As I navigate through an existence riddled with unceasing horrors, each moment a reflection of life’s harsh trials, my inner strength shines through. This journey, fraught with relentless challenges, becomes a testament to my enduring spirit, unwavering in the face of adversity.
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I take a look at my life and realize there’s nothin’ left
‘Cause I’ve been blastin’ and laughin’ so long that
Even my momma thinks that my mind is gone
But I ain’t never crossed a man that didn’t deserve it
Me be treated like a punk, you know that’s unheard of
You better watch how ya talkin’ and where you walkin’
Or you and your homies might be lined in chalk
I really hate to trip, but I gotta loc
As they croak, I see myself in the pistol smoke, fool
I’m the kinda G the little homies wanna be like
On my knees in the night, sayin’ prayers in the streetlight
We could easily pay the debt down by taxing millionaires/billionaires appropriately. Or, since it’s totally fine for a country to run a deficit, invest it back in to infrastructure and climate reinforcement.
Other than all the proof from places that have tried pilot programs that it actually improves productivity, and the fact that government spending only increases inflation if they’re, you know, making inflation with a money printer.
Anything else you feel like being wrong about today?
Government debt is not the same as individual or corporate debt. Most of the US’s debt comes in the form of issuing Treasury Bonds, and most of the debt is owed to the American people. The US also controls its own money supply in which that debt is denominated.
Also, spending is only part of why debt goes up. A huge portion of the US debt has been created through tax cuts, e.g. the $1.5 trillion Ryan-Trump tax cut for high earners early in Trump’s presidency
Who cares if most of it is owned to rich Americans. If anything it is all worse because you are creating a totally non-thinking investment, an easy way for the rich to keep their money instead of them trying stuff like starting new ventures. Ever heard of the crowding out effect?
Yes the US controls its own money supply in very vague sense of the word “control”. If the fed tried printing it’s way out of debt inflation would cause collapse.
You really like the black and white arguments, don’t you?
Controlling a source of money doesn’t mean the only option is to print so much of it that inflation eats the whole economy.
Let me ask you this: if the US is so bad at managing the debt it owes to its people, how come we have functioned as an economy under that debt for the last several decades?
And you really like downplaying how shit things are.
Let me ask you this: if the US is so bad at managing the debt it owes to its people, how come we have functioned as an economy under that debt for the last several decades?
Let me ask you this: if smoking or being overweight is so bad for your health how come people can do it/be for several decades?
Got it? No? Alright let me break it down. Most of the debt we have was built up starting from 2001. A combination of two wars, tax cuts, defunding the IRS, and bailouts. So it isn’t several decades it’s 2.5. Now in that time period there have been 3 government shutdowns or 1 per 7 years. The current debt to collections ratio is second highest of a nation in the world and every other (ok not Japan) government hovering around that ratio owes money to the IMF which is another way of saying it is easy to erase.
The types of debt the US carries is far from simple with 10s of millions of individual creditors. And unlike Japan the high debts were accumulated in infrastructure, it was not for war or to give the wealthy a tax break. If the Japanese default they will still have their highways, if we default we still can take comfort in turning Iraq into a smouldering pile of rubble.
Our debt is huge, new, complex, and we have nothing to show for it. As long as it remains it grows faster than tax revenues grow to service it. Which means our government runs less efficiently. This is real dollars and cents. Projects don’t happen, food stamps don’t go out, roads don’t get repaired and all the while more and more money is transferred via income taxes to people who are already wealthy enough to buy our debt. Meanwhile the typical ways of getting out of debt remain out of reach. We can’t print money without inflation, we can’t get it forgiven because we don’t have one single major creditor, we can’t raise taxes because that would be unpopular, and we can’t cut anything without sending chaos out there.
But I forgot, since we aren’t immediately in risk of dying we have no risk of it. Have you considered a career in insurance?
^ did not read past the question. Guarantee it’s alarmist garbage about how we’re definitely going to die because of some imaginary numbers were living fine with.
Hey man, get off your high horse a little and I might start taking you seriously.
The US is already in $36 Trillion dollars of dept.
People have said, “the U.S. is already ___ dollars of debt” my entire 46 years as if that means something. What does it mean? Sometimes the economy goes up, sometimes the economy goes down. Debt keeps going up. It doesn’t seem to be changing anything.
I seem to recall in an interview that the writer who included him knew he wasn’t actually a bad guy, but he had bad memories fighting him in the game when he was younger. At least he’s being a nice guy in the movie despite being in the bad guy group.
Until everyone is also driving the 6,000 lb death machine. Now you need to get the 9,000 lb death machine to compensate and thus the cycle restarts until everyone commutes to work in literal tanks because “it’s safer”.
Statistically, you absolutely are. There’s good data to back it up: even when looking at the same vehicle category, the risk of death is smaller in a bigger vehicle.
Which is of course exactly what you’d expect. It’s basic physics after all. And there’s simply more metal between you and the thing that you hit / hits you.
Still, the inverse also applies: driving a larger vehicle is more dangerous for everyone else on the road, so drivers should be extra careful. Everyone wants to get home safe.
Hey, that’s not fair to drug dealers. I’ve heard many kind stories about dealers helping people. If something happens to their customers then they can’t buy anymore. If something happens to Reddit mods, they just replace them.
It’s funny how people don’t realize this is the actual solution and are downvoting. In reality lowering taxes for everyone achieves the exact same thing. Yet people would rather have a set of money each month given to them, despite the incredible bureaucracy that it requires, with it probably eating up 30% of the funds then.
How does this work for the disabled, the partially disabled, those who can barely get by on low income etc? Honestly we’d be better off with universal healthcare and removing employers from the health insurance system. They often pay tens of thousands of dollars in premiums, and the employees still have to pay premiums often.
That would give companies way more freedom to hire, less incentive to force near full-time part time jobs, and would allow people the freedom to move from job to job without any effect on medical services. The companies may very well not pay more. Plus the government would have the buying power to essentially price fix most medication and care.
Edit, addition:
This will never work though because of profit incentives. If I’m CEO of a fortune 500 I’m going to do absolutely whatever it takes to be profitable, and more profitable each quarter. Literally the legal obligation of a publicly traded company. It’s a fiduciary duty under law. When most of the investment is top 0.1% plus other publicly traded corporations and private equity firms the people will never benefit proportionally. Even well of working class tech workers making bank, really aren’t when you look at how little they actually have of the overall pie. If taxes go down for me, yeah I’d have more money to spend, so everyone has more money to spend, but 30% of crumbs are still crumbs, plus we lose a bunch of social services and things like Medicare and Medicaid which are already essentially damage control. Fundamentally, the incentives determine the outcomes. Capitalism, especially or current chrony implementation, is fundamentally tied to incentives that benefit wealth accumulation at the top.
Maybe… Do both? Lower the taxes and give stipends for the disabled and those who can barely hold their income? So those same people can buy things cheaper?
Let’s just have 0% taxes! Then everyone will be rich!
No one’s road will get paved and their house fires won’t get put out, but lowering taxes is the solution, so eliminating them altogether must be the ultimate way to lift everyone out of poverty!
No it’s not, the money you have monthly might be the same for a lot. But there’s a big differences psychologically and socially, that you don’t have to work just to survive. I can quit my job without having to fear how I’ll survive. I can decide to get further education without having to think about how I’ll do that financially (at least in Europe). Etc.
It’s very big difference compared to just lowering taxes (granted we’re not talking about negative income tax which may indeed result in the same thing as UBI).
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