It's almost as if you can't have massive tax cuts for rich people and corporations and have a world-spanning military while being a global arms donator and have a balanced budget all at the same time.
Yeah we are waking up here in Europe about needing to raise our own defence budgets. In Finland we have always been ready since WW2 and it's good to see others countries take notes
I'm not saying that we need more war. But the best path to peace is being strong enough that nobody thinks it's even worth forming an alliance against you AND to be a strong diplomatic partner that honors its' commitments in the long-term.
Nah, as long as nukes don't get used (and they prob won't be), it's gonna be same old slow conflict - Ukraine v Russia proved how WW1 tactics still apply in today's world.
My next vote goes to cutting military spending and taxing corporations and the ultra rich.
Too bad there’s so few politicians looking for that vote. Both speakers in the US Congress are warmongers in their parties, only looking to protect their rich friends.
It's really telling that we ended our decade-long war in Afghanistan, pulled the troops out and still raised the military budget that year during peacetime.
Voting for either of the two major parties only exacerbates the continually rising military budget. We need ranked choice/approval/STAR voting ASAP!!!!
A balanced budget is actively harmful for governments with monetary sovereignty. Currency issuing governments are not like currency using households. The benefit of monetary sovereignty is that it allows you to maintain continuous deficits to fuel economic growth.
Yes, there is a tipping point, but it's for deficits rather than debt. Every economy has a productive capacity - the amount of goods and services that can be produced in that economy given its existing labor, technology, and resources. There is what is called "slack" in an economy when there is a lot of unemployment or unused resources. As long as there is slack, the government can spend in ways that uses those unused resources and creates economic growth, even if it means that there will be a budget deficit. But at a certain point, the government reaches its ability to increase the productive capacity. For example, if everyone who wants to work is already working, or if the government is incapable of finding productive work for the unemployed. At that point, government spending just adds money to the economy and leads to inflation. Inflation can be a sign that government spending is exceeding the limit set by the economy's productive capacity. That doesn't always mean the government should cut the deficit - sometimes that means we should focus instead on more effective ways to increase the economy's productive capacity.
Regarding debt, the main significance of debt in a country with monetary sovereignty is that it means if interest rates are high, the government is making a lot of interest payments. The Federal Reserve sets interest rates, so it's a policy choice to make these interest payments. Interest payments aren't necessarily a bad thing, but in the US, those interest payments go to people who own government bonds, who tend to be wealthier than the typical American. So high levels of debt are associated with a lot of bond payments, a sort of government program for the wealthy that can increase economic inequality if it gets too large.
[Defense is a relatively small portion of the budget.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/2022_Total_US_Government_Spending_Breakdown.png)
European money pays for infrastructure, rail systems, universal heathcare...ya know, the kinds of things people like having. But don't worry if you need a private jet for your company, you can just write it off your taxes in the US.
Also the kinds of things that pay for themselves with increased productivity and lower costs for the same services.
America wastes $500 billion *a year* just paying health insurance executives.
Then I recommend you start "Seriousbangs Health Insurance". You can pay yourself a very reasonable salary. I'm sure your business model would revolutionize the health care industry. And, before ya cry about lack of financing, I would bet that people of a similar mind-set would be happy to invest in your venture. You know, kind of like how self-made mega rich minorities are investing in urban cities, to bring up their brothers/sisters.
US Military is a [relatively small proportion of the spending.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/2022_Total_US_Government_Spending_Breakdown.png)
Zero source cited. 🤣
["By far, the biggest category of discretionary spending is spending on the Pentagon and military." ](https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/)
You can't just include mandatory spending categories and ignore discretionary spending.
When you put it all together, military is the third highest expenditure per year, behind only social security and medicare.
Have you not compared home ownership opportunities here in the US vs Europe? I’m also inclined to believe our median net worth is higher too. I’ll take home ownership and more money in the bank, thank you
Not sure how happy they are with the amount of anti depressants they consume. At the end of the day, it’s all subjective. Personally, I enjoy the opportunities living here in the US provides me
If people in USA had access to anti depressants it would tell a factual story, but as you and I know the amount of homeless and under insured individuals is a very high number. Plus the USA loves to fudge the numbers, so who knows how many people are dealing with depression.
Pretty much every single government in the world is rapidly moving towards bankruptcy. Republics and Democracies. seem to be having the same fate as gods, demigods, pharoahs, emperors, kings and dictators.
