American Fiscal Policy
- Thread starter fonzob1
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I went with "Neither is more likely than the other." Which party is more likely to reduce the public debt is not at all the same question as which party is more fiscally responsible.
Because the longer you allow an 18+ trillion dollar debt to accumulate the harder it will be to reduce it later, and experiencing a Soviet-style financial collapse of the U.S. one day would be pretty miserable. And, there is no way that we're borrowing enough trillions with a negative interest rate right now to completely negate our positive interest owed. There has got to be a cap on how much we are able to borrow with a negative interest rate.
That is an interesting point. That was the scenario we had when we created a surplus during the Clinton administration. Congress does have the final say in how much money we spend. However, that was a different Republican congress, and I don't think we have seen one like it since.
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I'll just state it plain and simple since RobMax doesn't seem to get through:
A long term bond with an interest rate that's significantly below the inflation and growth rate is basically free money.
The money the government gets now is worth more than the money the government will eventually have to repay.
A long term bond with an interest rate that's significantly below the inflation and growth rate is basically free money.
The money the government gets now is worth more than the money the government will eventually have to repay.
Well, you know, worry about about that when the rates rise. Current Fed policies have kept rates extremely low.
So, it's ok to run up epic debts if you have a good reason?
If survival depends on it, I think you have a better justification for spending. You could argue that the Cold War and terrorism were a threat to our survival on a national scale.
The Cold War, maybe. Terrorism, no.
That's subjective. Obama (et al) thought that pumping money into the American Recovery Act was worth the cost. But that gave rise to the Tea Party.
There are threats to our survival outside of other people with guns.
You could argue that. But you'd lose that argument. If you think some bearded jackoffs with an AK47 can actually threaten the United States of America, the same country that beat back Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, landed a man on the moon, and has a standing military of 1.4 million people with 2000 nuclear warheads, then you must not think much of the country.
The only things the terrorists have managed to accomplish is make it hard to take a picture of power stations and kill 5000 servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You cannot be serious.
What is the purpose of that response? I don't see what it brought to the discussion.
9/11 had a lasting impact on the US (economically and psychologically). If terrorists could compound terror strikes similar to 9/11, it could amount to a substantial amount of damage (especially if terrorist organizations one day became sophisticated enough to bring nuclear weapons or biological weapons into the equation). The motivation is there, they just have not yet developed the capability in part because we have invested so much into routing them.
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That's like saying bears are a threat to your survival on a national scale. They kill people but haven't yet managed to build enough strength to kill everybody.
Terrorism is a serious issue but saying it was a threat to your survival on a national scale sounds like the security hysteria of the Bush years.
At no point did terrorist pose a serious threat to the very survival or existence of the United States as a whole.
The security-crazy liberty-reducing policies of the Bush era on the other hand... they were a more serious threat to the core of what the USA should be about. But hey, the country survived even that, America Fuck Yeah, and so on.
Terrorism is a serious issue but saying it was a threat to your survival on a national scale sounds like the security hysteria of the Bush years.
At no point did terrorist pose a serious threat to the very survival or existence of the United States as a whole.
The security-crazy liberty-reducing policies of the Bush era on the other hand... they were a more serious threat to the core of what the USA should be about. But hey, the country survived even that, America Fuck Yeah, and so on.
Not that it is, but that it could be if left unchecked. 9/11 was pretty impactful.
Also a threat if left unchecked: mosquitos.
Equating terrorism to the threat of mosquitos and bears? I' m not feeling those comparisons at all...
We didn't feel the idea that terrorism was a threat to the survival of the country.
I bet. I never asserted that it was at present. Only that one could argue that it could be if we didn't invest in fighting it.
9/11 was a fluke. It was a conspiracy of oversights, blind spots and lucky chances that resulted in disaster. More than any other thing that's happened in the last 14 years since 9/11 probably the biggest thing that's prevented "another 9/11" is how terrorists are dealt with on airplanes and air-travel in general. And I'm not talking about padding around an airport terminal in your socks throwing away that slightly too-big travel-sized bottle of shampoo.
