We already had a song in the 80’s in which the singer sings: “And about America, that country isn’t real” Grew up laughing about that, but now I have to agree with him.
Where did all the money the regime made from all the tariffs go?
Glad to hear that spending was an investment… In corporate welfare
Party of fiscal responsibility. I swear, Democrats just suck at messaging as they have so much ammunition on why Republicans are incompetent child raping asshats, yet they never go there.
I am no strategist but it feels like if the Dems bought billboards and ad time across the country with some basic messages, data on simple charts, etc, we could be running the show for good. There’s just so many opportunities. Abortion is up after Roe is overturned. Turns out we were right, and we weren’t a cabal of satanic baby killers. Debt is way up. Republicans always crash the economy, as a graph of unemployment over the last 30 years shows. Sexual abuse and corruption run rampant among conservatives. Etc. But none of this gets hammered on.
Because their handlers don’t want this.
Because they’re complicit. They can’t challenge the system because it works for them. Which is why the most progressive legislation is always proposed right after Republicans take control of either chamber.
The Democrats don’t want change, they want things to stay the way they are, or at least, only move to the right a little bit.
It doesn’t matter that one party is objectively worse than the other. That we have actual ghouls and goblins in charge of the government, because the other half of the government kinda wants them to be there. So they can point across the aisle and say “man don’t those guys suck? Shame there’s nothing to be done about it…”
This 👆🏻The Democratic Party is neoliberal and pro-business. It usually aligns itself with the interests of corporate America, many of whom actually support what the Trump administration is doing atm.
Besides, many individual senators personally profit from Trump’s lowering of taxes, removal of legislation and manipulation of the stock market.
Not to put the blame on anyone, but Americans look to me like an a-political people. There is no large, organized opposition movement against the Trump administration. Moderate Americans are stuck thinking the political fight is something they can outsource to the Democratic Party.
Well, Trump DID say before his first term he’s a businessman and will run this place like a business… Unfortunately, for everyone here, he’s run all other businesses into the ground, so I guess this is no different, besides there’s no bankruptcy for a country. He can just keep going more negative.
Trump doesn’t care about businesses. He cares about himself. It doesn’t matter if his business goes under as long as he comes out ahead. Trump is tanking the US but he’s made billions in office. He’s fine with that.
It’s equivalent to $5400 per year per capita.
But the way things are going, it’s going to get worse. No fiscal responsibility by the Republicans, and increasing interest rates, and most likely declining economy will for sure make this worse.
If (when) the AI bubble burst, it could be as bad as 1929.Let’s not forget when they get control of the Fed and just start printing. Printer go BRRRRRRRRRRR
Hyperinflation here I come.
I did this points up
- trump
We’re fucked because the only solution is raise taxes and/or cut spending, and neither are politically feasible.
We could try printing our way out of it, but people will swear up and down that would cause runaway inflation. Maybe it would, but it’s always made we wonder. I mean, I’m not talking about printing money and sending everyone in America a check. I’m talking about printing money and using it to pay bond holders. Obviously not all at once, not all bonds come due at the same time. And, in theory, wouldn’t that cause bond yields to go down? If treasuries were essentially guaranteed investments (and weren’t they kind of seen that way for a very long time, up until recently?), yields would drop and the cost of borrowing for the Federal government would go down. Right? In theory, anyway. I’m sure I’m missing something, so please someone enlighten me.
Austerity, here we come!
And what do we have to show for it?
- social services cut
- environmental protections rolled back
- parks decimated
- pointless wars
Oh but we’ve funded a massive browncoat legion, slush funds for insurrections and a destroyed historical east wing.
Seriously, I could see if we were in debt due to rapid expansion or infrastructure upgrades, but this level of spending is unprecedented and we have absolutely nothing of value to show for it.
It does feel like flushing money down the toilet, doesn’t it? Then again, I’m not a Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security recipient, nor am I a member of the armed forces. They might disagree.
But why shouldn’t I want to get something for my money? If I pay Medicare taxes, why shouldn’t I get Medicare benefits, for instance?
Trump, is that you?
Jokes aside, this is a bad idea.We could try printing our way out of it, but people will swear up and down that would cause runaway inflation
That’s exactly what would happen. With more dollars on the market chasing the same amount of goods (e.g. oil) the price of everything denominated in dollars would shoot through the roof. As a simplified example, imagine I have a barrel of oil and someone offers me $50 for it. That’s pretty good and I might be inclined to accept. But, with the money printer going BRRR, someone else has a lot of cash to splash around and offers me $100 for that barrel. Well great, that $50 bid can go get fucked. But they really want my barrel, and the money printer go BRRR so now they have $150 to offer me. And this cycle keeps going, so long as the money printer is BRRing along. Eventually though, I get smart and realize that, no matter how many dollars I get for my barrel of oil, the value of those dollars is going to collapse faster than I can spend them. So I finally get smart and tell both bidders to put their dollars somewhere else and demand that I get paid in a more stable store of wealth (e.g. gold or a more stable currency).