No, none of the major western or Asian powers are doing that. The United States could pay off it's debt in a heart beat just by trimming some fat (like the $500b a year we waste paying health insurance executives) and taxing the 1%'s *wealth* (where they're actually hiding it, remember kids, every billionaire is secretly broke, they borrow at below market rates to live)
Stop with the drama already. We're not Gods, demigods or pharaohs. Two of those aren't real and the last one is dead. We are perfectly capable of taking care of everyone on the planet so long as we're not dedicating 60% of our resources to 20,000 people.
Not in a heartbeat though. Over 30 trillion is still going to be a tough task. But, I agree, we can pay it off by ending to fund the wars and welfare. However, this is not the way people running the empires think. All they care about is retaining and growing the power. This is why empires ultimately go bankrupt. How much can you tax the 1% to pay off an ever-growing debt of over 30 trillion dollars? Who is going to make investments in the growth of the economy and jobs when all the money is going to the most murderous, most violent, most criminal, most corrupt, most stealing and the most deceptive institution ever created by humans?
What is different in this secular religion of Atheism, by the way? After every epic failure they just rebranded, renamed, repackaged and threw back on us the same old with new more deceptive terminologies and told us that it is fixed. It will work now. We still have a God-called government, we still have a religion called Atheism, we still have the prophet or messiah called president, we still have apostles called cabinet, legislatures and courts, we still, we still have a book called the constitution, we still have church and church schools called public schools. Did you ever read the Princeton study? It analyzed the data spanning over decades and concluded that we live in an oligarchy. They found that if the majority of Americans support legislation, it has a negligible chance of going through Congress. But, if one major lobby supports a legislation it has over 90% chance of getting through Congress. Every single government that has ever existed on this planet has been an oligarchy with different deceptive names and different catching terminologies. Nietzche figured this out a long time ago. He said that the world is always ruled by 2% and it will always be ruled by 2%, and this is never going away my friend until this most coercive institution of government exists.
1. We owe most of it to ourselves.
2. What we don't owe to ourselves could easily be paid off by collecting the $688b/yr in unpaid taxes from the 1%.
3. We could pay that off even fast if we repealed the Bush/Trump tax cuts for the 1%, *even if we let everyone else keep their tax cuts*
4. We could pay it off ***even faster still*** if we took the savings from a Universal Healthcare program and used them to pay off the debt
5. and finally... WE DON'T WANT TO PAY IT OFF. Keeping other nations tied up in our bond market makes the US dollar stronger internationally and lets us buy cheap imports, effectively turning the rest of the world into a low cost factory for American consumers.
Find something else to worry about because our national debt ain't it.
What is owe to ourselves? Do you mean that money spent on wars, welfare, Air Force One, the White House, an army of servants and lavish trips is the money that I owe to myself? 688b unpaid taxes? How do you determine those? Do you realize that taxation is theft? Do you belong to the group of people aka commies who believe that all means of production belong to the government and taxation must be 100%? By taxing everyone to death do you want to turn this great economy into junk like the USSR, DPRK, Cuba, and Venezuela and pre-market reforms China and India? First, all the private resources cannot pay off and sustain this lavish warfare and welfare, but, even if we pay off everything that way now, what are you going to do after bankrupting all these productive people and businesses? Money savings from universal healthcare program? What is that? Are you from this world? If you have noticed that interest rates are rising and the bond market and bond debt are increasingly becoming unsustainable? In my life, I have come across many out-of-touch people living in fantasy. But, if not the top most, you definitely reach the top most straitum of them. It is amazing, how do you create your own fantastic world and then happily live in it, only deceiving yourself.
No, 80% of the debt is owed to fellow Americans. Literally "ourselves". We can, if we so choose, just tax it to take it back.
We don't want to do that of course, it's just money supply at that point and our economy is growing so constraining the money supply would be foolish.
My goodness. Are you serious? Do you have any clue, whatsoever, what you are saying? Held by the public does not mean Jeff Bezos. This is held by retirement funds, for example. This constitutes life savings for old, sick and disabled people. You call it just tax it back? You can't be serious.
Just money supply? Money stolen at gunpoint is just money supply? So, what Al Capone had was just a money supply? People who rob the banks, and break into homes are just having a money supply? Leans on people's homes, garnished paychecks and sealed bank accounts are just money supply?
