The benefits of capital flight?

  Less inflation.

  There is no shortage of liquidity. Money can be created out of thin air all the time. So when this money leaves the country, the benefit is less inflation as that money is no longer available domestically to chase after finite goods. As new money continues to be created, the money then leaves again helping to ease inflation.

  The biggest fear is that this money will eventually be sent back by the foreign recipients of this money. Money creation policies then need to be controlled either through higher interest rates or less government spending to help ease the incoming money flow. Because if the government and banks are creating trillions and foreign recipients are also sending trillions back. That might just push inflation into the double digits.

  "Bastiat argued that the national trade deficit was an indicator of a successful economy, rather than a failing one. Bastiat predicted that a successful, growing economy would result in greater trade deficits, and an unsuccessful, shrinking economy would result in lower trade deficits. This was later, in the 20th century, affirmed by economist Milton Friedman".


"Another fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad. We eat bananas from Central America, wear Italian shoes, drive German automobiles, and enjoy programs we see on our Japanese TV sets. Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports or, equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports".

Milton Friedman 1980 

  I disagree with some of the suggestions made in the above statements. However it is true that a country is unable to enjoy the goods they export and are only left poorer as a result of having the goods they produce shipped overseas. A South African gold miner who exports gold to Switzerland means South Africans now have fewer gold. Diamonds exported from the Congo means the Congolese now have fewer diamonds. The South African and Congolese miner make a profit, but that profit is not enough to make up for the loss their countries suffer from the transaction. During the height of imperialism the goal was for the Conquering state to import as much goods as they could from the conquered state thus reporting a trade deficit with the conquered. The goal was not to have the commanders perform more work for the natives. The goal was to have the natives perform more work for the commanders.

                                                Effeminate leisure class as a sign of nobility


 There is one potential setback to all this profligacy. In the form of the potential force of the nation posting the trade surpluses and using its excess reserves in attacking the currency of the country posting the trade deficit. But this was inevitable. The currency was always meant to devalue, except it was being pent up all this time.