For a large part the way airlines dealt with terrorists in the past was to basically do what they want, because in past events they'd usually have the plane land somewhere and then make demands for some sort of personal or political gain. It was never conceived of that terrorists would take control of the plane and crash them into buildings. So, really, the only change we needed to make was to not give-in to terrorists on planes to not let them, under any circumstances, gain entry into the cockpit. Argument could be made for the "no knives in the cabin" thing but it's sort-of bizarre to me the terrorists managed to gain control of the plane with box cutters. But, again, that sort of goes back to the "give in" thing. Resisting, attacking or just laughing at someone trying to force you to do something with a box cutter would have changed things.
Anyway, I'd argue nothing we've done over the last decade and half beyond some of the more basic airport/airplane changes has prevented "another 9/11." Like I said, 9/11 was a fluke. If it was that easy to attack America it'd have happened a lot more between the 1996 WTC bombing and 9/11. And, in '96 the "best" they could manage was filling some moving vans with explosives.
Nothing the military, the NSA, the CIA, the DHS has done over that course of time has prevented or stopped anything. Maybe some intel, maybe some things here-and-there but the fact remains we were dealing with a disorganized bunch of lunatics who just happened to get their ducks in a row once and rolled a 20 on us.
There's no call whatsoever for us to spend as much on military spending as we do, which as much as the next several countries combined, most of whom are allies
You can't tell me it takes that much money to protect the US from terrorists. And any attempt to lower it or to suggest to lower it and the GOP shout about "weakening America."
We spend vastly more on military spending than we do anything else in this country and political leaders (:cough:the GOP:cough
shout about "burdening our children with debt," and "we can't afford it" when we want to do things like given citizens health care or spend more on education, or upgrade, replace and repair America's infrastructure, roads, bridges, highways, etc.We could HALVE our military spending and still be spending way more than everyone else, maintain solid defenses and not be at any greater risk from attack by terrorist groups simply because, frankly, they're not that big of a threat. They're not organized enough to be a consistent threat. They got lucky, really lucky, once and mostly because of how airlines dealt with terrorists and because people gave into box-cutters.
And, yeah, box-cutters can be dangerous. But if the flight-staff has shown resistance in giving into the demands and the terrorist attacked with a box-cutter, I'm sure someone else on the plane would have done something to protect them. Not saying there wouldn't have been injuries, heck probably some serious ones. Maybe a death. Cut someone in the right place, yeah, that knife is dangerous. But the terrorists could have been subdued by a plane-full of people realizing men are attack flight-staff with knives. Which is likely what happened on Flight 93, had the cockpit not been breached F-93 would have landed safely. Had passengers/crew on the other planes reacted the same way, and the cockpit not been breached, 9/11 wouldn't have happened the way it did.
Better training for airline staff, telling them to resist terrorist demands and to not give-in and better protection of the cockpit is all we really needed to do. We didn't need to go to war, spend trillions of dollars and end thousands of American and innocent lives over what happened. Yeah, something should have happened, but I think we overreacted just a bit.
Slash military spending if you want to deal with America's financial problems. There's no need to spend what we do, but the GOP want to use events like 9/11, "threats" like ISIS, Al-Queada, the USSR, Saddam Hussein to scare people into wanting us to spend as much as we do. They're like the guy at Best Buy who wants you to buy the "extended warranty" plan when all you're buying is a Walkman (they still have those, right?) I mean, what *if* "something" happens? You want to be sure you're protected, right?
They didn't "get lucky." They did dry runs before the real thing to see what they could get away with. It was a well thought out plan that worked on four different planes.
America taking the fight to the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan resulted in weakening those organizations. Being proactive instead of sitting back and allowing them to flourish might have hindered them from feeling out other weaknesses in our system and investing in the next terror attack.
That said, I don't think all of America's defense spending has been spent wisely. We do a lot of wasteful spending (on Defense among other things).
America taking the fight to the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan resulted in weakening those organizations. Being proactive instead of sitting back and allowing them to flourish might have hindered them from feeling out other weaknesses in our system and investing in the next terror attack.
That said, I don't think all of America's defense spending has been spent wisely. We do a lot of wasteful spending (on Defense among other things).