Debt Limit
- Thread starter Typhonis
- Start date
Because they don't want to be limited in how much of our money they can spend.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
No politician wants to pay down the debt.
Money in-hand today is money you can spend, so borrowing more makes your short-term situation better. Meanwhile money spent on paying down the debt is money you're not giving to projects that benefit your keyholders and donors.
Conversely, raising the debt is a problem for future politicians once you are out of office so it can potentially be weaponized against rivals at best, and at worst is somebody else's problem.
bintananth
behind a desk
The debt ceiling is a joke meant to fool people into thinking Congress actually cares about keeping a lid on Federal spending.
Everybody knows it will get raised ... just like the last time we had this "crisis". Seriously, it gets raised at least once a year on average.
If it doesn't? Welp, that just means the US Treasury advances the printing press throttle to pay the bills.
Everybody knows it will get raised ... just like the last time we had this "crisis". Seriously, it gets raised at least once a year on average.
If it doesn't? Welp, that just means the US Treasury advances the printing press throttle to pay the bills.
Sergeant Foley
Well-known member
Subscribed and following!
History Learner
Well-known member
I'd like to ask the people in this thread how exactly they'd like to cut spending/pay down the debt.
Federal Spending as a % of GDP is 25%. For context, 2008 was a reduction of 5% of GDP and most estimates of the Great Depression suggest it was 25-30%. To meaningfully cut the debt to GDP level would result in one of the worst economic episodes in American history. Even leaving that aside, in what categories do you wish to cut from:
Federal Spending as a % of GDP is 25%. For context, 2008 was a reduction of 5% of GDP and most estimates of the Great Depression suggest it was 25-30%. To meaningfully cut the debt to GDP level would result in one of the worst economic episodes in American history. Even leaving that aside, in what categories do you wish to cut from:
Bigking321
Well-known member
I think shutting down several government agencies would save quite a bit of money. And fire like half of the bureaucracy. We don't need the vast majority of it.
And more efficiency in everything government related including the military. The amount of waste is mind boggling.
And a consumption tax instead of the current insanity that is our tax code. Simplify that and the IRS could be vastly reduced instead of hiring like 80,000 new agents.
And more efficiency in everything government related including the military. The amount of waste is mind boggling.
And a consumption tax instead of the current insanity that is our tax code. Simplify that and the IRS could be vastly reduced instead of hiring like 80,000 new agents.
Bigking321
Well-known member
Nah. I don't buy that.
The cost of things will go up sure, but directly in proportion to the expenditures. Expensive things become more expensive proportionally than cheaper things.
So a millionaire living in luxury or whatever is paying a lot more into the system than someone of more modest means.
Plus the elimination of the rest of federal taxes will give everyone more money anyway.
Taxes in general are just theft from the poorer peoples of Western nations.
These countries existed for a long time with way less taxes, I fail to see how we cannot return to that method of spending and taxing.
That, and public executions for billionaires who don't pay their taxes appropriately.
These countries existed for a long time with way less taxes, I fail to see how we cannot return to that method of spending and taxing.
That, and public executions for billionaires who don't pay their taxes appropriately.
You need catholic Kings for that.Real one,not modern fakes.
Problem is - when you could find them ?
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Dissolving the department of education, the ATF, reforming the rest of the Federal bureaucracies with half the manpower, more automation, and more accountability, that'd all make a pretty good start in bringing the budget back in line.
Ditching all the unconstitutional welfare programs would solve the problem overnight, but is even less politically plausible than the above. Government gibs are the national-level equivalent of a heroin addiction.
Ditching all the unconstitutional welfare programs would solve the problem overnight, but is even less politically plausible than the above. Government gibs are the national-level equivalent of a heroin addiction.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
The underlying issue is that we have incomprehensibly higher economic complexity. No matter how you look at it, there's a need for a several-fold expansion of the government's scale simply to keep up with the increased variety of businesses. For instance, GMO foods weren't a thing when the EPA was founded, and if we ever want to enforce environmental regulations on imports so they aren't just reflexively dodged with offshoring we'll be needing whole new departments that may as well go to the EPA.
