Clyde_Style wrote:stuporman wrote:Clyde_Style wrote:
Trump will have produced the greatest tidal wave of evictions and homelessness imaginable. This is getting really ugly fast.
Biden's going to have to explode the national debt to bail out millions of people from this situation. Trump won't do it, but Biden will be forced to by circumstances. Some of the Euro countries pretty much did it pre-emptively and nobody got tossed into the street because they couldn't make rent. And that was smart, because it is better for their economies to have people housed and stable and capable of working while preventing defaults on mortgages.
You mean more than the ten trillion plus that Trump has already exploded the debt for the benefit of the wealthy and corporations?
Here's a secret about 'national debt'... as a country that prints it's own money which happens to also be the world reserve currency the national debt is insignificant and that 'debt' point only serves to be used as a political ploy by whoever wants to push a narrative with it.
I've been listening to some very well educated economists the past couple years to get a better understanding of macro economics and they say some very interesting things that aren't standard mainstream talking points or concepts.
For one thing the whole currency system is a big 0... meaning the 'national debt' is merely a 'credit' elsewhere. Where? In our economy. Every dollar of national debt is public wealth and a dollar working in the economy so to erase the debt it needs to be taken from the populous. The national budget doesn't operate like personal or business budget.
The reason for taxes is taught to us as a curb inflation because too many dollars chasing goods and services will drive up prices. Except that hasn't been happening for...um.... the whole existence of the Federal Reserve Bank. The only inflation in the US came from scarcity of raw materials or supply chain disruption.
Taxes don't pay for government services..... let me repeat that in bold
TAXES DON'T PAY FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICES. They can do anything they want as far as expenditures and programs regardless of the tax money that is collected. Expenditures happen before and don't rely on taxes but what they pay for can either help or hurt an economy, not whether it is 'debt'.
There are a number of reasons why inflation doesn't effect the US, one I already mentioned about global reserve currency but another is globalization itself. The few things that cannot be cheaply outsourced is real estate, equities and to a degree health care which is why those things are inflating in prices.
The government can bailout the people directly, back rent & mortgages, college debt even cash right into their accounts month after month for years or permanently if they wanted....without relying on 'taxes' to pay for it.
All of this demand side funding would not just make everyone's lives better immediately and in the long run it would create so much economic activity plus an increase in innovation and GDP there would be another 'new deal' boom for decades.
Believe it or not they don't want that, they want 90%+ of the population struggling to survive day to day always on the edge of calamity. They do this because they want to control people, that fragility allows them to manipulate people into voting them into power again and again.
The top small percentage will make their wealth either way and they keep everybody else under their thumb so they won't ever be challenged. This is why they don't want widespread economic prosperity because when people are suffering and struggling they can't change anything.
This isn't new.... it's been going on for thousands of years. We just have fancier gadgets and tools now but it's the same primitive ways.
Deficit spending has not created the effects that many economists in the past predicted, you're right about that. It does mean as you're saying the government can in one sense spend us towards a more equitable system and I also agree that keeping people on edge is a form of control.
But printing money is not an infinite option. Trump's tax bill amplified the consequences of blowing up the deficit and NOT spending on civilians.
My point stands that the Europeans were more equitable in their approach to spending to shield their citizens from the worst economic effects and that Biden may be forced to respond in a simllar manner particularly after Trump's mishandling of every aspect of the pandemic. And if he does do that, and he can and he should, then it is a significant difference from Trump and the GOP no matter how much you want to lump them all together as a corrupt establishment.
I agree with much of what you said except that 'printing money' is absolutely the 'infinite option', that's the way they set the system up as. Look at what just happened, more than 10 trillion dollars 'printed' and injected in a few different ways into the economy in the matter of months.
The problem is that 95% of that went to the banks and corporations because of the steadfast belief but continually disproven notion that the money 'trickles down' to everyone. That method enriches the few because they get to decide where that money goes and what do you think they are going to decide?
It's also how the established hierarchy gets perpetuated in society and the economy with the funds going to who those in control want and the people excluded they want. Racism, sexism and all sorts of other inequality gets reinforced through that selective process the economy gets 'help' in this way.
It's also not just 'picking winners' as some often like to complain about when someone gets money they don't want, it's actually making winners out of losers. Corporations that have mismanaged, often intentionally to enrich the few, so when market stresses come along they need to get bailed out.
The wealthy get their money even though they misbehaved and choose to keep it for themselves while the populous struggles to survive in these times of crises....or just anytime really. It's 'infinite money printed' through socialism for the wealthy elites and rugged individualism for the poor masses as the famous saying eludes to.
If the money were injected at the bottom people would be able to use it to take care of their needs so it would flow up to those wealthy elites anyway. Rent, mortgages, debt, food, services, goods and everything that people spend their money on, those corps would get it eventually anyway.
Sure there will be some who save or invest in their own life but this would raise up their conditions and allow them to rise up out of poverty or up from working class to middle class or middle class to more affluent and so on. Instead of waiting for some mythical trickle down while the debt and bills pile up.
I have no faith that Biden would make any significant changes to how this process happens, he's a neoliberal and part of the established hierarchy. He may try to do more for people in this crises than Trump or the Republicans will try to but in the long run he will perpetuate the system that has brought about the economic inequality in the first place.
When the Obama administration had the opportunity in the previous economic crises to keep people in their homes by using the bailout to clear the underwater debt in passing it through them which eventually gets to the banks anyway yet they chose not to. They gave it to the banks and let them take millions of family's homes.
Coincidentally, Kamala as AG chose not to prosecute Mnuchin for fraudulently taking people's homes in Cali when the rest of the AG office....and many other including those who's homes were taken wanted her to. See how this is one big inbred group of self dealing, self protecting and self perpetuating elitist class?
Biden surely is a better choice than Trump, but he's not a 'good' choice. Decades of choosing lesser of two evils has only given us more evil choices to choose from. As long as people continue to empower those who oppress them by accepting the evil choices as suffice nothing will change.
