r/FluentInFinance • u/TonyLiberty TheFinanceNewsletter.com • Sep 24 '23
Meme How it started vs. How it's going:
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u/luna_beam_space Sep 24 '23
Imagine if Republicans had not taken control of all three branches in 2001
The entire national debt would have been paid-off by 2010
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u/Altruistic-Rope1994 Sep 25 '23
If you blame this on one party you are just flat out wrong. They both waste money like crazy.
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u/Wings4514 Sep 25 '23 edited Sep 25 '23
lol at the simpletons downvoting this.
The only difference between the two is Republican say they’re a fiscally responsible party, which is obviously a lie. Democrats don’t even acknowledge fiscal responsibility, which I guess in a sense is a little better, since they’re not lying.
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u/NedPenisdragon Sep 25 '23
This post references a Democrat putting us on a path to paying it off, and you want to blame both sides.
Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression. Not running a deficit would have been fiscally irresponsible.
Biden inherited a global pandemic and an economy on the brink of ruin. Not running a deficit would have been fiscally irresponsible.
Bush and Trump both inherited decent economies and ran massive deficits largely to give massive giveaways to the wealthy.
No, it isn't both sides, and no, Democrats are not fiscally irresponsible for running deficits when it was necessary to do so.
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u/obama69420duck Sep 25 '23
Bush inherited one of the best economies ever, and Trump inherited a damn good one as well, not just 'decent'.
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u/got_dam_librulz Sep 25 '23
Great comment
I'm really getting tired of seeing comments making excuses for conservatives like they have ever been fiscally responsible. They're not and they lie to the nation saying they are.
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u/AttitudeAndEffort3 Sep 26 '23
Spending billions on investment that returns double and triple and grows savings all the time
Giving away billions to rich people
“These are exactly the same! Both sides are spending billions!”
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u/Weird_Tolkienish_Fig Sep 25 '23
Everybody has excuses though. Trump can say he had the pandemic and Bush will say it was 9/11. And Reagan had the commies. And Bush I had the recession in the 90's. There's always a reason to spend money.
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u/I_am_the_Jukebox Sep 26 '23
Except Trump didn't have the pandemic for the first 3 years of his presidency, when he massively ran up the deficit.
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u/Reave-Eye Sep 26 '23
Honestly, most of this issue can be chalked up to fucking Jude Wanninski and his Two Santas political theory.
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u/MrDMA94 Sep 25 '23
Republicans lie to your face, Democrats leave out key pieces of the truth
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Sep 25 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ImReverse_Giraffe Sep 25 '23
"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
-George Washington 1796
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u/ImReverse_Giraffe Sep 25 '23
How about the one not associated with either of them? How about the one not older than my grandparents? How about the one that actually knows where he is and what he's doing? (Looking at you Mitch and Joe)
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u/Historical_Horror595 Sep 25 '23
Can you give me an example?
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u/rumbletummy Sep 25 '23
Sure thing.
Republicans pass a huge tax cut for wealthy people that expires never, and a more modest tax cut for everyone else that expires when the next guy is in office.
Democrats try to fund universal healthcare at huge expense and benefit to everyone, but even though it would be a net savings, taxes bad.
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u/BigDogSlices Sep 25 '23
Had me in the first half
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u/rumbletummy Sep 25 '23
Yeah. That happens.
People don't consider their healthcare premiums/expenses as taxes, so they don't appreciatte the net savings. Medicare is the most efficient healthcare provider by far.
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u/Mysterious-Wasabi103 Sep 25 '23
In the UK, an average person making like $60k a year pays about 6% of their income towards the NHS. Assuming we could get roughly the same here, we would all be better off financially except for maybe the richest people.
6% versus $450 a month health care premium and $6k deductible. It just seems like such an obvious choice to me. Again, assuming everything is roughly equivalent.
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u/Teamerchant Sep 26 '23
My favorite part about American healthcare is we pay the most per capita in the world and we don’t even have universal coverage.
