fishonjazz
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Jo Jorgensen 2020 - First Female President
- Thread starter AlaskanAssassin
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LogGrad98
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I think a lot of people will happily opt out of paying another tax. Especially young people who aren't faced with any existential dread yet. And then the system will collapse for those who stay opted in.
How Older Americans Got By Before Social Security
Pensions, annuities, savings accounts and mattresses were among options of what to do with your money before the existence of social security.
www.aarp.org
I don't know enough about acceptabble debt levels to make a comment on ours, but if @idestroyedthetoilet has an opinion, I'll listen carefully to it. In the past, he has dismissed such concerns.
AlaskanAssassin
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I think this exactly proves my point. You're basically describing a pyramid scheme.
LogGrad98
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Absolutely, but to be fair it's upside down because it's been raided so many times in the past and not managed well at all. Originally the system was decent, we've made it the ****-show it is today. And now if we kill it we might as well take the Viking way out and start throwing people off cliffs because that will be the end effect anyway for the many many people who rely on it.
AlaskanAssassin
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Well, our annual GDP is about 20T, and our Federal debt is about 23T. So if everyone in this country worked as normal, and gave everything we produced/earned for an entire year to the government, we still would not be out of debt. Nobody knows exactly how far we can push this. There are a few countries that have higher debt to gdp ratios than us, but its not that many. Japan is one that is over 200%. Can the US get to that level of debt, or push it even higher, without suffering a catastrophic depression?
Many modern economists have taken Keynesian theory and given it steroids. We no longer have the ability to normalize interest rates. Since the 2008 recession, we've only gotten rates back to about 2.5%.......and now we are back down to zero again. At some point in the future (who knows when) the market will force higher interest rates, and we are not going to be able to handle the interest on our debt. Maybe this is still a ways down the road (only because we are the worlds reserve currency, which isn't a guarantee forever).
idestroyedthetoilet
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How Older Americans Got By Before Social Security
Pensions, annuities, savings accounts and mattresses were among options of what to do with your money before the existence of social security.
I don't know enough about acceptabble debt levels to make a comment on ours, but if @idestroyedthetoilet has an opinion, I'll listen carefully to it. In the past, he has dismissed such concerns.
What I probably said was deficits don't matter until they do. The wealth of a nation lies in its productive capacity, not in an accounting balance sheet. USA is a production powerhouse.
The concern is in the Federal Reserve losing control of the bond market. I'd like a good explanation on the mechanisms of how that could actually happen. I think it's obvious there is a limit to debt load, but we're talking more of creating moral hazard here IMO, disincentive to work.
A concern to watch is extrrnal debt load. If "China will dump US dollarz!" comes to pass it means they exchange treasuries for cash, which would need to be spent on US goods or go to waste via inflation. The Fed might not be able to both buy all bonds and contrl inflation as buying bonds pulls down rates, which adds inflationary pressure (cheaper borrowing = more buying and higher home prices). Or, you could look at China dumping USD more rationally as a massive stimulus into the US labor market and a reversal of the trade deficit. We'd simply have to work our way out of the inflationary pressure. Higher wages, more overtime for manufacturing employees... Keep in mind the current scale of something like 1 trillion into just one year of a 20 trillion economy? 5% one time is not too much to manage IMO. Taxes from it would reverse debt and adding in all those extra treasuries essentially being extinguished debt held by the Fed and we'd be in a much stronger financial position.
idestroyedthetoilet
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Look at the Federal Reserve remittances to the US Treasury before and after 2008, and the national debt minus Fed held debt for both periods. People went crazy over QE and Obama era debt, but the US debt:GDP actually went down concidering the economy kept growing after the brief stall and our central bank financing all our excess spending.
WTS, their is a limit and the MMT folks seem loonie. Go talk to someone who has been working a gas station job full time through the CARES Act, making less working full time than just the extra federal unemployment benefit. Damn right theyre angry, and it wasn't right to do them dirty like that. A new stimulus bill should make the low wage workers whole!
WTS, their is a limit and the MMT folks seem loonie. Go talk to someone who has been working a gas station job full time through the CARES Act, making less working full time than just the extra federal unemployment benefit. Damn right theyre angry, and it wasn't right to do them dirty like that. A new stimulus bill should make the low wage workers whole!
