2009

And money spent servicing the debt is money not put to other productive endeavors.

Just because economic theory doesn’t dictate federal debt is the be all end all, doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. You have to consider the opportunity cost and reasons for said debt. Also it is preferable to run a surplus in good years and deficit in bad. When the economy tanks running a deficit to stimulate demand and buoy people and industries can have positive effects. And having a deficit to foster better long term benefit is fine.

But running a surplus during good years isn’t a bad thing.

2010

Which is what made Trump going full Oprah for the wealthy during this period of economic growth so frustrating to me. I’m fully on board with the federal government taking on debt during downturns in order to mitigate a recession and get the economy moving again, but that’s with the understanding that when economic times are good, we’ll pull back. Instead, Trump blew a hole in the budget in a time when we should be getting positioned better to handle the oncoming recession.

But of course, it’ll be unemployment and other social benefits that get eyed by Republicans when it does hit. I’m sure it’s all a feature and not a bug for the party, but Trump is literally too stupid to understand any of this.

2011

Come on there is basically zero evidence that the balanced budget contributed to mild recession we had in 2001. I’d argue that excess of the dot com era in 1999, who have been worse if we had been running a large budget deficit. Government taxes and moderately high interest rates sucked up some of the silly money from the pets.com of the era.

On the other hand, I can point to dozens of countries were running large and persistent deficit spending lead to a collapse of the countries economy. Nobody really knows what the upper limit of safe deficit spending is. Certainly 2-3% of GDP seem sustainable. 4% deficit to GDP on top of a debt to GDP ratio over 1 is at least flashing yellow and even more troubling with a full employment economy.

2012

They’ve been wanting to starve the beast for decades, of course… the end goal is an economic system that resembles pre-1929 America. At this point it’s some kind of a tug of war between the sheer political popularity of social safety net programs and the GOP’s endless bag of tricks to pull wool over eyes etc.

2013

Agreed. Curtailing debt service and managing inflation are legitimate reasons to run a surplus. There are legitimate political and policy reasons as well.

I just think that running a surplus merely to pay down the debt is a bad thing. The federal economic policy apparatus is not like a household budget. We should be managing taxation and spending according to desired policy outcomes, not accounting ones. The Fed is responsible for managing inflation and employment and bends its decisions to those ends. Congress should likewise be creating budgets according to desired policy outcomes, including economic ones. For instance, Obama’s slow drawing down of the deficit as employment slowly returned was the right way to manage inflation in that situation. Balancing the budget shouldn’t be seen as a goal, rather as a possible outcome of policy choices made for other reasons.

2014

I think the next step will be indentureship. I searched qt3 to see if mentioned and it was, by um… me, 3 times. 12 years ago heh. blimey.

image
image.png952×583 81.6 KB

2015

I dunno about you guys, but I want a DENTURED servant. It would be too creepy to have one of those guys with no teeth.

2016

I mean, if they are in-dentured, wouldn’t that mean that they would have dentured? The were in-dentures as it were?

2017

I would prefer denatured servants.

2018

When the average value of unskilled labor is less than the insurance cost of healthcare, we’ll kind of be in the same situation as the early middle-ages, where the poor will have to sell themselves into serfdom in exchange for security.

2019

Won’t work as the serfs will all be robots by then.

2020

So a future of workhouses, bonded labour or slavery will be pointless as those type of low skill repetitive work will be done by robots.

So that leaves what role in our brave new world for the working class… protein supplements for the servant class? and i guess some kind of scavenger class living in the walls and sewers and out in The Great Trump Radwastes.

2021

And anything that can’t be done by robots will be offshored to a place where people will work for almost nothing because the cost of living there is so low.

2022
2023

The nearly hour-and-half-long video refers to Democrats as “dark and evil” and features a bevy of American and European far-right, anti-Muslim white nationalists who make a correlation between gang rapes, Islam, and immigration. The documentary also features members of the Proud Boys, a hate group designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, that often aligns with white nationalists and are known for being misogynists and anti-Muslim. The Proud Boys participated in the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in mid-October several members of the Proud Boys were arrested in New York City after a violent street confrontation with anti-fascists.

2024
2025

That’s right, make fun of the poor guy’s accent.

2026

Jesus Christ.

It’s like someone stuck a finger in his ass as he was saying it.

2027

He’s the first…object…that ever pronounced that right. Just leave Lou Uumellmahaye alone.

2028

Agree. Just a reminder that we never paid back the then-massive debt from WW2, and now it’s just a rounding error. Governments that control their own currency and can borrow in that currency at favorable rates should absolutely run moderate deficits almost constantly, and should be prepared to borrow big in order to spend money during periods of economic downturn.