Public Debt

[Gohron]

Yeah, Yoshi has a good point. I believe our spending on the Iraqi war is pretty similar to the spending on the Vietnam war when adjusted for inflation and whatnot (though I can't say for sure, it was for awhile though).

I don't know what the hell is going on with our government (and don't bullshit, it's not just a Republican problem) but it's not very good. With increasing talk about a social health-care system we're probably looking at cigarettes costing $500/pk.

It's too bad we threw out the Articles of Confederacy way back when, I think messes like this could've been avoided otherwise.

[MarsKitten]

Basically we're fine until we reach the point where our debt over time outstrips our ability to pay it down. Then the holders get nervous. Worst case scenario, we end up like Lebanon where our debt is like 2000x our GDP, and theres no pretense of paying it off.

[Anthony]

Basically we're fine until we reach the point where our debt over time outstrips our ability to pay it down. Then the holders get nervous. Worst case scenario, we end up like Lebanon where our debt is like 2000x our GDP, and theres no pretense of paying it off.

First to address this, the irony of it all is from my understanding, our debt value is pegged to our own dollar. So we could pay it off by printing money wheeeee!

To everyone else, which candidate is anti-big government?

[MarsKitten]

That leads to an inflationary spiral though. We print more money, the more worthless it becomes, the less our debt in dollars is actually worth compared to what is worth now

Anti-Big Gov't lol not in this country. All our candidates are government corporatist with the exceptions of kusinich, ron paul and whatever nutbar 3rd parties are going. No matter who you try to elect they wouldn't cut the gov't just grow it in various ways. Either military, enforcement agency or social services.

[MarkRyan]

To everyone else, which candidate is anti-big government?

Motherfucking Ron Paul, that's who.

[MarsKitten]

Not a fan of his take on the supreme court though. Limiting their jurisdiction in any way means one less check against the other branches of the gov't. Gods know 2 for each isn't enough.

[Zerohero]

We give a trillion dollars to Japan every year just so you know...

[Anthony]

That leads to an inflationary spiral though. We print more money, the more worthless it becomes, the less our debt in dollars is actually worth compared to what is worth now

Exactly, the debt is not pegged to current dollars, its pegged to the value of dollars even after inflation. So yeah, we hit a bit inflationary point, not necessarily a spiral, but the value of the debt shoots down. We don't print more money to use it (Seigniorage), we print more money purely for inflation. In fact, every time the fed increases the money supply, other countries get pissed at us, because thier dollars are worth less.

It won't happen though, the fed is pretty good about sticking to its goals. And thank god too, otherwise there would be all sorts of trouble.

[Doc Holliday]

This is funny, the US Dollar is losing worse to the Canadian than the Euro or Pound!¹

The 1980s debt absolutely had to happen. We were strategically playing a game of chicken with the USSR that we knew they couldn't win. The government was still reasonably small, as it was a technological race. Big government is never a good thing, and, unfortunately, a lot of that recent debt didn't go to kill Arabs. It went to make the government bigger.

Well, the Bushlicans have increased our debt by about 500 bills a year (or adding 7% to the debt) and the cost of Iraq sandbox is around 500 bills*, so I'd say yeah the war has it's share of blame. Plus in the begining of 2006, one economist said the cost of the war in terms of our economy, is between 1 and 2 trillion**.

Even taking a conservative approach, we have been surprised at how large [the war costs] are. We can state, with some degree of confidence, that they exceed a trillion dollars.

But, you are right that the so-called small-gov Bushlicans -- did they even claim to be small gov? or were they just anti-pussy/terrorist lover -- anyway they have tact on their own pork fat, even inside the BCWM® (considering the results have fallen behind expectations***).

And you are also right about the arms race being the right thing to do. It just cost a shitload of money that we should be paying for now, instead of a pissing contest in the hot dirt.

One last thing… around a third of our debt is left over from WWII and the interest it's accumulated, we need to pay for that too... or have Europe write it off.


* This year's budget has $190 bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. 1
** 2
*** 3

¹ Stolen off wiki

Inflation in the value of the Canadian dollar was fairly low since the 1990s, but had been severe for some decades before that. In 2007 the Canadian dollar rebounded remarkably, soaring 23% in value before reaching parity with, and then surpassing, the U.S. dollar in September of that year. On November 7, 2007, it surpassed the $1.10 mark at $1.1030 U.S. in morning trading before slipping back to $1.093 by 10:00 AM Eastern time, after China announced it will diversify its $1.43 trillion US of foreign exchange reserves away from the U.S. dollar.

Since 84.2% of Canada's exports go to the United States, and 56.7% of imports into Canada come from the United States,[5] Canadians are mainly interested in the value of their currency against the United States dollar (USD).

[Spent]

unfortunately, a lot of that recent debt didn't go to kill Arabs.

How can you expect us to take you seriously when you spout shit off like this - your opinions are informed but you wear your blinders so much I worry about you if you ever pull your head out of your ass enough to look around and see the big picture.