US Has No Ability to Pay Back Debt

[MiM]

What say we just nuke anybody we owe money to?

Good idea.

The US's largest single creditor is China, for about $1.5 trillion. That would be a good place to start...

I'm not sure about what that will do with your credit ratings, though

[Seth]

The Guardian quotes, 'The British economist Baroness Vadera, a former Labour minister and G20 adviser who played a role in devising a rescue package for the international banking system at the time of the 2008 crash, said the current crisis could be even worse. She told BBC Newsnight: "It feels as scary, but it is different. The reason it is potentially worse is that governments stepped in [in 2008-09] all over the world and saved the banking system in order to save their economies, but now who is going to step in to save governments?'

Who is going to step in to save governments? The only people who can: taxpayers. Don't talk to me about loopholes. They're an ongoing fight, I agree. But ultimately governments have no income but tax. None. This is how the inevitability of tax increases take hold. It's like I said, they're going to have to stop playing games and put up taxes.

What a silly idea. Taxes are levied on income. If people don't have jobs, they don't have income. If you tax the people and companies who provide jobs so heavily to pay for government spending that they go out of business, there are no jobs, and no income, and no taxes.

The obvious solution to excessive government debt, which is caused by excessive government spending, is to stop the government from spending money.

Socialists, however, just don't seem to be able to integrate the idea that money just doesn't appear from the money fairy, and that it's the product of actual people actually working and actually producing wealth, and when people stop working and producing wealth, and begin expecting government to produce wealth, the system rapidly collapses because of...wait for it...excessive government spending.

The only thing that will save Europe, any of it, is to go off Socialism and back to Capitalism and to allow the indolent dependent class to get really, really hungry so that they will go back to work. I doubt it'll happen that way though. I expect what will happen is the economy will collapse, the dependent class will riot to maintain their indolence and entitlements, the governments of Europe will become ever-more authoritarian and oppressive as they try to maintain basic order, which will foment further revolution by Marxists, who will end up in charge of...wait for it...nothing. They will kill millions of people who just want to live free, calling them "counterrevolutionaries," and they will try to provide for the indolent dependent class, but will fail, and millions of others will starve to death. And after a spasm of Marxism, anarchy will reign, new nation-states will emerge as people band together to grow basic foodstuffs and protect themselves from bandits, and Europe will return to the Middle Ages for a while, before Capitalism once again emerges triumphant, as it always does because it is the natural economic system of mankind.

But in the process, tens or hundreds of millions of Europeans will die of warfare, starvation and disease, all because they are too collectively stupid to realize that government cannot provide for them, they must provide for themselves or starve.

[Seth]

What say we just nuke anybody we owe money to?

Good idea.

The US's largest single creditor is China, for about $1.5 trillion. That would be a good place to start...

I'm not sure about what that will do with your credit ratings, though

"Give us good credit or we will nuke you" is a pretty persuasive method of adjusting one's credit rating.

I think the US ought to go to Moody's and say "fuck with our credit rating again and you're all going to disappear."

Or, we could just stop borrowing money and live within our means and not worry about credit ratings. That's what I do.

[MiM]

The only thing that will save Europe, any of it, is to go off Socialism and back to Capitalism and to allow the indolent dependent class to get really, really hungry so that they will go back to work. I doubt it'll happen that way though. I expect what will happen is the economy will collapse, the dependent class will riot to maintain their indolence and entitlements, the governments of Europe will become ever-more authoritarian and oppressive as they try to maintain basic order, which will foment further revolution by Marxists, who will end up in charge of...wait for it...nothing. They will kill millions of people who just want to live free, calling them "counterrevolutionaries," and they will try to provide for the indolent dependent class, but will fail, and millions of others will starve to death. And after a spasm of Marxism, anarchy will reign, new nation-states will emerge as people band together to grow basic foodstuffs and protect themselves from bandits, and Europe will return to the Middle Ages for a while, before Capitalism once again emerges triumphant, as it always does because it is the natural economic system of mankind.

This thread was about the US, wasn't it? Currently the unemployment rate over there is high above what we are experiencing (at least in Finland). Besides the countries making it here are the one in the north, which are also those with the furthest developed social security nets.

"Give us good credit or we will nuke you" is a pretty persuasive method of adjusting one's credit rating.

I think the US ought to go to Moody's and say "fuck with our credit rating again and you're all going to disappear."

qute! I guess that goes nicely with "the land of the free and the home of the brave"

Or, we could just stop borrowing money and live within our means and not worry about credit ratings. That's what I do.

fair enough with me

[Cormac]

The Chinese are already making the transition from low-tech to high-tech value-added manufacture in many areas. They're channelling a lot of money into science and R&D (more than any other country by GDP IIRK). They have a growing middle class to help boost demand for consumer and luxury goods, and they can continue undercutting the rest of the world in basic manufacturing for the forseeable future. I'm pretty sure they'll become economically and politically dominant in my own lifetime.

And they're making their country a hell in the process. It's going to be a greater ecological disaster than the USSR by the time it's done. We get Chinese pollution here.

Idk, things are changing quite quickly. One of their big investments is renewable energy. The largest solar panel company in the world is in China. They rest of the world already fucked their countries in their industrial revolutions, but china will likely leapfrog some of the worst bits entirely, especially if they ever find a way to make renewables as cheap as coal. I'm sure they'll find ways of dealing with the other pollution problems eventually too, probably by outsourcing their primary manufacturing industries to other countries as they transition to high-tech value-added manufacture. Though, they'll likely rely on their own poorer areas for a long time yet.

They don't really need to make it cheaper. They can use their artificially cheap labour to manufacture and build large scale renewables like the recent big dam. I wouldn't be surprised to see them cover South faces of mountains with solar panels etc. It wouldn't surprise me at all. If installed in this manner in a large enough scale, the cost difference becomes more or less irrelevant.

[Exi5tentialist]

put up taxes.

What a silly idea. Taxes are levied on income. If people don't have jobs, they don't have income. If you tax the people and companies who provide jobs so heavily to pay for government spending that they go out of business, there are no jobs, and no income, and no taxes. The obvious solution to excessive government debt, which is caused by excessive government spending, is to stop the government from spending money.... etc etc

Talking about silly ideas, Seth - about your post. This isn't an argument about whether there should be no government spending and no taxes versus 100% government spending and 100% taxes. Obviously, the balance of government spending has to be somewhere between 100% and 0%, and the balance of tax has to be somewhere between 100% and 0%.

There is nothing "obvious", as you put it' about excessive government spending being to stop the government spending money. "Obvious" means rebalancing income and expenditure. Being practical, as opposed to putting forward silly ideas like "stop the government from spending money", would be to increase taxes and reduce spending.

It's not even an argument. The crisis will deepen from now on. We can all talk ideology if we want, thereby avoiding the problem. There's plenty of time left for capitalism - versus - socialism forum arguments. But then something will happen, and the US government will have to put up a practical, rather than an ideological, solution.

I predict over the next 10 years, taxes will go up somewhat, and government spending will fall, somewhat.