DISASTER DELAYED: The End of Civilization On Hold

[benji]

So unless something changes in the next 72 hours then the United States, and the rest of you losers, get to have some real fun in about three and a half days.

to living within our means!





Anybody care?

[el badman]

I'm guessing a "compromise" will be found by tomorrow. What a fucking masquerade though, it's crazy to reach this point where a 15 trillion dollar debt still needs to be increased for the sake of...well, every living being apparently.

[benji]

I love it. The Democrats are apparently filibustering their own bill now: http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/ins ... debt-bill/

And this debt ceiling increase is really nothing. Every single plan that has been suggested, "Cap, Cut and Balance", Obama Administrations, Paul Ryan's all demand future debt increases. It's mostly because of Medicare. It's a $100 trillion liability that simply cannot be paid for. I think Rand Paul's might be the only one that actually does prevent future debt and it comes close.

I have to switch into a full Democrat lulz fest here because they've had Congress since 2006 and never increased the ceiling (even though that fucker Bush signed every one he got sent AND IT WAS FUCKING OBVIOUS THIS WAS COMING, I MEAN JESUS CHRIST YOU HAD A SUPER MAJORITY) and didn't pass a budget last year! There's no actual budget!

Got about a $1.5 trillion deficit forever. Not even talking about debt, DEFICIT! Putting upper income tax rates back to 1993-2001 levels gets you $70 billion. Raising income taxes slightly on the middle class and 50% on the lowest taxable class only gets you $270 million. Confiscating all the wealth of the upper brackets only gets you $1.2 trillion ONCE.

Not really seeing the institution of massive tax increases on the poor and middle class like the regressive tax system of Europe to pay for the "Great Society" as a winning political ploy however.

Oh, this is so much fun. A compromise is going to just ruin everything.

Can't wait for the ceiling to be hit and instead of being rational and paying interest, Social Security, Medicare, veterans and the troops (which can be done within the window) they'll instead cut all of those to pay the worthless bureaucracy. Just like when the states and local government cut parks, education and police first.

HARUMPH HARUMPH HARUMPH!

[NovU]

Here is a noob question as I don't hold much expertise in American politics but...

Why can't Obama borrow some money just like Replicans did in the past. I hear Reagan did it as well as Bush several times, like 18 and 7 respectively. if there were as much debt then as now, why should any plan change now to make things worse? Just avoid the frigging default as you can. Could Republicans possibly be playing a stupid game? They can borrow money for their goals(were they ever successful?) but this president can't?

If you guys go default, we probably are the country that will be most affected. F U guys.

[The X]

Just cut spending. Don't live on borrowed money. I see that your army wastes a lot of money each year. Easy savings there.

[rise]

Why can't Obama borrow some money just like Replicans did in the past. I hear Reagan did it as well as Bush several times, like 18 and 7 respectively. if there were as much debt then as now, why should any plan change now to make things worse? Just avoid the frigging default as you can. Could Republicans possibly be playing a stupid game? They can borrow money for their goals(were they ever successful?) but this president can't?

Because the Republicans are being total douchebags and since there is a Republican majority in Congress, nothing Obama and other Democrats want is getting passed. The Republicans have only one goal right now, and that is making sure that Obama fails everything he attempts for the rest of his presidency. It's absolute bullshit that the Republicans are willing to fuck the country in the ass, just so they can say that Obama is a crappy president. I just can't believe Obama didn't pass a whole bunch of stuff when there WAS a Democrat majority in Congress.

Just cut spending. Don't live on borrowed money. I see that your army wastes a lot of money each year. Easy savings there.

I totally agree.

[benji]

Because the Republicans are being total douchebags

lol, they're being great and not caving for once. If they cave and let the debt ceiling increase as the Democrats and their leadership wants, THEN they're total douchebags.

and since there is a Republican majority in Congress

No, there isn't.

I just can't believe Obama didn't pass a whole bunch of stuff when there WAS a Democrat majority in Congress.