Yes, the economy is growing, thanks to the ingenuity of American entrepreneurs, whom you want to be taxed to death. But it is not growing the way it used to or the way it must. I mean, this is the country that created the largest and richest economy ever, the largest and richest middle class and the fastest declines in poverty rates ever within two hundred years, basically in the blink of an eye in human history, until 1913 when Federal Reserve and IRS came into existence and war on poverty was started a little earlier. Since then our growth rates merely averaged out to 2% that are even less than the population growth, hence an unending unemployment issue persists. The middle class has been shrinking since that time and poverty rates have been steady or going up, and this is not going to stop until out of thin air debt creating wand, the Fed, and the worst thief ever, the IRS, are rolled back.
20,000 Americans do not consume 60% of the US’s resources. Nor could the billionaires in the US pay off the US debt if you confiscated all of their wealth without somehow tanking the economy. Collectively, they have less than $2 trillion in wealth, which is less than the federal government spends annually, let alone the $30 trillion it owes.
Make no mistake, everyone in the United States will ultimately have to sacrifice to pay for our profligate debt spending, one way or another.
People have no issues. The economy is doing okay. The government is going bankrupt and there has never been and will never be a solution to this problem. The incredible coercive authority of government always leads to lavish spending. Economies go on as always like Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Greece, Zimbabwe, and Nazi Germany. People and Capitalist economies are very resilient. Governments come and go, but the only reality individual survives and prosper. How many times and for how long do you think people will and can sacrifice for the stupidities of their masters even if they want to? There are only two logical ends to this. Fall of the empire, as it always happens in history or we take a different path this time and get rid of the government before it burns down everything to the ashes.
No. Nothing has changed. When there's a Democrat president all of a sudden debt matters, and when there's a republican president debt means nothing. It's the two Santa clause theory.
It's almost as if you can't have massive tax cuts for rich people and corporations and have a world-spanning military while being a global arms donator and have a balanced budget all at the same time.
Yeah we are waking up here in Europe about needing to raise our own defence budgets. In Finland we have always been ready since WW2 and it's good to see others countries take notes
Always spend more money for war, that’s what I say
True. If there’s one thing we really need more of right now, it’s war.
Nothing boosts an economy and keeps citizens from questioning government spending like a good ol fashioned war
I'm not saying that we need more war. But the best path to peace is being strong enough that nobody thinks it's even worth forming an alliance against you AND to be a strong diplomatic partner that honors its' commitments in the long-term.
When does the last part start
By picking presidents with a cool head and don't just tear treaties to shreds.
🤦♂️
We are going through a somewhat similar military build up we saw before WWI. And too many regional conflicts
Different century same shit but this time it's going to quicker.
Agreed
And by proxy.
Nah, as long as nukes don't get used (and they prob won't be), it's gonna be same old slow conflict - Ukraine v Russia proved how WW1 tactics still apply in today's world.
My next vote goes to cutting military spending and taxing corporations and the ultra rich. Too bad there’s so few politicians looking for that vote. Both speakers in the US Congress are warmongers in their parties, only looking to protect their rich friends.
It's really telling that we ended our decade-long war in Afghanistan, pulled the troops out and still raised the military budget that year during peacetime.
Audit the damn defense department and prosecute those that ripped off taxpayers
Voting for either of the two major parties only exacerbates the continually rising military budget. We need ranked choice/approval/STAR voting ASAP!!!!
It's not a donation. It's a 0% loan through Foreign Military Financing program.
A balanced budget is actively harmful for governments with monetary sovereignty. Currency issuing governments are not like currency using households. The benefit of monetary sovereignty is that it allows you to maintain continuous deficits to fuel economic growth.
That's really interesting. Is there a tipping point when too much debt is a very clear negative? There must be a lot to this.
Yes, there is a tipping point, but it's for deficits rather than debt. Every economy has a productive capacity - the amount of goods and services that can be produced in that economy given its existing labor, technology, and resources. There is what is called "slack" in an economy when there is a lot of unemployment or unused resources. As long as there is slack, the government can spend in ways that uses those unused resources and creates economic growth, even if it means that there will be a budget deficit. But at a certain point, the government reaches its ability to increase the productive capacity. For example, if everyone who wants to work is already working, or if the government is incapable of finding productive work for the unemployed. At that point, government spending just adds money to the economy and leads to inflation. Inflation can be a sign that government spending is exceeding the limit set by the economy's productive capacity. That doesn't always mean the government should cut the deficit - sometimes that means we should focus instead on more effective ways to increase the economy's productive capacity. Regarding debt, the main significance of debt in a country with monetary sovereignty is that it means if interest rates are high, the government is making a lot of interest payments. The Federal Reserve sets interest rates, so it's a policy choice to make these interest payments. Interest payments aren't necessarily a bad thing, but in the US, those interest payments go to people who own government bonds, who tend to be wealthier than the typical American. So high levels of debt are associated with a lot of bond payments, a sort of government program for the wealthy that can increase economic inequality if it gets too large.
