that can influence the monetary and fiscal policy, as well as their family members. To reduce the yield on government domestic bonds, it is proposed to increase the demand for them through the introduction of wide and easy access to the purchase of government bonds by the population through bank branches and mobile banking.
