More great news.
The national debt continues to rise
- Thread starter bamacpa
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HELLO AGAIN, Guest! We are back, live! We're still doing some troubleshooting and maintenance to fix a few remaining issues but everything looks stable now (except front page which we're working on over next day or two) Thanks for your patience and support! MUCH appreciated! --Brett (BamaNation) if you see any problems - please post them in the Troubleshooting board!
Yep, we allowed grift to become the norm in our federal politics and now we're here.
Look at it this way, this will surely stop Trump's march to authoritarianism because there will be nom money to pay the soldiers, or the cops, or the judges.
Running out of money almost never stopped an authoritarian. They just print more money, since they run the printing presses. Everyone else loses their savings due to inflation, they simply hold onto power and print more money.
That will be true. He never had to worry about our justice system, or Congress's doing their due diligence.
Hopefully, one day we will again realize that there are two parts to the problem, the spending side AND the revenue side. You want a spending bill, fine, how will we pay for it? If you cant answer the 2nd part, shut up!
I dont remain very hopefull until it all crashes down.
I dont remain very hopefull until it all crashes down.
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No one wants to remember the good old days of post WWII American glory featured marginal income tax rates of 80-90% on the highest brackets.
yeah, i don't think that is quite what folks have in mind when they talk about being "great again"
It’s amazing how “fiscal responsibility” only ever seems to apply to programs that help people, not to tax cuts, wars, or corporate subsidies. Everyone talks tough about spending, but the revenue side is political kryptonite because the donor class doesn’t want to hear about higher taxes, even when history shows they worked.
Post-WWII America built highways, schools, and a middle class with tax rates that would make today’s politicians faint. That wasn’t bloated government; it was investment that paid off for decades. The GI Bill, the FHA, and the interstate system were funded by asking those who’d done best to chip in more.
Nobody’s saying we need 90% rates again, but pretending tax cuts and deregulation alone create prosperity is how we ended up with record deficits, crumbling infrastructure, and billionaires hoarding wealth while everyone else just treads water. Until we take both sides of the equation seriously — what we spend and how we pay for it — we’re not fixing anything, just delaying the collapse.
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government aid/money/etc going to the wrong people drives a lot of it
Until Social Security and Medicare get fixed, the debt will continue to rise. Budget cuts and layoffs of personnel might play well on TV, but don't even scratch the surface.
Conceptually, both SSI and Medicare / Medicaid are pretty easily fixable. For both, life expectancies are significantly longer than the actuarial assumptions underlying the payouts. Additionally, revenues (i.e., payroll withholdings) are insufficient.
So I've posted proposed details several times, but any plan that will fix the problems involves phasing in a delay in the age for benefits and an immediate increase in payments into the plans.
The solution also involves returning to the original Obamacare plan -- everybody must have health insurance. Could be through an employer. Could be an individual plan. Could be through the Obamacare plan. But one way or another everybody must have it.
After a sputtering start, it was actually working until a Republican Congress removed the universal mandate. That gave healthy young people a huge incentive to drop it altogether. Which is exactly what they did. No health insurance plan ever devised works when you're effectively insuring only less-healthy and/or old people.
We actually addressed Social Security in the 80s, and it worked until people kept on living longer.
Since then, both parties have had periods of time where they controlled both the White House and Congress. But they both sat on their hands. We simply don't have the political will to do any of that now and have a Congress of noodle-spines. And it applies to both parties.
Numbers is numbers, guys, and everybody will have to be part of the solution....it will not be painless for anybody.
Would you rather go back to shorter life expectancies?
Conceptually, both SSI and Medicare / Medicaid are pretty easily fixable. For both, life expectancies are significantly longer than the actuarial assumptions underlying the payouts. Additionally, revenues (i.e., payroll withholdings) are insufficient.
So I've posted proposed details several times, but any plan that will fix the problems involves phasing in a delay in the age for benefits and an immediate increase in payments into the plans.
The solution also involves returning to the original Obamacare plan -- everybody must have health insurance. Could be through an employer. Could be an individual plan. Could be through the Obamacare plan. But one way or another everybody must have it.
After a sputtering start, it was actually working until a Republican Congress removed the universal mandate. That gave healthy young people a huge incentive to drop it altogether. Which is exactly what they did. No health insurance plan ever devised works when you're effectively insuring only less-healthy and/or old people.
We actually addressed Social Security in the 80s, and it worked until people kept on living longer.
Since then, both parties have had periods of time where they controlled both the White House and Congress. But they both sat on their hands. We simply don't have the political will to do any of that now and have a Congress of noodle-spines. And it applies to both parties.
Numbers is numbers, guys, and everybody will have to be part of the solution....it will not be painless for anybody.
Would you rather go back to shorter life expectancies?
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I've pointed this out before, but I find this an interesting data point.
The top marginal tax rate in US history was 100%. On incomes above $25,000. FDR did this by executive order in 1942.
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