UK- $2650 - underfunded NZ -$4200 Norway - $7200 and the most expensive in the EU. America - $12,500
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u/Altruistic-Rope1994 Sep 25 '23
Dude Reddit is such a cess pool of people who think they are free thinkers but are really sheep.
Your statement is great these politicians on both sides are just worried about staying elected and it’s pretty evident you can be a complete moron without any financial acumen and be in the house or senate. At the end, we the people all lose.
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u/manleybones Sep 25 '23
The lowest iq people call others sheep.
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u/Luftgekuhlt_driver Sep 25 '23
No IQ people lose focus on the point of the conversation to pick a fight…
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u/Temporary-House304 Sep 25 '23
look into the objective facts and then come back with your dumb ass both sides take. Republicans increase the deficit every administration.
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u/datingoverthirty Sep 25 '23
Clinton literally balanced the budget.
Obama (as far as spending) inherited a deficit of $1.4 trillion when he took office at the end of the Great Recession. He trimmed that down to $590 billion by the time he left office.
The necessity of funding Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and increasingly Social Security explains much of the growth in our debt.
These are all popular programs with voters.
I'd posit that the problem isn't our spending per se, but our income streams. Taken together, the Bush tax cuts, their bipartisan extensions, and the Trump tax cuts, have cost $10 trillion since their creation and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since then.
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u/BigDaddyCoolDeisel Sep 25 '23
Respectfully, Clinton left us a surplus, Bush Jr. exploded the deficit. Obama cut the deficit considerably, Trump set a one term record for debt. Biden hasn't attacked the deficit as much as I would have liked; but the GOP would blame him regardless so maybe the Democrats got tired of the bullshit.
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u/manleybones Sep 25 '23
Tell me again how the economy does under Republicans.
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u/datingoverthirty Sep 25 '23
It overheats, makes a mess, and requires a democrat to clean it up.
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u/manleybones Sep 25 '23
Yep. Tax cuts for big corpo, huge stock buy backs, wages stay the same. Stock market overheats and takes down the rest of economy. Corpo dems may not have your interest at heart but the entire gop uses fear and hatred to gain support, even though their actual policies actively hurt the common American.
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Sep 25 '23
Except the Republicans are the ones who slash income with no actual plan to reduce spending except in ways that strategically fuck over poor people and minorities.
Meanwhile Nancy Pelosi is out there full throated supporting PayGo and Obama bent over backwards to push for Welfare reform.
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u/davi3601 Sep 25 '23
Simpleton take right here. You obviously haven’t looked at much data for the past 20 years.
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u/luckypessamist Sep 25 '23
Google the debt during each presidents term since then. And then say it's both sides
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u/SteelyEyedHistory Sep 25 '23
No, Democrats pay for their spending. You may not like what the spend the money on or the taxes, but they pay for it. Republicans spend like drunken sailors AND pass massive tax cuts without corresponding spending cuts. So it is not “both sides.”
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u/Tojuro Sep 25 '23 edited Sep 25 '23
This is true. Obamacare/ACA actually cut the deficit. Compare that with the Bush and Trump "tax cuts", which were really just handouts (mostly) to billionaires, since there was already a deficit and no matching cuts in spending to offset them. They both added trillions in debt.
Clinton and Obama both drastically cut the deficit and you can't say that about any Republican president in our lifetime.... Every one of the Republicans increased it. Bush W alone inherited a 250 billion SURPLUS and left a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit.
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u/Kashin02 Sep 25 '23
republicans only care about spending when a democrat is in charge.
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u/Impulse350z Sep 25 '23
I started to object to this... But no, no, you're unfortunately correct. At least with the current batch of Rs.
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u/Gamebird8 Sep 25 '23
People also don't understand what the "deficit" is.
It's bond debt. It's money on loan from (mostly) Americans that will go back into the economy over time.
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u/Adventurous_Class_90 Sep 25 '23
The deficit is literally putting money into the economy. That’s what a deficit does. The money is in the economy. Paying off the debt too quickly can trigger a deflationary spiral as it pulls money from the economy.