Because he's not a dictator and there are these things called elections. The Democrats didn't pass a budget last year because they didn't want to get hit on it during an election season. Same reason they're demanding an debt ceiling increase past November 2012. Same reason they didn't pass any debt ceiling increases since taking power in 2007.

Just cut spending. Don't live on borrowed money. I see that your army wastes a lot of money each year. Easy savings there.

You could cut defense 75% like I want, hell, you can eliminate the entire Defense Department and you still have a fiscal trainwreck on your hands because of Medicare and the rest of the government. Like 45 of the states are also insolvent and they don't even have military budgets to cut!

Why can't Obama borrow some money just like Replicans did in the past. I hear Reagan did it as well as Bush several times, like 18 and 7 respectively. if there were as much debt then as now, why should any plan change now to make things worse? Just avoid the frigging default as you can. Could Republicans possibly be playing a stupid game? They can borrow money for their goals(were they ever successful?) but this president can't?

Because borrowing money is the entire fucking problem! Who gives a shit if the Republicans were assholes who raised the debt ceiling out of fear of old people in the past? The Democrats instituted the Ponzi Scheme of Social Security and the demographic disaster of Medicare in the first place. And that fucking scumbag rascist tyrant Wilson, the worst American in history, is the one who started this whole mess with the Federal Reserve. All of the political system is to blame, ESPECIALLY THE VOTERS.

You can't avoid the "default" by raising the debt ceiling, you're just compounding the problem EVEN MORE! The entire thing is unsustainable, you can confiscate the wealth of the entire country AND Europe and you still have a massive debt problem.

And you can't cut spending because then you'll be voted out of office in favor of someone who promises he can kick the can down the road longer!

Thank the "Greatest Generation" for this. And Wilson. Always thank Wilson for everything bad that happens.

Don't forget all of the voters. 70 million of the assholes voted for Obama. And another 60 million assholes voted for McCain. Then last year another 80 million assholes voted for Republicans and Democrats who weren't Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Justin Amash or similar.

[Phil89]

Apple now has more cash to spend than the United States government.

[benji]

Wow, that article is completely wrong. Not a single thing said in the first two paragraphs are true. It's comparing all of Apple's assets to a SINGLE DAY of the government. I doubt the government ever keeps large amounts of cash on hand, it's all other transactions to and fro various accounts.

[shadowgrin]

You mean you don't have gold reserves???

[benji]

All the gold in the world wouldn't pay for half the current debt and that's assuming you could get the current price for it while dumping all the gold into the market instantly. The U.S. reserves probably wouldn't even pay for the deficit.

[Patr1ck]

So, who are we in debt to again?

[benji]

For 75 years we wrote a bunch of IOU's made out to ourselves and stuck them in a drawer. Some we sold to other people.

[Patr1ck]

How am I going to pay myself back if I borrowed it on interest? I'll have to bankrupt other countries or declare bankruptcy to myself.

[Phil89]

So, who are we in debt to again?

Saw this on another forum. http://innovation.cq.com/media/debt_components/

[The X]

No easy way out of it. I guess they need to tax more & spend less.

[benji]

Not going to happen. For one, you can't tax your way out of it, the current debt is almost 150% the size of the entire private sector. The required future debt is larger than the entire world economy. And B, you can't ever cut spending ever because someone wants that "free" money.

The tax increases needed to eliminate the outstanding debt would require like 70% of income for the lowest third, 85% of income for the middle third and 100% of income for the top third. Also, you'd have to tax all the benefits the other taxes are paying for at the same rates. Good luck with that.

[The X]

Aren't there states like Florida where no personal income taxes are payable? Although I'm assuming if this is the case they slug you with lots of sales & other indirect taxes.

What's average tax rates over there? Here most people pay around 30% tax. Australia is highly taxed for personal income taxes since you effectively pay 46.5 cents in every dollar you earn over $180,000. Naturally most in business (medicos & personal services income exempted) just cap their income at about $80,000 (threshold for 30 cent tax bracket) & then have their "bucket" companies pay the balance of profit at 30% & then take it out as fully franked dividends later.

