Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@bitemytail: A crash course in economic theory is probably beyond the scope of this conversation, and way more than I have time for, but in short, the Public Debt Crisis is purely a construct of fiction designed to influence public opinion. It has no basis in economic reality.
A sovereign currency issuer like the United States can create as much debt as it wants, as long as that debt is denominated in its own currency. It is literally impossible to go bankrupt because it can make whatever money it needs to pay its obligations. Now, this can have other bad effects, like inflation, but only in combination with other circumstances, such as a loss of production capacity.
Entities that cannot issue their own currency, like state governments, are balance sheet constrained and need to manage their books so they don't hit unsustainable levels of debt. And even sovereign issuers have theoretical limits to debt levels, such as when the interest payments eat up all tax revenue, but the United States is at least an order of magnitude below that level.
There is money in our economy that is drastically underutilized. We know this because people are currently earning negative interest rates on long-term US debt. They are literally paying the government to hold onto their cash. At the same time, the consumer economy continues to lag due to lower than desired spending levels coupled with income growth that has fallen way behind the pre-1970 curve. Investors are starving for things to put their money into, with trillions of dollars in savings literally doing nothing. Consumers are starving for cash with jobs that barely pay the bills.
This is the ideal time to fund massive public projects with money borrowed from investors, with that money going to pay people to work real jobs building real things, raising incomes for consumers and providing more money to stimulate the consumer economy. This will, in turn, increase demand for goods, which will cause business to hire workers and purchase capital goods, which will increase the demand for investment capital, raising interest rates in a positive feedback loop.
This is what we want and need right now. With politicians all waxing poetic about the economy and small businesses and good jobs, this is exactly how we get them. It's the textbook mechanism for boosting an economy. A President who can pull it off will coast to reelection on a wave of prosperity, as long as conservatives don't drag the economy to a stop by throwing their bodies in front of it.
The Republican Debt Crisis Myth has strangled our economy for decades and sabotaged many attempts at progressive economic policy. It's long time we disposed of it.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 5th 2019 at 2:48:07 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Sure, because a lot of those things don’t just cost money, they also produce money.
Let’s use renewables as an example, say the federal government commissions a big old solar field out your way, that’s a money sink right? Not as much as you’d think, see the money doesn’t disappear, it goes to businesses who spend it either on stuff (some of which is bought internationally and thus does leave the economy) or on workers, the company also makes a profit.
The taxes the company pays on the profit goes back into the treasury, so you haven’t really spent that money, the workers who get paid then all pay income tax, which again goes back to the treasury, they also buy stuff that has sales tax on it (that money goes to the state though, but that’s still okay), the shops they buy stuff at then have more profit, which they pay taxes on and which they use some of to hire more staff, who again pay income tax and spend money supporting business that hire people.
It’s not a total closed loop, money leaks out of the loop when people just sit on it (which includes paying off debt if the person they owe debt to sits on the money), when it leaves the country (though some of that does come back) and though other means, but a single federal dollar can circulate an awful long way, generating benefits for everyone whose hands it passes though.
Also strait up, the richest of the rich really are sitting on that huge a pot of money.
Edited by Silasw on Sep 5th 2019 at 6:47:17 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranShow me a mechanism by which "the cost of everything would increase". This is just an assertion found on CNBC and Fox, with no basis in fact. Republicans (and even Democrats, to our shame during the Reagan era) have been screaming about how debt would cause inflation for decades, but this has never actually happened.
Japan has more than double our debt-to-GDP ratio and is currently in a desperate fight against deflation. Clearly debt levels and inflation are not intrinsically tied.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 5th 2019 at 2:49:36 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Regarding accelerating the death penalty for shooters, aren't most of them dealt with under state law? You know, aside from the ones who don't off themselves or get put down by the cops?
This sounds stupid, and denying appeals is likely unconstitutional anyway.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.We know HOW to but we CAN'T because we WON'T. People who think, "if only those people wouldn't complain about the problem then the problem would be solved" aren't actually contributing anything. Because that means it's not an answer.
If the problem hasn't been solved in decades, maybe that means it's a big problem.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 5th 2019 at 12:37:01 PM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.And, frankly, it's people displaying panic about the problem that are at the root cause of being unable to solve it. Reasonable and effective solutions are seen as non-viable because "OMG nuclear waste FREAK OUT aaAAAAHHHAaaahhhh!"