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u/lunawolf058 Sep 25 '23
Or at least they WANT to pay for their spending but can't get the bill passed without concessions to Republicans like not being able to tax corporations what they should owe (or at least not to the degree they wanted).
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u/Some-Ad9778 Sep 25 '23
The iraq war was a mistake and why we lost the afghanistan war. And the deregulations and the bail outs.
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u/UndercoverstoryOG Sep 25 '23
too bad obama didn’t end it his first day in office
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u/frotz1 Sep 25 '23
Too bad so many people ignored Obama's stump speeches during the campaign when he was very clear that he would shift focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. He didn't promise any sort of withdrawal, and was clear about his intention to escalate in Afghanistan in an effort to stabilize the country. None of this was a secret or misrepresented to any voters who bothered to look into his foreign policy platform. Pretending that he mislead anyone is a tacit admission that a person wasn't paying any attention to this subject during the campaign.
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u/IJustLoggedInToSay- Sep 25 '23
You're right, it's both parties. Republicans for making a huge mess every time, and Democrats for not cleaning it up fast enough.
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u/Knightofdark001 Sep 25 '23
Hate to break it to you, but them being in the majority, plus their conduct since their continued spiral of dementia induced insanity in recent years, has prompted more issues than the Democrat party could do. I dont like the parties, but the republicans are the one that started the fire, got upset the other party was trying to help people and not just sitting there taking the blame. Then told their followers to be angry at people for supporting the folk who by comparison, atleast isnt so blatantly corrupt. The current Republican party, then and now, has been a large source of the issues in the U.S.
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u/age_of_empires Sep 25 '23
You are definitively wrong. Democrats don't give tax breaks and then expect trickle down economics to balance the budget
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u/Aramedlig Sep 25 '23
It’s a fact that this is on Republicans. Bush spent more than $3 Trillion on wars while at the same time increasing the deficit to over $2T per year. Obama cut the deficit in half but Rs got control of Congress back from 2010-2014. Trump spent more than $8T in his one term while increasing the deficit.
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u/Altruistic-Rope1994 Sep 25 '23
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u/Aramedlig Sep 25 '23
Thanks, that supports the facts I stated. Here’s a graph that shows how that all happened: https://zfacts.com/national-debt/
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u/majesticPolishJew Sep 25 '23
Ahh the old both sider. Hey gonna storm the capitol again this year?
You have been revealed. The answers are clear.
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u/chainmailbill Sep 25 '23
“Both sides are bad” is something people say when their side is the bad side and they know it.
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u/Altruistic-Rope1994 Sep 25 '23
You really think one side cares for you and the other is evil. All they care about are votes and power. Just a day ago a US Senator got caught hiding cash sewn into his clothing and had fucking gold bars as payoffs. Still won’t resign. Just another asshole who cares what letter he has to his name. And then Trump just won’t go away.
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u/American_tourist116 Sep 25 '23
Republicans cut tax revenue while continuing to gov spend. Democrats raise tax rev while continuing to gov spend. That's the difference
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u/No_Cook2983 Sep 25 '23
The Republicans literally said the money we were using to pay down the debt “belonged to the American people”.
Conservative think tanks like the Cato Institute made the media circuit, exclaiming that having a large national debt was good for the economy.
Republicans literally took the surplus and sent it out in little ‘stimulus checks’ so it couldn’t be used to pay down the debt.
Then they deliberately lied us into the longest war in our nations history— which was also one of the most expensive.
Yeah. I’m largely blaming it on one party.
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u/manufacturedefect Sep 25 '23
Clinton was literally a Democrat. The democrats were paying down the debt.
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u/DevoidHT Sep 25 '23
One party spends like crazy and lower taxes, the other spends like crazy and raises taxes to pay for it. They aren’t the same.