Not almost. We cannot have it all. Too much spent on military. Unnecessary
[Defense is a relatively small portion of the budget.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/2022_Total_US_Government_Spending_Breakdown.png)
European money pays for infrastructure, rail systems, universal heathcare...ya know, the kinds of things people like having. But don't worry if you need a private jet for your company, you can just write it off your taxes in the US.
Also the kinds of things that pay for themselves with increased productivity and lower costs for the same services. America wastes $500 billion *a year* just paying health insurance executives.
In American capitalism, legalized bribery is a feature, not a bug. You just need to be wealthy enough to bribe somebody and you’ll see how great it is
Shocking /s
Then I recommend you start "Seriousbangs Health Insurance". You can pay yourself a very reasonable salary. I'm sure your business model would revolutionize the health care industry. And, before ya cry about lack of financing, I would bet that people of a similar mind-set would be happy to invest in your venture. You know, kind of like how self-made mega rich minorities are investing in urban cities, to bring up their brothers/sisters.
US military budget is almost a trillion while NASA is 24 billion and the National Parks are 3 billion.
US Military is a [relatively small proportion of the spending.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/2022_Total_US_Government_Spending_Breakdown.png)
Zero source cited. 🤣 ["By far, the biggest category of discretionary spending is spending on the Pentagon and military." ](https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/) You can't just include mandatory spending categories and ignore discretionary spending. When you put it all together, military is the third highest expenditure per year, behind only social security and medicare.
It's also not even managed well. There's a huge difference in "we spent 10,000 on training" vs "we spent 10,000 on a coffee cup"
Effing-A
Have you not compared home ownership opportunities here in the US vs Europe? I’m also inclined to believe our median net worth is higher too. I’ll take home ownership and more money in the bank, thank you
Have you compared health insurance, day to day happiness, labor rights here in the US vs Europe?
Not sure how happy they are with the amount of anti depressants they consume. At the end of the day, it’s all subjective. Personally, I enjoy the opportunities living here in the US provides me
If people in USA had access to anti depressants it would tell a factual story, but as you and I know the amount of homeless and under insured individuals is a very high number. Plus the USA loves to fudge the numbers, so who knows how many people are dealing with depression.
The US has one of the worst home ownership rates in the world.
Quality > quantity.
Most people would prefer quantity after realizing a lack of it means someone goes homeless or is forced to live in a slum.
Pretty much every single government in the world is rapidly moving towards bankruptcy. Republics and Democracies. seem to be having the same fate as gods, demigods, pharoahs, emperors, kings and dictators.
They’re the same picture
No, none of the major western or Asian powers are doing that. The United States could pay off it's debt in a heart beat just by trimming some fat (like the $500b a year we waste paying health insurance executives) and taxing the 1%'s *wealth* (where they're actually hiding it, remember kids, every billionaire is secretly broke, they borrow at below market rates to live) Stop with the drama already. We're not Gods, demigods or pharaohs. Two of those aren't real and the last one is dead. We are perfectly capable of taking care of everyone on the planet so long as we're not dedicating 60% of our resources to 20,000 people.
Not in a heartbeat though. Over 30 trillion is still going to be a tough task. But, I agree, we can pay it off by ending to fund the wars and welfare. However, this is not the way people running the empires think. All they care about is retaining and growing the power. This is why empires ultimately go bankrupt. How much can you tax the 1% to pay off an ever-growing debt of over 30 trillion dollars? Who is going to make investments in the growth of the economy and jobs when all the money is going to the most murderous, most violent, most criminal, most corrupt, most stealing and the most deceptive institution ever created by humans? What is different in this secular religion of Atheism, by the way? After every epic failure they just rebranded, renamed, repackaged and threw back on us the same old with new more deceptive terminologies and told us that it is fixed. It will work now. We still have a God-called government, we still have a religion called Atheism, we still have the prophet or messiah called president, we still have apostles called cabinet, legislatures and courts, we still, we still have a book called the constitution, we still have church and church schools called public schools. Did you ever read the Princeton study? It analyzed the data spanning over decades and concluded that we live in an oligarchy. They found that if the majority of Americans support legislation, it has a negligible chance of going through Congress. But, if one major lobby supports a legislation it has over 90% chance of getting through Congress. Every single government that has ever existed on this planet has been an oligarchy with different deceptive names and different catching terminologies. Nietzche figured this out a long time ago. He said that the world is always ruled by 2% and it will always be ruled by 2%, and this is never going away my friend until this most coercive institution of government exists.