I know over here benefits are too high for unemployed. Not much incentive for them to get into workforce.

Anyways, not saying that you can suddenly pay off all the debt by any measure, but you guys really need to cut that deficit down considerably. You're going to be running a deficit, but doesn't need to be that bad. Only two ways to really do it, increase taxes (income tax, sales tax, stamp duty, land tax, payroll tax - hate the premise of the last one especially though) & decrease spending.

[benji]

Yes, there are states that have no income taxes. But that's irrelevant to the federal issue. No-income tax states benefit the feds since state income tax is deductible from federal taxes. (One reason I've for example advocated Michigan raising exempt taxes like income over raising the others because it keeps more money in the state rather than sending it to D.C. and hoping we get it back. This isn't popular though, even among the Democrats I spend all my life with because they don't understand any of this and nobody dares explain it to them.) Most states live on sales and property taxes.

Tax rates are basically irrelevant here, because we're the worlds dominant currency we've simply borrowed and borrowed and borrowed and borrowed and so on. There isn't the private sector money (despite being the largest private sector economy in the world) to pay for it. We have the largest government in the world, and even per capita we have one of the five largest governments in the top 30 economies.

We can't pay off the debt, we can't not run a deficit, we can't increase taxes and we can't decrease spending. It's an absolute structural flaw.

I wasn't exaggerating. Raising taxes like I said above will just end the deficits for a short period, it won't pay down the debt. We have to confiscate Europe and Aussieland and Japan and so on. We require over 1200 times the size of the current private sector to pay for the outstanding obligations to everyone alive today. And that's taking every single dollar of the private sector.

Actually, I should explain it this way for everyone and especially you since you know accounting.

Not a single plan proposed will reduce the debt. All of them. Every single one. Including the one being fought over current are mere promises to "reduce the deficit" over TEN YEARS which is completely meaningless since a prior Congress cannot bind another. And all the CUTS are actually REDUCTIONS IN THE RATE OF INCREASE.

The plan that apparently is going to pass now sadly allows for $2.5 trillion in debt increase, with $1 trillion in lowering the rate of growth in spending (NOT ACTUAL SPENDING!), with another $1.5 trillion that a commission may evaluate and will never be voted on.

Terrible, but I guess it won't require Obama to declare a dictatorship, as so many "sensible" commentators have wanted, in order to further destroy the rule of law.

[shadowgrin]

The US should just nuke itself, that way the entire country gets a fresh start. And many people will get to live out their post-apocalyptic dream life!

[benji]

At least now we know who the Bioware Viral Marketer is!

[The X]

Amazing that there is no possible way of getting back the budget to surplus in a few years time so that debt can very slowly start to be repaid.

When was last time the country was in budget surplus for a year? Before 9/11?

I know over here we haven't been in surplus since Labor (our version of Democrats) got in. Will be happy to see Coalition (our version of Republicans) get back in so we can get back to surplus & stop wasting money. Despite all the resource wealth, we still are racking up debt. Although nothing in the hemisphere of you guys. We're going relative gangbusters compared to States & Europe thanks to China. But we're in a two-speed economy (the mining side which is propping up the rest of it).

[Phil89]

http://www.usdebtclock.org/index.html

[benji]

When was last time the country was in budget surplus for a year? Before 9/11?

1956 and 1957. 1921-1930 also saw debt decreases every single year.

Largest drop was 1832-1835 when outstanding debt dropped from $39 million to $33,000.

Ending a perilous stalemate, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders announced a historic agreement Sunday night on emergency legislation

Congressional sources familiar with the outlines of the deal say it would cut the deficit by about $2.8 trillion and raise the debt limit by a similar amount. The deal includes $1.2 trillion in spending cuts up front and creates a select bicameral committee to find another $1.6 trillion in savings later in the 112th Congress.

[The X]

Ridiculous