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Is a US default inevitable? With the rising debt and interest rate payments on the debt alone predicted to encompass 85% of the budget by 2020, is it a given that the US will defalt?
If not, what scenario would prevent this?
Governments don't default, they print money. They will inflate the economy and your dollars won't be worth 30% of what they are now.
Sanganista. Mathematically you are in the ballprk. You are a high income taxpayer. If tax rates doubled or tripled would you continue to take the same salary or the same investment strategy? I have control over my income and investments. If rates were 90% I would cut my salary to near zero. I would put all my money in tax-free munis. I would delay taking any capital gains. As tax rates increase AGI decreases.
The only principle is the debt. Yes...........and...............?????
And not only do you not know the difference between debt and deficit, you don't know the difference between PRINCIPLE and PRINCIPAL
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Originally Posted by hawkeye2009
That debt is over 11 trillion...
Close enough to 12 trillion to call it that. And to think it was less than $6 trillion when George W Bush was inaugurated.
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Originally Posted by hawkeye2009
...and we have to pay interest on that Saggy, impairing our ability to pay for all that socialist stuff that you love.
Yes, I know. But unlike you, I know how much.
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Originally Posted by hawkeye2009
A continued annual deficit, which has occurred since 1969, adds to the debt and will ultimately result in default. Just what, in your learned marxist mind, do not understand about that?
There was indeed a unified budget surplus in 1969, and there was again also in each of 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001.
Meanwhile, the debt-to-GDP ratio was much higher than today during and after WWII, and not only did we not sink into default, we rode the rails of managed capitalism to one of the great extended periods of economic advance in our history. Lasted all the way until Reagan took over and began messing things up.
Obama is making the same mistakes as FDR. saggy thinks that's just swell.
Saggy knows better than to be taken in by manufactured Mises Institute swill. Some others do not. While trying to claim some actual historical economists as its confreres and forebears, the Mises Institute has no standing at all in the present-day economic community. It and its hundred or so members (over 20K for the American Economic Association) would not exist at all were it not for the pay-to-play financial support of ultrahard right-wing corporate money from people named Scaife and Coors and Bradley and Walton. Some still swallow it all up, though...
Last edited by saganista; 10-19-2009 at 10:49 AM..
Saggy knows better than to be taken in by manufactured Mises Institute swill. Some others do not. While trying to claim some actual historical economists as its confreres and forebearers, the Mises Institute has no standing at all in the present-day economic community. It and its hundred or so members would not exist at all were it not for the pay-to-play financial support of ultra-hard right-wing corporate money from people named Scaife and Coors and Bradley and Walton. Some still swallow it all up, though...
That one bruised your ego, didn't it? I can tell because instead of intelligently discussing the facts in the book, you resort to a particularly vitriolic level of wildly thrashing partisan hate.
Read the book, and then come back here and try to disprove the historical facts. It'll be a l-o-n-g wait, because you won't be able to.
saggy, very clearly, sees him/herself (??? - sorry, not sure which) as one of 'The Anointed.'
LOL. You don't have to be anointed to be able to tell the difference between fcat and fiction. A decent education should do it. There doesn;t appear to be enough of that to go around, though.
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Originally Posted by InformedConsent
Read Sowell's book to understand the massive societal damage 'The Anointed' have caused in the name of massaging their sense of superiority and self-importance.
While Sowell has done some relatively credible historical work, he is otherwise a paid hack. This work has all the thought, basis, and credibilty behind it to make it a worthy companion piece to Krauthammer's ramblings and bleatings about Bush Derangement Syndrome. Serious? No, not really...
Ironically, austrian economists have been the only ones to correctly identify all of the evils of the present system and correctly pointed out all of the problems that we have been experiencing since the Keynesians enslaved us. The intellectual elite will never abandon their love of the Keynesian fallacies because they would lose their authoritarian power over the masses.
Ironically, austrian economists have been the only ones to correctly identify all of the evils of the present system and correctly pointed out all of the problems that we have been experiencing since the Keynesians enslaved us. The intellectual elite will never abandon their love of the Keynesian fallacies because they would lose their authoritarian power over the masses.
Exactly... see how how vicious the attacks are when they're called on it?
Sanganista. Mathematically you are in the ballprk. You are a high income taxpayer. If tax rates doubled or tripled would you continue to take the same salary or the same investment strategy? I have control over my income and investments. If rates were 90% I would cut my salary to near zero. I would put all my money in tax-free munis. I would delay taking any capital gains. As tax rates increase AGI decreases.
At anything resembling current marginal tax rates, the effect is nil. If you're wealthy, work-leisure decisions do more to affect AGI than tax rates. Most wealthy people need to work. They aren't doing it for the money anymore. In any case, tax rates are tiered, and no one anywhere is talking about doubling or tripling any of them. Minor increases in the top rates are the worst that's currently being discussed. The top rate in 2008 didn't affect you as a married couple until you'd already socked away $357,700. A change in the top rate would only affect the dollars you made that were in excess of that amount. I'm certainly not the highest of all high-income taxpayers, but I can tell you that even from my vantage point, taxes are a non-factor in anything other than estate planning. The effect of taxes on what my after-tax cashflow allows me to do is effectively zero.
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I can tell because instead of intelligently discussing the facts in the book, you resort to a particularly vitriolic level of wildly thrashing partisan hate.