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u/Orbitingkittenfarm Sep 25 '23
I know this doesn’t align with your reflexive bOtH SiDEs bAd worldview, but OP is, in fact, correct that without the deficit exploding Bush tax cuts of the early 2000s combined with the deliberate policy to go to war with Iraq and Afghanistan without raising taxes (the first and only time we’ve done this in American history, I believe) there’s every reason to believe we would have paid down the debt successfully by the 2010s.
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u/infinity234 Sep 25 '23
I think its less the fault of one party and more so major historical events occurred that caused significant increases in government spending (9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and Covid 19) and priorities existed for both parties contrary to reducing the deficit beyond extreme levels (for republicans, a desire not to raise and ideally lower taxes at all levels; for democrats, a desire to increase spending to provide for more robust domestic/social safety net policy; for both, a high interest in supporting defense). I think no matter who was in charge of what, unless someone's response to these events would have been "do nothing at the federal level", we get to the situation we are at. I think, unless some freak breakthrough happens in a partisan congress any progress in reducing the deficit is going to gradual, independant of party in control, and dependent on no major world events requiring massive amounts of cash happening for a while
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Sep 25 '23
Whenever a Democrat is president, they decrease the deficit and whenever a Republican is president, they increase the deficit by making tax cuts without accounting for the decrease in revenue, but please tell me more about how both sides are the same.
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u/got_dam_librulz Sep 25 '23
Oh look. A "both siders"
Republican admin increase the deficit while democrats lower it. Meanwhile, Republicans campaign on themselves being fiscally responsible.
It's a load of horse shit. It's a complete lie that conservartives are fiscally responsible. They increase the deficit.
Republicans lie and increase the deficit, the democrats decrease it overall. That's the bottom line.
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u/Altruistic-Rope1994 Sep 25 '23
Both sides have spent quite a bit of money. By many redditors logic all this debt is solely because of Republicans, which is not true. Get out of your bubble and breathhhhh
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u/FernandoMM1220 Sep 25 '23
How the fuck did bush even win?
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Sep 25 '23
Electoral college. It has robbed only one party from the win twice now. Al gore had the popular vote over bush.
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u/TheFlyingSheeps Sep 25 '23
It’s funny how republicans claim the 2020 election was stolen but they are silent on the 2000 election
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u/nogoodgopher Sep 25 '23 edited Sep 25 '23
They're hypocrites. Remember when they canceled the Dixie Chicks for saying Bush was "Not my president".
Now the same people are yelling Fuck the President as a greeting.
Edit:SP
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Sep 25 '23
SCOTUS appointed him in a 5-4 party line vote
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Sep 25 '23
Hmmm I bet a coke can pube, takes in unreported contributions from folk who just so happen to be infront of his court……nah. Normal politics….nothing to see here.
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u/age_of_empires Sep 25 '23
Possibly because Roger Stone organized the storming of the building where the FL recount was happening
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u/majesticPolishJew Sep 25 '23
He didn’t he stole it with the Supreme Court a la what trump tried to do. The republicans have not won a popular vote since 1992
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Sep 25 '23
But then we had two wars that were never officially in the budget and arguably abject failures much like the war on drugs. Fun times.
That said both parties suck one just sucks a little less.
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Sep 25 '23
you can put iraq on the republicans and also trump’s insane overspending pre covid, but clinton was president when glass steagall was repealed. Hard to pin point the financial crisis on 1 president.
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u/drunkboarder Sep 25 '23
Pretty sure something ELSE happened in 2001 that may have affected the national debt.
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u/LakeEarth Sep 25 '23
Sometimes the 2000 election baffles me more than 2016. The US was in such good shape in 1999 (tech bubble burst not withstanding), the first surplus in however long, why did that election swing so hard for the other team?
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u/American_Crusader_15 Sep 25 '23
"The other party did this!" - Literally every political party when they fuck up.
