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U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues

#41

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

0xy wrote: post #27
jghn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct yet also obscures an important point. The popular narrative is that one party is the party of fiscal responsibility and the other is fiscally wasteful. But the data don't really bear that out, and it's arguable that the opposite may be true. I'd contend that yes they both need to be incentivized as such, but also a necessary but not sufficient step is to halt the narrative that one party is the one wh…

The spending floodgate cannot be turned off or reduced, only directed towards the current admin's pet projects and away from the previous admin's pet projects. This is true for both parties.

The “spending floodgates” have not materially changed direction in any of the last four administrations. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, debt service and the military. Besides those five factors everything else is only a quarter of national spending and I think you will find if you look that those other categories don’t move around from admin to admin as much as you might think either.

Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues

#42

Post by _djo_ »

rhelz wrote: post #29
pstuart wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loathed the actions of DOGE but believe that "government efficiency" (yeah, lily oxymoronic) should be baked into everything the government does, most importantly, even the programs that one supports. That has been one of many failures of the Dems to both pursue and socialize.

The federal government is actually quite efficient in what it does. For example, the overhead for Social Security is between 0.5% and 1%. I.E, less than the mutual funds in my 401k charge per yeah for "administrative fees." When people talk about government waste, what they really are talking about is things the government does which they don't approve of. E.g. ICE--is that wasteful spending? Depends upon whether you…

Correct. It's also often forgotten how much the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) had done to make government more streamlined and efficient between 1993 and 1998. That took care of pretty much all the low-hanging fruit that those behind DOGE falsely believed was still there.

Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues

#43

Post by mikestew »

solid_fuel wrote: post #39
bamboozled wrote: post #37

This admin has done basically the opposite of everything it said it would do…who could’ve guessed?

What? Basically everything they’ve done was laid out in project 2025. The people who voted for this were warned about exactly what has happened.

"Why u surprised, bro? Project 2025, duh!" meme needs to die, it's a lazy answer. You know full well what OP is talking about. Where's the $2 gasoline? Why does the debt keep going up with the party of fiscal restraint in charge? No more foreign wars, eh? Etc. There's nothing wrong with reminding folks what was said on the campaign stump.

Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues

#44

Post by rhelz »

rvz wrote: post #9
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New representation will get voted in because of the current macro, will have to raise taxes to pay down the debt to prevent an eventual debt spiral, the electorate will be angry they don't have cake (unless the taxes are applied disproportionally to the top income and wealth percentiles), and we'll be right back to irresponsible policy. I don't have much hope for the US, but at least the bond market are the adults in…

> New representation will get voted in because of the current macro, will have to raise taxes to pay down the debt to prevent an eventual debt spiral That debt is never getting paid, I'm afraid.

I'm old enough to remember when people said that the debt Ronald Reagan racked up would never be repaid. Which means I also am old enough to remember Clinton turning record deficits into record surpluses.

I remember when the U.S. Treasury stopped issuing 30 year bonds---no deficit, no need to borrow!! Boy did that scare the bejezuz out of the financial industry though. I read an op-ed in the Wall Street journal about how are we ever going to offer 30 year mortgages if the banks can't buy 30 year treasury bonds?

Then the supreme court handed the 2000 election to George Bush, and the financial industry was happy again, because record surpluses turned into record deficits again. The banks still lent money to homebuyers--in fact, so many people took out mortgages that.....

The answer is so simple, everybody know it: spend less than you earn, borrow only for things which will pay you back. We can start doing that this afternoon, if we wanted to.

Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues

#45

Post by CursedSilicon »

mikestew wrote: post #43
solid_fuel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Basically everything they’ve done was laid out in project 2025. The people who voted for this were warned about exactly what has happened.

"Why u surprised, bro? Project 2025, duh!" meme needs to die, it's a lazy answer. You know full well what OP is talking about. Where's the $2 gasoline? Why does the debt keep going up with the party of fiscal restraint in charge? No more foreign wars, eh? Etc. There's nothing wrong with reminding folks what was said on the campaign stump.

Why remind people of the lies? We all knew they were lies. And the people who believed the lies will not have their minds changed

There's a 30% bedrock of America that appears to be simply broken beyond repair. That's his permanent voting and approval base

Re: U.S. Debt Hits $40T as America's Borrowing Binge Continues

#49

Post by solid_fuel »

mikestew wrote: post #43
solid_fuel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Basically everything they’ve done was laid out in project 2025. The people who voted for this were warned about exactly what has happened.

"Why u surprised, bro? Project 2025, duh!" meme needs to die, it's a lazy answer. You know full well what OP is talking about. Where's the $2 gasoline? Why does the debt keep going up with the party of fiscal restraint in charge? No more foreign wars, eh? Etc. There's nothing wrong with reminding folks what was said on the campaign stump.

No, I disagree. The reason I bring up project 2025 is because we knew this would happen. The actions this administration is taking are exactly what people who were paying attention said they would do.

Why does this matter? Because anyone claiming "this isn't what I voted for" is lying. They weren't tricked, they weren't deceived by his alluring words, they made a choice knowing what the consequences would be. And now that the consequences are here, they want to cry and pretend like they didn't know. Like a child touching a hot stove.

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