First things first.
Cut the CFR umbilical cord that has hatched President after President since the middle ages.
Defund the CFR by rejecting every politician who has been known to associate with it.
All I can say about Trump on that score is that he was not accepted by the CFR for believing American Exceptionalism and wanting to make America stronger again. I suppose that globalism could be equated with leveling any inordinately influential national power, but what the CFR doesn't get is the fact that China intends to really take over like America and Britain never could.
The next five years would mean a Chinese millennia of brutal fascism and no human rights, and Biden has been bought off. It would be all green lights for Red China.
We can't let that happen. Whatever Trump's warts, he did not sell us down that river. At least not yet.
And I mean that river like the Congo or some other damn African river where African slavers shipped their captives to sell to the British for export.
Ron didn't like this.
A few years ago, an American citizen of Chinese background, mainland, joined my larger family circle. She was pretty much a loyal supporter of Xi Jin Peng, though an American citizen. Very smart, anti-religious, materialist, indoctrinated.
Our media doesn't do much actual realistic reporting on China.
However, when Xi moved into the old Mao house, I started paying closer attention.
So, don't you think that if you don't like Trumpism it might be worthwhile looking at Xi? What concerns would you think deserve investigation.
Personal consolidation of political power?
A new kind of "dynasty" forming around a strong central persona???
In NK, if you want to go traipsing around in the webz, you can find some good reportage..... family photos on the living room wall showing the family member's pics, with the dictator included in the very center, and larger than life. The comment was there about how the dear leader is actually better than the Christian Jesus because he's "one of us".
Putin is doing the same kind of nation building, including the Russian Orthodox rites in his Sunday schedule.
Xi is issuing books of sayings for people to study like Christian's used to read scripture.
Xi is a racist of the Han dynastic heritage. He believes the Han ethnicity is superior to others across the world. He believes his manner of rule is superior to Western democracy. He is building out China's world role, with educational methods holding Confucian precepts up as cultural superioties.
Xi believed he could buy any American politician the way he bought Bill and Hillary and Biden, but Trump is just a hard *** who won't roll for cheap.
There is nothing in the supposedly superior Chinese Way that restrains strong man autocratic power like our Constitution is supposed to do. There is insufficient internal debate/discussion about problems. There is nothing in the way of imposing harsher restraints on the compliant populace. Nothing that counters just picking up troublemakers or undesirables and hauling them off to the West and working them like slaves, or harvesting their organs for the medical markets.
Tell me how Hitler could have been worse.
Please.
Somebody make the case about Xi being someone who the Dems should associate with and take money from.
Biden richly merits every concern ever expressed here in this forum about the false Trump/Putin collusion. And now the facts are out. We have the handwritten notes of John Brennan briefing Obama on the Hillary plan to work up a case on Trump and Putin, with the Russians smiling on saying it would be great.
Chairman Graham Releases Information from DNI Ratcliffe on FBI’s Handling of Crossfire Hurricane | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today released a...
www.judiciary.senate.gov
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First thing first is not to get back into the car with any drunk driver. Hard pass.
AlaskanAssassin
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Federal debt wasn't a problem in Greece, until it was a problem, and at that point there was no escaping the their crisis. I realize that the US is nothing like Greece, but it at least has to be a consideration that at some point, this will be a crisis here as well. The Fed can't control rates forever. At some point, no one is going to want to buy our bonds at these rates that are lower than inflation (I don't understand how they are selling them now.) If the fed loses control of rates, how are we going to pay interest on $25 Trillion if the only bonds we can issue are at 5%, 10%. We would be spending over a Trill a year on interest alone at 5%. Interest rates returning to historical averages (15%ish) would cause our entire tax revenue to go to paying interest on our debt.
Not sure I understand. Is a trillion dollar annual deficit not too worrisome? I think you are right that if it was a one-off year, our economy could handle it and adjust moving forward. However, we're doing it year after year after year. What politician is going to commit career suicide (for both them and their party) to eliminate the deficit (either through increased taxation or lower spending).
Thanks for your thoughts, btw. I think one of the biggest problems we have is that the average person (meaning most people) don't truly understand the how the Federal Reserve works, MMT, QE, or in general how our government intervenes with the economy and free markets. I wish more people would take the time to try and understand it.