And, in theory, wouldn’t that cause bond yields to go down?
Maybe for a very short period, but it would reverse very, very quickly. If investors want to make money (wealth really). If they start to realize that US Treasury yields either not making as much money or losing money due to the devaluation of the US Dollar, they are going to demand higher yields. This is why countries which are suffering crises have to pay much higher borrowing costs. The US has been a special snowflake here, specifically because the US Dollar is seen as exceptionally stable and the US economy is seen as a safe place to put money. If we go stupid and start heading the hyperinflation route, that will all collapse. Read up on the Turkish Economic Crisis for something.
If treasuries were essentially guaranteed investments (and weren’t they kind of seen that way for a very long time, up until recently?), yields would drop and the cost of borrowing for the Federal government would go down.
That is why US borrowing costs are currently so low and one of the reasons the US can run these sorts of deficits and not have investors fleeing for other countries. Despite Trump’s flailing about, the US Dollar is still seen as a safe investment. It’s relatively stable, easily convertible and easily transferable. Plus, it’s used to buy oil. Inflating the fuck out of it would not help any of these perceptions and may make some nations with lots of oil consider requiring other forms of currency. You want to see a major economic catastrophe in the US? Convince the world to stop trading oil in US Dollars. Granted, as the largest single producer of oil and natural gas, the US has a lot of pull against that. So maybe, the US Dollar would survive the Middle East de-Dollarizing. But, it’s not a gamble I would want to make for anything other than really, really, really good reasons.
With more dollars on the market chasing the same amount of goods (e.g. oil) the price of everything denominated in dollars would shoot through the roof.
Yeah, but that’s what I’ve never quite understood: how would it put more dollars on the market than there was always going to be anyway? I mean, the idea was always to pay back these bond holders. Weren’t the dollars that will be needed to pay back bond holders going to have to be created at some point regardless?
The total Federal debt is $39 trillion, but there’s only something like $20 trillion actually in existence, if I’m not mistaken. Even if we collected every single existing dollar out there through taxes, we’d still have a shortfall of almost $20 trillion.
how would it put more dollars on the market than there was always going to be anyway?
Specifically printing money (as you proposed, or more realistically, the Fed giving more money to the US Treasury) means increasing the Dollar supply. Something kinda like that happens all the time and, in a much more controlled fashion, and is probably a net good. But, the Fed could just add $39 Trillion to the US Treasury’s bank account, it’s just a database update command anyway, and that would increase the Dollar supply by $39 Trillion. Sure, no actual bills would be created, that isn’t really important. At the scale those investments operate at, no one is handling cash, it’s just numbers in a database. But, it’s numbers in a database which are very carefully tracked and those numbers mean something to people. If I move $100 from the database at my bank to the database at your bank, you will have the ability to obtain more goods and services based on those database transactions. The whole thing is absolutely a house of cards, but it’s a house of cards that most people trust because if anyone fucks with that house of cards the US Government will show up and start shooting them. People also trust it because the US Government (US Fed, really. But that’s a whole different can of worms) is very careful about how it grows the money supply.
If the US Fed started just adding large amounts of money to the US Treasury’s account, people would notice and people would freak out.
The total Federal debt is $39 trillion, but there’s only something like $20 trillion actually in existence, if I’m not mistaken. Even if we collected every single existing dollar out there through taxes, we’d still have a shortfall of almost $20 trillion.
Wikipedia puts the number in actual bills and coins around $2T. But ya, the number of physical Dollars is dwarfed by the US debt. And no one cares. Most money exists as numbers in databases. But, those digital Dollars are every bit as real as the physical ones in the sense that they can be used to obtain goods and services.
I’m talking about printing money and using it to pay bond holders.
I think that would do even more to devalue the dollar and inflate things than just cutting checks to households would, if only because bond holders are the types to watch everything the government does and try to get a step or two ahead with their trades and stuff. They’d see that and react like the CNBC hosts did when the GameStop guy said he was gonna buy eBay by just issuing a bunch of new stock.
raise taxes and/or cut spending, and neither are politically feasible.
See, Democrats should call for a wealth tariff. Republicans hate taxes but love(?) tariffs apparently.
On the taxes front, idk Trump enacted Tariffs which is based seemed to love and that are literally a tax increase.
Maybe this is actually a way a same administration could raise taxes without actually raising taxes? Like yea it’s regressive and the wrong approach, but it is possible to do.
They’re going to print more money anyway, they don’t care.
Why should this administration be able to control fiscal matters?
Their boss can’t even control fecal matter.Oh well! What’s another trillion???
You know what they say about budget - billion here, billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money!
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