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 5th 2019 at 4:59:40 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If it's politically nonviable then I'd qualify it as a big problem, just for political instead of technical reasons.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangHumanity is basically in one of those disaster movies from the 90's where, like, a giant meteor is about to slam into the Earth and we need to use a drill-nuke to blow it up.
Except the drill-nuke, in this case, is responsible and conscientious energy policy.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Yes and as we see with the Washington Disaster, it is an issue that could take decades if not a century to fix as well as massive chunks of resources.
"Whataboutism" is not a good look for environmentalism.
Excepting nuclear war
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 5th 2019 at 2:22:41 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.I'd posit that climate change is actually worse than nuclear war.
I've never been 100% convinced that MAD would literally destroy the whole world. Like, it'd wipe out the major global powers, but I've never heard a compelling reason for why anyone would be lobbing nukes at Madagascar, for instance. I feel like there are pockets of human civilization that wouldn't really be a priority nuke target.
I also feel like a lot more people would stay out of it than we necessarily give credit for. Like, if the U.S. and Russia started shooting nukes at each other, I could totally see the U.K. shrugging its shoulders and just letting those idiots wipe each other off the map. I've never really bought the idea that if a single trigger is pulled, every single other person in the bar will instantly pull out their gun and start firing.
I'm happy that we've never had to test it and find out what would happen. But I'm not convinced that 100% extermination of everyone everywhere would be the actual outcome.
The planet turning into Mars, on the other hand, feels legit like a "complete annihilation" scenario to me.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 5th 2019 at 3:35:09 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Climate change isn't a "human extinction" scenario either. It's a "costs millions of lives and trillions of dollars, irrevocably change the face of the planet, and drive thousands of species extinct" scenario, but I don't think anyone credible is claiming that it would actually destroy the human race.
Which certainly doesn't make it okay. We should be doing everything we can to mitigate climate change, to avoid all those horrific consequences that will happen if we don't.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien."Whataboutism" is not a good look for environmentalism.
Tha's not whataboutism, whataboutism is responding to criticism by accusing the criticizer of hypocrisy.
Pointing out that the costs of Climate Change far dwarf the worst costs of Nuclear power is just a rational cost/benefit calculus.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangThe beyond-the-worst worst case is Earth turning into Venus, but that's not in the range of what's being predicted. Neither would nuclear war cause a planetary extinction event, although wags have suggested that we could nuke ourselves to start a nuclear winter to offset global warming.
Either way, nuclear waste disposal is so far below these on the scale of disaster magnitude that it barely registers as a blip.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Wow, that is right up there with "nuke hurricanes" on the Terrible Idea scale.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.On a sidenote, global warming is actually essentially doing the opposite of turning the Earth into Mars. Mars has a very thin atmosphere (though, to be fair, one made mostly of CO 2 IIRC), and is cold as hell.
In fact, one proposal for terraforming Mars is to actually pump out a ton of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere so that the planet gets warmer, this would melt the ice underneath and give the planet some oceans. Driving a gas-guzzler on Mars would actually be good for the environment there.
Though, strangely, setting off a ton of nukes on Mars is also another proposal for terraforming the planet.
Yeah, Mars is kind of a bizzaro planet when it comes to pollution.
Leviticus 19:34First off, nuclear waste disposal literally just involves sealing the material and burying it. Something like 80-90% of nuclear waste in the US isn’t even dangerous enough to kill someone. Unless you bury it along a fault line or something there’s not really many ways for the containment to become compromised. Given how much land the federal government owns in the US building a site is just a matter of funding, which isn’t what I’d call a big problem. Frankly, I don’t think people really understand radiation or nuclear energy at all.
Second, I think people are vastly overstating the potential impact of a nuclear war. Nuclear war is very very bad, but it’s not a human extinction event. It probably wouldn’t even fully wipe out the countries involved, though they’d be shells of their former selves at the end. Humanity would survive a nuclear war, though it wouldn’t be very fun.
Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 5th 2019 at 2:56:31 AM
They should have sent a poet.

Re:nuclear power: more modern reactiors are built to use thorium, not uranium, or to use “spent” uranium to convert it into a less volatile substance. There’s also the idea of embedding them in salts instead of water so a meltdown wouldn’t happen.