My apologies, You are correct, I looked at the actual debt amount before I even had my coffee after getting out of bed. But you are still looking at it wrong.. Debt is created when expenses out weight income. Paying out 255 Trillion at first looks like a huge expense and you are assuming would translate to debt, while ignoring what it would do to the income side of the equation, as well as, what expenses it would replace, not add too.
How would it not add to the public debt? Where does this mystical $255T come from if not the Treasury Dept's printing presses? If you're suggesting this $255T would eliminate all other federal expenditures that aren't military or mandatory spending, that's a reduction of maybe $3T spending at best? How is it even considered "income" if the government is magically giving its residents the equivalent of 12 years of GDP, an amount of debt that functionally could never be repaid?
That estimate seems optimistic.
Where did I say it would eliminate all other federal expenditures? IT would eliminate most of them however, as most of them are tied to social programs and such. But that is not what I said at all. Go read what I said again.. and realize you can't take today's numbers and apply any of them to the outcome of what they would be if you did what Sportage suggested. The whole equation, every aspect of it, would be completely different, not just at the federal level, but state and local levels as well. That 255T would become a vast part of the GDP going forward. As I said, it looks like a huge expense that is being assumed it would translate to Debt, which would only be true for a short amount of time, as the return on such "investment" in it's citizens would be astronomical.
I agree, I have been saying all along that Manchin never intended to vote for BBB or the Voting Right Act. Just check out the timeline. Every time Manchin has some complaint about it the Democrats work out a deal to give him what he wants and he then has some new problem. He is not negotiating in good faith, he is burning out the clock. He knows that the Democrats, and Biden in specific, badly want a unified Democratic party, but he has no interest in that, he just wants to dangle that carrot in front of them while the clock runs out.
Yep, should have roasted that piece of shit over a spit the first time he started playing this game, make him unelectable. They'd be in the same spot wrt forward progress but at least nobody would say their house wasn't in order.
The first sign this was a hare-brained idea is that it was proposed by sportage. The second sign should have been when you said $255T is just 1% of the national public debt, but that was due to a lack of coffee. The irony is that in your first reply, you explained reasons why giving each American adult $1M is a terrible fucking idea because most would spend it inefficiently.
It's great that you ignored my apology about it being 1% of the national debt. The fact that you ignored that apology and chose to try and weaponize what I said, and throw it in my face shows what kind of person you are, and that you have no desire to even try to think past your own short slightness. Then go on to keep saying the same shit over and over trying to use the same equations and same numbers of today, thinking NOTHING would change. You think everyone would quit their jobs.. so their current income without the 1 Million would completely disappear, you think nobody would invest any of it, spend any of it, and it wouldn't generate any income taxes, that a million dollars to every adult wouldn't generate tax revenue outside of income, you think it would have zero effect on GDP, you think it would simply disappear in to thin air and have zero effect going forward on anything other than the debt side of things, and not generate income that would give it a return.. You have no clue what kind of return investing in people would actually bring.. This country and many of it's big businesses is built on doing just that. IN the end, you are just stuck in the "moment" and can't fathom that a net loss at the start would become a net positive in the years going forward. It's no different than investing in a business, that pays for itself after the initial investment.
You wish we would play politics.
And yet, when a vote regarding Pentagon spending comes up, somehow our fearless leaders can come together around the campfire and agree to terms with hardly a whiff of pushback.
I used to get pissed about this stuff too, but then I realized that a huge portion of our economy depends on that military spending. Before we can cut it too deeply we need to make sure we are sending that spending somewhere else that will make up the difference.And yet, when a vote regarding Pentagon spending comes up, somehow our fearless leaders can come together around the campfire and agree to terms with hardly a whiff of pushback.
7 Democrats, 3 Republicans oppose.Senate Passes $768 Billion Defense Bill, Sending It to Biden (Published 2021)
Lawmakers in both parties linked arms in an overwhelming vote authorizing an increase in the Pentagon’s budget of roughly $24 billion more than President Biden requested.www.nytimes.com
They only fuck around with policies that actually help people. Help themselves or kill people in other countries? Signed on the dotted line. Fuck this 'rock and a hard place' business, they are the rock and the hard place.
That is the easy part. Take half that money and aim it at something else. Here are just a few ideas. They are just off the top of my head.
Sure it's easy to come up with 1000 different ways to spend that money more effectively. The hard part is getting those policies past Republican obstruction.
Of course. You were saying that you can't just cut military spending because so much of our economy depends on it. I was just pointing out that it only depends on it because that is where we spend that money. Move that money elsewhere and our economy will quickly adapt. If we have done anything successful in building a capitalistic society it is that our economy is quick to adapt to a change in where the money is flowing.
Nah, I didn't say that. I said before we can cut it we need to make sure we're sending it somewhere more effective.
A huge portion of our economy depends on the health and well-being of its citizens as well. My issue isn't bipartisan support for military spending, it's this fucking shitshow every time anyone wants to actually help people.
I don't see why we should think that covid has had it's run. We're stepping into year three of a two week lockdown to "flatten the curve". We've trashed the economy, we've run up an astonishing debt, we're looking at long term inflation, we've developed a vaccine that doesn't work very well. It seems to me that the rona is here to stay. That sucks a lot, but it's just another of those grim, meat hook reality's we have to learn to live with.
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