2020 Election MEGAthread

[Patriam1066]

Originally Posted by Raev [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yes! Patriam and Castle are saying some useful things as well. I feel like we are finally getting a few decent posts here in this thread now!



Just to be clear, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with the world as it is right now. It is serving its intended purpose perfectly.



Your points regarding the financial bubble are well taken. But the US national debt is currently $27 trillion. 4% interest would require about $1 trillion in interest per year. Historically it has been impossible for countries to pay off over 100% debt/GDP in real terms. So we have to choose between a deflationary collapse (massive defaults) or inflationary collapse (Venezuela/Weimar Germany style wheelbarrows of printed cash).



Yes, I agree 100%, but how do you plan to accomplish this within a political system that is obviously designed NOT to work? The fact of the matter is that a substantial fraction of Americans prefer the status quo. You have the welfare leeches on the bottom, the people who like the moral superiority of lecturing their betters, and of course the psychopaths at the top who have no intention of letting go of their power.

Like I told Castle, the devil is in the details.

Well, destroying the institutions beyond repair, like not accepting election results, is absolutely the worst idea. What comes next would likely be worse

Reform is an uphill battle, notably because our population can’t seem to avoid bad food, drugs, and bad decision making. I’m not sure where we go from here, but bottom line, there will have to be much more serious consequences for corruption. Marginally higher taxes on certainly the wealthiest 1%, but probably the top 10%. Massive cuts to programs like disability, which is extremely abused, look at how many more people remarkably became disabled during the pandemic. It’s bull shit. The military budget has to be halved, public pensions disbursed only after an additional 10 years of service (a military career is 30 years instead of 20). In short, belt tightening across the board. Personally, I would cut all forms of welfare and replace them with a UBI. It’s more egalitarian and if you fuck up, boohoo

Frankly, we’re heading that way anyway. Housing prices have gone from 3-5 times the annual salary to 5-10x, depending where you live. People think that welfare benefits them, but the policies, like deficit spending, that enable this actually don’t benefit those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. This has been true for a while. I bought a house in Utah a while ago for a vacation home because there was literally nothing else to do wirh my money, in addition to putting it in trusts for grandchildren. If I were a real ass hole, I could buy 4-5 homes and rent them around the Houston area, which is exactly the result of our historically low interest rates. IF the american dream is predicated on owning a home (I’m not sure I buy that premise), the welfare state and low interest rates are antithetical to the interest of the working poor

As for political reform, that’s going to take a popular person who doesn’t get Gracchi’d. But the Republican and democratic parties are trash right now