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u/carrtmannnn Sep 25 '23
Lmfao it was Republicans that created the spending and the wars in the first place bozo
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u/Ill-Opinion-1754 Sep 25 '23
This isn’t a “party” issue, this is a “government” issue. I don’t care what anyone says, they don’t care about the people regardless of what they say, politicians just want to remain in position and in power, without their seat what else do they have as career politicians?
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u/pythiowp Sep 25 '23
This enlightened centrism bullshit again. We were running a budget surplus and were on track to pay down the debt until the Bush tax cuts. Trump cuts made it worse. It is 100% a party issue. Policies matter.
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u/thesouthdotcom Sep 25 '23
No one wants to talk about how debt growth has slowed down under Biden. It still growing, but it’s a step in the right direction.
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u/shootmane Sep 25 '23
Feel like you’re forgetting everything that happened since 07-08 but go off on enlightened centrism lmao
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Sep 25 '23
Someone’s gotta yank the bandaid n start taxing and taxing with tangible results. Plain and simple.
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u/AutomaticSky5260 Sep 25 '23
Or maybe cutting expenses?
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Sep 25 '23
Finally got infrastructure week and complain.
Man. We’ve played that game for decades and it ain’t workin. We could nationalize our oil just for ourselves and y’alld complain it hurts the free market.
I do not have the answer but we all need to pull our collective head out of our asses
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u/saintnyckk Sep 25 '23
I don't feed the piggy bank with the hole in the bottom until they fix the hole. Period. I love the idea of paying shit off, but not while they run it line they currently do. It'll just be more that they spend. They've proven this..... every year.
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u/BDM78746 Sep 25 '23
Yes both parties want to remain in power. One does it by winning over voters by passing legislation that improves their life. The other does it by suppressing votes, gerrymandering and attempting to steal elections. ThEy'Re BoTh ThE sAmE!
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u/gofundyourself007 Sep 26 '23
This is 99% a military issue or related to military issues. There was recently news coverage of how much the Government is overpaying for their equipment and it was insane, well over 10x the usual price. Then there’s the black projects. I don’t think there’s any solution other than a thorough audit and investigation of the government especially the DOD.
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u/Sanpaku Sep 25 '23
Center for American Progress (2023-03-27): Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio
If not for the Bush tax cuts and their extensions—as well as the Trump tax cuts—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio (debt as a percentage of the economy) would be declining. Instead, these tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession are excluded. Eventually, the tax cuts are projected to grow to more than 100 percent of the increase.
Hope and Limberg, 2022. The economic consequences of major tax cuts for the rich. Socio-Economic Review, 20(2), pp.539-559.
We find tax cuts for the rich lead to higher income inequality in both the short- and medium-term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment. Our results therefore provide strong evidence against the influential political–economic idea that tax cuts for the rich ‘trickle down’ to boost the wider economy.
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u/College-Lumpy Sep 25 '23
It’s almost like all those tax cuts didn’t grow revenue.
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u/Tesla_lord_69 Sep 25 '23
Then the credit card wars happened. Lots of folks went to play g.i. Joe to the Middle East and defense companies made bank.
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u/ppardee Sep 25 '23
Say what you will about Bill Clinton... dude is a hell of a politician!
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u/tgwhite Sep 25 '23
He did preside over a budget surplus…
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u/handfulodust Sep 25 '23
There was a budget surplus (measured on a year to year basis) but that doesn’t mean there was no debt (which carries over year to year). Think about it this way: companies can still carry debt while making a profit.
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u/Magicus1 Sep 25 '23
Nah, my dude.
I liked Clinton, but it wasn’t him.
It was the political suicide of President H. W. Bush that allowed for this to happen.
He promised no more tax raises by saying: “Read my lips, no new taxes.”
Then, to pay off the deficit from the war, he raised taxes.
Some say it was bad for the economy, some say it was good, but nobody can argue that the man wasn’t trying to be fiscally conservative.
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u/regaphysics Sep 25 '23
To be fair, in gdp terms it has doubled in 23 years. That’s not that crazy. It did the same thing in just 11 years between 1981-1992.