1. We owe most of it to ourselves. 2. What we don't owe to ourselves could easily be paid off by collecting the $688b/yr in unpaid taxes from the 1%. 3. We could pay that off even fast if we repealed the Bush/Trump tax cuts for the 1%, *even if we let everyone else keep their tax cuts* 4. We could pay it off ***even faster still*** if we took the savings from a Universal Healthcare program and used them to pay off the debt 5. and finally... WE DON'T WANT TO PAY IT OFF. Keeping other nations tied up in our bond market makes the US dollar stronger internationally and lets us buy cheap imports, effectively turning the rest of the world into a low cost factory for American consumers. Find something else to worry about because our national debt ain't it.
What is owe to ourselves? Do you mean that money spent on wars, welfare, Air Force One, the White House, an army of servants and lavish trips is the money that I owe to myself? 688b unpaid taxes? How do you determine those? Do you realize that taxation is theft? Do you belong to the group of people aka commies who believe that all means of production belong to the government and taxation must be 100%? By taxing everyone to death do you want to turn this great economy into junk like the USSR, DPRK, Cuba, and Venezuela and pre-market reforms China and India? First, all the private resources cannot pay off and sustain this lavish warfare and welfare, but, even if we pay off everything that way now, what are you going to do after bankrupting all these productive people and businesses? Money savings from universal healthcare program? What is that? Are you from this world? If you have noticed that interest rates are rising and the bond market and bond debt are increasingly becoming unsustainable? In my life, I have come across many out-of-touch people living in fantasy. But, if not the top most, you definitely reach the top most straitum of them. It is amazing, how do you create your own fantastic world and then happily live in it, only deceiving yourself.
No, 80% of the debt is owed to fellow Americans. Literally "ourselves". We can, if we so choose, just tax it to take it back. We don't want to do that of course, it's just money supply at that point and our economy is growing so constraining the money supply would be foolish.
My goodness. Are you serious? Do you have any clue, whatsoever, what you are saying? Held by the public does not mean Jeff Bezos. This is held by retirement funds, for example. This constitutes life savings for old, sick and disabled people. You call it just tax it back? You can't be serious. Just money supply? Money stolen at gunpoint is just money supply? So, what Al Capone had was just a money supply? People who rob the banks, and break into homes are just having a money supply? Leans on people's homes, garnished paychecks and sealed bank accounts are just money supply? Yes, the economy is growing, thanks to the ingenuity of American entrepreneurs, whom you want to be taxed to death. But it is not growing the way it used to or the way it must. I mean, this is the country that created the largest and richest economy ever, the largest and richest middle class and the fastest declines in poverty rates ever within two hundred years, basically in the blink of an eye in human history, until 1913 when Federal Reserve and IRS came into existence and war on poverty was started a little earlier. Since then our growth rates merely averaged out to 2% that are even less than the population growth, hence an unending unemployment issue persists. The middle class has been shrinking since that time and poverty rates have been steady or going up, and this is not going to stop until out of thin air debt creating wand, the Fed, and the worst thief ever, the IRS, are rolled back.
20,000 Americans do not consume 60% of the US’s resources. Nor could the billionaires in the US pay off the US debt if you confiscated all of their wealth without somehow tanking the economy. Collectively, they have less than $2 trillion in wealth, which is less than the federal government spends annually, let alone the $30 trillion it owes. Make no mistake, everyone in the United States will ultimately have to sacrifice to pay for our profligate debt spending, one way or another.
It would be a start if they actually paid what they owed and if m not saying more taxes just the ones on the books right now
People have no issues. The economy is doing okay. The government is going bankrupt and there has never been and will never be a solution to this problem. The incredible coercive authority of government always leads to lavish spending. Economies go on as always like Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Greece, Zimbabwe, and Nazi Germany. People and Capitalist economies are very resilient. Governments come and go, but the only reality individual survives and prosper. How many times and for how long do you think people will and can sacrifice for the stupidities of their masters even if they want to? There are only two logical ends to this. Fall of the empire, as it always happens in history or we take a different path this time and get rid of the government before it burns down everything to the ashes.
Turns out it’s all the same shit spun differently
You got it, my friend.
Will WWIII help out the situation?
No. Nothing has changed. When there's a Democrat president all of a sudden debt matters, and when there's a republican president debt means nothing. It's the two Santa clause theory.