We know how to reduce the deficit: raise taxes on the rich. It's not rocket appliances. It's just a complete non-starter given the current GOP. The people screaming the loudest about the deficit are the same people preventing any real steps to fix it.
You and I both know that if we raise more money, we will spend more money. There is no situation when the U.S. makes more money without immediately increasing spending
Wait, I don't believe that at all, for the following reasons:
1. The opposite hasn't been true. We have seen two dramatic tax cuts in recent history which absolutely did not lead to reduced spending.
2. The majority of federal spending is for healthcare or social security. Spending in these areas is somewhat hard to change, even with the political will. It's certainly damn near impossible to decrease such spending; it would immediately cause massive hardship for the most vulnerable people in our society (and probably riots riots).
3. The U.S. has run a surplus before and somehow didn't immediately bet it all on the ponies.
Perhaps our modern politics are so dysfunctional that there is no way out.
I'm curious how/why you think that? Tax rates were, quite "famously" much higher in the past. Comically so.
Even at a "personal debt" level, the main way out of debt is to make more money. Always has been. "Saving your way" out is a pipe dream that mostly doesn't happen. Especially as people have been coerced into paying so many private companies for things.
Sure. The U.S. could run a surplus like it did under Clinton. Surplus & time -> debt paid off.
But the only way we know to get back to those days involves raising taxes on the rich. The people ranting and raving about the debt would never agree to raising taxes, so the deficit hawks will continue blowing up the deficit until things fall apart completely.
The last few times this particular form of terrorism has been tried, it has achieved little. If the people threatening us had won major victories then maybe the strategy would make a sick kind of sense. Instead they won token policy concessions at best. Causing real harm to the people whose vote you need in exchange for make-believe gains is not generally a good strategy.
But there are actually people deluded enough to say Biden was responsible for the most recent hostage-taking, so hell if know what's going on. Maybe the GOP could actually blow up the US economy without consequences.
>Ratings Downgrade: The rating downgrade of the United States reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance relative to 'AA' and 'AAA' rated peers over the last two decades that has manifested in repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions.
Maybe Coinbase won't just waltz off with their depositor's money, but their business model appears to be illegal from top to bottom. The SEC alleges that basically everything they are doing is illegal. Even if the SEC is wrong, Coinbase's practice of operating as broker, exchange, and clearing agent is a massive conflict of interest.
In the U.S., most rights are not explicitly enumerated. People are assumed to have all conceivable rights, and the restrictions must be explicitly enumerated. There is no law against lying in general.
There is, however, an explicitly enumerated right to freedom of speech. There are only a handful of recognized categories of non-protected speech. Lying isn't one of them.
You are well outside mainstream economics. The existence of market failures is only disputed by a tiny minority of economists. You can disagree with the consensus of experts, of course, but it's ridiculous to claim they don't have the "proper education".
I don't think you even realize that your beliefs are fringe.
In American law, the right to speak is assumed. It is the lack of a right to speech that is the exception. There are only a handful of categories of unprotected speech, which can be easily enumerated, and lies aren't one of them.
Fraud, defamation, perjury, and obstruction of justice are illegal. That's a much narrower restriction than a ban on lies.