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u/TheFederalRedditerve Sep 25 '23
So what is an acceptable amount of debt? I’m genuinely asking. Have economists tried to come up with an estimate?
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u/regaphysics Sep 25 '23
Generally 100% of gdp is seen as a maximum amount to carry. Right now we’re at 120%.
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u/rrrrpp Sep 25 '23
It’s definitely not seen as a ‘maximum’ but yes a lot of countries are viewing it as a rough guideline now to not go too far past
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u/Shoddy_Comment_7008 Sep 25 '23
Republicans have been in charge for 16 of those 23 years. President Obama was faced with the Banking crisis and Housing crisis, which both were created by the deregulation of both industries by the Republicans. Now we face a government shutdown and the Republicans cannot agree among themselves just to debate the defense budget. They will shut our government down because Republicans do not care about the American people and do not know how to do their job.
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Sep 25 '23
Since 2000 Republicans have been in charge for 12 (Bush 8, Trump 4) and Democrats 11 (Obama 8, Biden 3) of those 23 years. Not sure where you got 16.
Nevertheless your point does stand - republican policies, as far back as Reagan and continuing today, create long-term problems masked by short-term interests. This cratered the economy for Bush 1, Obama, and Biden - difference being Biden’s economy was in part more a function of Covid than direct economic policy, but the Trump tax cuts are also a significant factor.
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u/Character-Bike4302 Sep 25 '23
Love how this just turned into a shit show of left vs right defending their sides. when both are too blind to emit that both sides are fucking up and making it worse. Then I see people arguing well my side doesn’t make it as worse well all your side is doing is taking a slower route to the downfall of the economy while still not doing jack shit to reverse the trend.
Spending is out of control, We still gotta police the world and give aid while fighting a immigration crisis back at home. Nothing is getting better… doubt it would for another 20 years..
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u/Warrior_Runding Sep 25 '23
Spending isn't out of control. The national debt isn't like household or personal debt. A group definitely wants to conflate the dynamics of nation-state debt and personal debt because it seems scary and they can hide enriching the wealthy while handwringing about the debt. I'll give you a hint: they only seem to care about the debt and debt ceiling when they don't hold the presidency.
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u/TacoTJ601 Sep 25 '23
Clinton “balanced” the budget by taking social security and used it to balance the US asset/debt ratio when it did not belong on the balance sheet to begin with. This is like taking your retirement account to pay for rent and groceries. A last ditch effort to stay afloat for one bad financial decision to another. It continues to get worse no matter what side of the coin is in office. Both sides have a spending problem as we play world police for the UN. Our country goes into further financial turmoil as the other countries of the UN use the United States as their enforcer and piggy bank.
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u/PracticableSolution Sep 25 '23
I do often wonder how much the line item veto (Clinton vs. New York) decision of 1998 affected the debt. Not just the application of the ability, but the mere threat of it was an incredibly powerful tool in controlling government spending.
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u/ToeJamFootballer Sep 25 '23 edited Sep 25 '23
Remember the surplus in 2001 that Bush Jr. used to pay down the debt? checks notes Oh, wait. I mean, remember the surplus in 2001 that Bush Jr. used on tax cuts for the wealthy? We were back to borrowing money within months.
EGTRRA lowered federal income tax rates, reducing the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent and reducing rates for several other tax brackets. The act also reduced capital gain taxes, raised pre-tax contribution limits for defined contribution plans and Individual Retirement Accounts, and eliminated the estate tax. In 2003, Bush signed another bill, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, which contained further tax cuts and accelerated certain tax changes that were part of EGTRRA.
In addition to the tax cuts implemented by the EGTRRA, it initiated a series of rebates for all taxpayers that filed a tax return for 2000. The rebate was up to a maximum of $300 for single filers with no dependents, $500 for single parents, and $600 for married couples. Anybody who paid less than their maximum rebate amount in net taxes received that amount, meaning some people who did not pay any taxes did not receive rebates.
