Garrett
@garrett
It’s going to be very difficult to get the U.S. Debt under control without making voters angry The options are some mix of: - higher taxes - cutting defense - cutting social security - cutting Medicare - cutting Medicaid Doing nothing will result inflation eventually which could be very painful for everyone
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Nounish Prof ⌐◧-◧🎩
@nounishprof
you forgot time travel — go back to 1999 when we had a surplus and just don’t do this. Fire up the delorean! This is why I have respect for Rep Massey even though I disagree with him on pretty much everything else lol but I appreciate him standing firm on this particular issue. DOGE had potential here but instead it just shifted funds — no major fraud, waste or abuse really found or gotten rid of. It was just shifted to military contacts elsewhere cuz we really needed $400 million for Tesla trucks. If we refuse to deal with military spending, there’s no way forward. And here’s the other big problem: old people don’t care — they’re gonna be dead soon. So does a 70+ yr old congressperson/president really care about the Debt? Nope. That’s someone else’s problem. We needed age & term limits decades ago. On social security—the problem was the govt borrowing from it. Yes we should raise the age but you can’t cut it. It’s not the government’s money. this all makes me so 😡
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Garrett
@garrett
1999 was kinda the perfect storm that helped create a surplus. Not sure that's really replicable but would be nice! Agree that military spending is a big elephant in the room here. Kinda interesting to see the price of defense falling with cheaper drones/technology (See Ukraine's recent attack on Russia) Old people just kick the can so yeah we definitely need age and term limits but tricky when you need the people who benefit from the lack of these limits to vote for them and pass them
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Nounish Prof ⌐◧-◧🎩
@nounishprof
Not really a perfect storm but a deliberate approach to 1) cutting spending and waste which VP Gore worked on first researching then targeting cuts (unlike DOGE which felt haphazard) and 2) removed prior tax cuts And military spending is a grift. Full stop. But I agree there’s no way to get back there because of the compounding effect over time.
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