Alan Greenspan has died

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #74

enragedcacti wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - stopping fraud / - addressing wasteful and ineffective programs Good to know that this will be an evergreen argument despite an extremely well-supported project to do just that taking place in the last two years with nothing to show for itself other than hundreds of thousands of deaths.

>> stopping fraud / - addressing wasteful and ineffective programs > Good to know that this will be an evergreen argument despite an extremely well-supported project to do just that taking place in the last two years with nothing to show for itself other than hundreds of thousands of deaths. Not to mention the most prominent example of this this year sidestepped the Congressional stomach completely. An order of magni…

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

anthonypasq wrote: post #91

enragedcacti wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - stopping fraud / - addressing wasteful and ineffective programs Good to know that this will be an evergreen argument despite an extremely well-supported project to do just that taking place in the last two years with nothing to show for itself other than hundreds of thousands of deaths.

> despite an extremely well-supported project to do just that a weird extremely small executive branch task force with pretty much zero power is not what i would call a well supported project in the context of the trying to reduce spending in the american government. Congress controls the purse, doge had nothing to do with congress.

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:55 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #124

toomuchtodo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction accepted. Eight failed audits. Would love to see the will to fix this specific item, but am not confident it exists. We spent hundreds of billions on war with Iran before we forgave student loan debt and instituted Medicare for All, for example. The evidence is clear these are active choices we can make. We actively choose the bad financial policy choices through governance outcomes. The only branch of gov…

The Iran War spending is staggering but still not enough to cover Medicare for All, even for a single year. Maybe the ENTIRE defense budget would cover it.

Post by throw0101d » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

4er_transform wrote: post #98

throw0101d wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am aware of today's inequality (e.g., I read Piketty back when he was making a splash). But the critique is that Greenspan argued gold standard = less inequality and that fails on the historical record. If we want to talk about the causes of the 'New Gilded Age' that's something else. As a general starting point I'd begin with: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan…

Gold Standard is probably a force that acts against inequality but the forces pushing inequality today are just much stronger. Technology that creates winner take all markets and incredible leverage with few people being one.

Post by brightball » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #28

brightball wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

39 trillion in debt with no Congressional stomach for... - spending cuts - stopping fraud - figuring out how the net worth of people in Congress increases from hundreds of thousands of dollars to 10s or 100s of millions of dollars - addressing wasteful and ineffective programs Given those issues, the only solution will be inflation. The circling the drain moment will hit with the associated welfare programs get a dir…

Also please add as an option: raise taxes on the wealthy individuals and corporations back. https://inequality.org/article/11-charts-tax-wealthy-corpora... This is really ambiguous: "- stopping fraud" And can mean many things. On the right, it often means Somali daycares, on the left it means the underfunding of the IRS so that it doesn't do audits of rich people. I find this to be mostly a distraction: "- figuring o…