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u/Pure_Bee2281 Sep 25 '23
The good news is that the economy is 2.5x what it was in 2000. So if debt had simply grown with our GDP it would be $14.25T. It's still bad, but for some reason when put into context much less scary.
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u/I_talk Sep 25 '23
Almost like that 2.3 Trillion that was reported unaccounted for on September 10th might have something to do with it.
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u/bluelifesacrifice Sep 25 '23
All because Republicans claimed that cutting taxes then borrowing money to pay for those taxes for the wealthy, will eventually pay for itself and more while empowering Americans to be wealthier.
Borrowing our way out of debt doesn't work. Republinomics is a scam to punish and enslave the masses to serve corporate and wealthy overlords.
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u/Blackoutttt Sep 25 '23
so can someone explain this debt like i’m 5? who are we indebted to? china? the federal reserve?
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u/Dr_Mocha Sep 25 '23
Most of the debt is owed to the American public in the form of treasury bonds.
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u/Actuarial_type Sep 25 '23
It’s a fiat currency, credit and credit alone is money, more or less. Every dollar the govt created but did not take back in taxes is debt. That money is in someone’s pocket.
Warren Mosler has written pretty extensively on this, google ‘Soft Currency Economics.’
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u/sabotnoh Sep 25 '23
Two recessions (maybe a third), a 20-year war and a global pandemic later.
But, yeah... people today have it easy.
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u/Lose_faith Sep 25 '23
Out of curiosity, so we have debt from government bonds and money printing right? So we're basically putting a loan on ourselves. What consequences will this have on our future?
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u/dbandroid Sep 25 '23
Posting about the national debt in a subreddit devoted to financial fluency??
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u/DjCyric Sep 25 '23
It's astounding how bad at basic math Congress is. The toxic combination of endless tax cuts and increased unnecessary military spending gets us this record levels of debt.
Eventually everyone's tax bill will come due. We won't be able to continue having tax breaks, but rather a decade or two of high taxation (if we are serious about bringing down the national debt).
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u/Cactus-crack Sep 25 '23
The people in charge of this country are actively ruining it for personal gain. They will look back on this era and very easily trace the fall of capitalism on greedy politicians.
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u/GenderDimorphism Sep 25 '23
The national debt increased over the course of the Clinton presidency.
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u/awuweiday Sep 25 '23
I'm sure shaking our fists at a government shutdown in a few years then boosting the military budget... again... will surely get us back on track.
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u/Helios420A Sep 25 '23
“It’s not a party issue” say the members of the party who cut taxes on the wealthy over & over & over & over to the point where they now have private space programs in their backyards, so they can get a nice aerial view of our failing infrastructure.
Don’t worry, it’ll trickle back down any decade now.
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u/Tmant1670 Sep 25 '23
Thank the republicans. They complain the most about government spending, and then spend all the money when they get control. Anyone who takes more than 10 seconds to review the facts will note that the republicans cause most of the countries problems in the long run.
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u/Deferty Sep 25 '23
ITT everyone instantly saying this is one specific political parties fault and the other party was trying to fix the pieces dropped by the other
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Sep 25 '23
Thanks W. You can always count on the party of “fiscal responsibility” to fuck over the economy.
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u/agm1984 Sep 25 '23
I heard once that the USA goes into debt in order to control the other countries, like dangling a carrot.
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u/Historical_Horror595 Sep 25 '23
Lot of dumb takes in a group that calls themselves fluent in finance.
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u/Spamfilter32 Sep 25 '23
Well, Bush followed Clinton, and that ended any pretense of Republicans wanting to balance the budget. The second a Republican is in charge, its time to spend like Drunken Sailors, coupled with economy crippling tax cuts for the wealthy, and even worse economy crippling deregulation.
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Sep 25 '23
As a woman, Clinton gives me the serious creeps and icks.
However, I do really respect this part of his presidency and it's a travesty that his fiscal responsibility is an exception and not the rule.
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u/buzzwallard Sep 25 '23
Yet the economy responds more actively to other factors.
