#Politics From #WaPo: U.S. payments on debt interest increased to $659 billion this year.
"Within three years, if interest rates remain elevated, payments on the debt could become the second-largest federal program — behind only Social Security, which provides pensions for tens of millions of seniors, analysts say."
@WordsmithFL Or we could tax billionaires.
@MidnightRider Yeppers ... I worked for a few years as a budget analyst for a city in California. It's not that hard to figure out. Expenditures can't exceed revenues.
As far as I know, every state, county and city in the U.S. by law is required to have a balanced operating budget. Only the U.S. can go into debt, because it has to be the bank of last resort in case of emergency (war, recession, etc.).
Dick Cheney's "deficits don't matter" philosophy wrecked the federal budget process.
@WordsmithFL The rates on the wealthy were eye watering when FDR was president. Somehow, they managed to build iconic empires with what was left. The same sum the GOP tricks their members into thinking is a very small meager net earning.
@MidnightRider This is a type of societal Darwinism that began with Reagan. Rich people are successful, therefore they deserve to be rewarded by being even richer.
@WordsmithFL Or worse: If you don't make them richer they won't create jobs.
@WordsmithFL @MidnightRider
YYYYUP!
Goldwater, Nixon and others were the progenitors, but ol' Ronnie "I'm A SHIT Actor" Reagan pulled the cultural, legal, and economic trigger...
@WordsmithFL @MidnightRider It's like they don't realize (or don't care) that is inherently a feedback loop which - if taken to its logical extreme - would only end once *literally all wealth* was in the hands of a single individual.
Which means nobody else gets any food or water.
Which means everyone else dies.
Of course, in reality people would (hopefully) revolt and kill the greedy, defective maniac(s) trying to starve us all out long before it got that bad, but still.
@WordsmithFL @MidnightRider That's why AI, autonomous weapons, and bioweapons scare the shit out of me... not just because of what militaries will do with them, but because of what the rich may do with them.
Automate away all jobs, then unleash autonomous genocide-bots (or chemical/bioweapons they have a cure/antidote for) on the rest of society to kill us all so they can take everything for themselves.
Or worse... there are fates worse than death I could see elites wanting to inflict on us.
@IrelandTorin @WordsmithFL We all wish we could get at the "master panel" and throw some switches, change the trajectory of a flawed humanity. I believe AI might take over, period, it won't care about wealth. Hopefully I'll be pushing up daisies by then.
@IrelandTorin The reason for our constitutional republic is that the framers understood the need for the masses to have a means of participating in their government. Our system may be messy, but in general it works.
When people feel powerless, it becomes violent. The 1960s ghetto riots and campus demonstrations are two examples. #Trump tapped into the racists and uneducated to create his thug army.
Another revolution will happen if the Republicans impoverish us all.
@WordsmithFL But it's making a lot of rich people richer, right?
This is actually going to drive inflation instead of decreasing it.
#Politics from #WaPo:
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Bobby Kogan, an analyst at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank, has found that the Bush and Trump tax cuts and their bipartisan subsequent extensions have added $10 trillion to the national debt so far. Republicans have blamed higher spending under Biden, including the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed by Democrats in 2021.