It's expanded far more than necessary, and it's a rambling inefficient clusterfuck, but when people make statements they're usually referring to the pre-flaming-river times when "environmental protection" wasn't a thing. Pollution is far too acute a threat to public health to be rid of agencies like the EPA. That's just the most obvious case-study in why "back to before the 20th century" will not go well.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
You seem to be assuming that the EPA is the cause of anti-pollution movements in the culture, not a symptom of it. You also seem to be ignorant to just how much damage organizations like the EPA cause.
I have a simple alternative to massive, complex government bureaucracies:
Dissolve them all. When somebody dumps waste into the river, rather than slapping them with dozens of bureaucratic fines, take them to court for criminal and civil damages.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
And who gets to declare that the pollution is illegal? Congress doesn't have time to pass individual laws on every single compound, that's what bureaucracies like the EPA are for. Nor can you just ban everything, industry would completely grind to a halt if they could produce no emissions whatsoever. Even the greenest electric car produces some from the outgassing of its plastic components and oxidation of its lubricant. So you need somebody with the time and resources to regulate all these individual pollutants, run studies on exactly how much becomes critical and how much can be allowed to slide, and then regulate production accordingly.
Finally, how do you perceive that a criminal or civil case would go? Why would you imagine there's any success to be had there? Because IRL, we've seen how it works, the DA declines to prosecute Lex Luthor for killing half a billion people with smog, and meanwhile launches an all-out assault that destroys Dave's ranch for the cows farting too much, ensuring Lex Luthor won't have any competition in the near future for his Deliciouz Bugz project. Civil cases also tend to go to those with the most money, ie. Lex Luthor, not Dave.
Oh....the time to deal with the debt was over 20 years ago.
Since then we have run two wars on our nations credit card for decades, did what ever the fuck obama did and committed global economic sucide with covid. There is absolutely no way in the state of fuck the us can pay back our debt. We are long outside the remote possibility of that.
Europe is in the same boat, so is japan so are most of the countries on the planet during the relative good times pretty much every government on the planet borrowed unsustainable amounts of money and now that the boomers are retiring and most places don't have a way to pay that shit back?
Yeah the only real choice at this point is to default and its the same choice every one else is facing down. There are no other realistic options, you can't spend over a century making bad economic decision after bad economic decision and not pay the price. There is no other option but default.
Since then we have run two wars on our nations credit card for decades, did what ever the fuck obama did and committed global economic sucide with covid. There is absolutely no way in the state of fuck the us can pay back our debt. We are long outside the remote possibility of that.
Europe is in the same boat, so is japan so are most of the countries on the planet during the relative good times pretty much every government on the planet borrowed unsustainable amounts of money and now that the boomers are retiring and most places don't have a way to pay that shit back?
Yeah the only real choice at this point is to default and its the same choice every one else is facing down. There are no other realistic options, you can't spend over a century making bad economic decision after bad economic decision and not pay the price. There is no other option but default.
Likely but not true. It would take a level of austerity and will to deny gubm't SWAG in order to pull off however.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
No, I'm stating that said regulatory body has had rather significant additions to its job in the form of whole new technologies applicable to its jurisdiction and there are very obvious improvements to ensuring existing regulations do what they're supposed to that would also necessitate additions to it.
And what are you doing to enforce preventative regulations without an agency training inspectors and processing their findings? Without such, you are proposing we be reduced to strictly punitive measures after lives and land have already been ruined.
The United States can rather trivially pay off its debts with remarkably minor austerity measures, because the ratio of debt repayments plus government requirements to GDP is low enough we could gut spending and hike taxes to crush it in 20 years or so without necessarily collapsing the economy. More measured approaches with less risk of economic meltdown from system shock take increasing amounts of time, but we're in no danger of default with even the most basic of graft-purging measures.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
As opposed to a system where we already have corruption, incompetence, and ineptitude leading to lives and land being ruined, on top of the inhibitive effects of excessive regulation and bureaucrats on power trips trying to control everything?
Did you know that just recently the EPA was arguing before the Supreme Court that they had regulatory power over basically everything water flows through in the US? Including drainage ditches, privately made artificial ponds, etc, etc?
They've been arguing for this for more than a decade. Can you say power grab?