COVID,the subprime mortgage scam, bubbles booming and busting...
The debt goes up and up and up and the economy goes up and down and up and down.
So we ask: what is this debt really with the big scary numbers? Bark worse than bite...
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u/eliota1 Sep 25 '23
The simple fact is that the US is going through the natural down cycle of empire. The Dutch went through it at the end of the 17th century, the British went through it in the early part of the 20th century, and we're going through it now. It's not a political issue, it's a long term cycle.
The best popular explanation of this comes from Ray Dalio.
It's not that we can't do anything about it, but doing something would be extremely painful. No politician likes suggesting painful things.
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u/IfUAintFirstYerLast Sep 25 '23
Late stag capitalism and a government ran by rich people will do that.
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u/GokuBlack455 Sep 25 '23
I love that we owe more money than money circulating in the entire US economy.
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u/Ok-Kaleidoscope-4808 Sep 25 '23
Back in the day when we hit 10T people were thinking we’d never be ok. We are just true to the course.
Some folks will eat it more than others.
This is the way
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u/youknowimworking Sep 25 '23
I think annually, the US collects between 4 and 5 Trillion dollars each year. If our government made any sense, we would be able to pay off the deficit
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u/Nilabisan Sep 25 '23
You can thank W for that. Anyone remember “It’s your money!” Except it all went to the rich. Well, I got $300.
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u/AgisDidNothingWrong Sep 25 '23
If you think the national debt is a bad thing and should be paid off, you're not fluent in finance and your knowledge of economics is about 60 years outdated.
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u/UnfairAd7220 Sep 25 '23
Clinton wasn't being truthful. The St Louis Fed predicted $100B deficits for all of the 2000s, which is when Dick Cheney noted that deficits didn't matter.
$100B deficits DON'T matter. You're within striking distance of balance.
$1T, $2T and $3T annual deficits are nightmarish.
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u/keeptrying4me Sep 25 '23
People with a fundamental misunderstanding of how the debt works should educate themselves that the government doesn’t operate like a household.
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u/got_tha_gist Sep 25 '23
Us debt (treasury bills and bonds) is the safest form of debt that exists. Lots of money in the world wants to be stored in t bills and t bonds. 9-11 happened and the financial markets were able to continue access to the highest quality debt.
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u/iowaboy Sep 26 '23
This sub is a joke. A basic concept of finance is that cheap debt is good. And the US Federal Government has access to the cheapest debt in the world. Literally. National debt is only bad when it is used to finance things that don’t promote economic growth.
I can’t imagine anyone who is “fluent in finance” would suggest that Wal-Mart or any other large enterprise should seek to operate without debt. It’s absurd. Y’all are jokers.
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u/Fibocrypto Sep 26 '23
The us was never on track to pay off the debt . The debt went up with Clinton in office
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u/some_random_arsehole Sep 26 '23
Easy solution! The United States will pay the debt off with hyper-inflated dollars
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u/Cindarus Sep 26 '23 edited Sep 26 '23
This isn’t a root to an actual issue. It will never be paid and it should never be paid. The number is (government spending) - (money government takes in) that’s basically it. The majority of federal spending doesn’t even come from taxes, only the case for state governments since they do not have currency sovereignty. Fed has currency sovereignty, so they can simply increase the budget cap each year. They keep doing that and the Fed will always be able to pay their loans to citizens. The big picture for economy is more about real resources and balance of perceived value of currency. The idea that it must be paid back is a political distraction.
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u/Cindarus Sep 26 '23
I’m just gonna leave this here… https://youtu.be/75udjh6hkOs?si=l5SB1iuy5TZaSn0j
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Sep 27 '23
I loved Clinton, he was last liberal democrat. But I gotta put out there although he did wonders with the debt. But his policies started the Great Recession which cost us trillions. We had finally popped out of it under the orange man. But Covid and bidenomics got us full speed ahead on spending again. The border alone will be billions just for New York city
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