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The threat on the table with respect to the debt ceiling is default on the national debt.
There's no need to default on the national debt.
Let's say your credit card company calls and says they're freezing your card and you can't spend more money on credit. What happens then? Well, you can decide you're going to default and not pay your bills, but for me, that happened, and what I did wasn't defaulting, I cut my phone, I cut my Internet, I cut my food bill, and then I was able to make my critical payments and pay my debts.
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@Zealist @sj_zero All parts, yes. Things getting worse for everyone slowly. Power consolidation grabs by "elite" via regulatory capture and abuse of cronyism. It doesn't feel good to be right about it. It's good to know so you can watch for the poison pill hidden in seemingly good pieces of legislation and such. I am a believer in low scale catabolic collapse.
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@BowsacNoodle @Zealist @sj_zero > low scale catabolic collapse
that's a lot of words for accelerationist :smirk:
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@sj_zero I don't have a problem with austerity cuts; I won't notice much of anything other than a lower QOL as things and people around me get worse faster. I have a problem with how it will likely be implemented, because our country is ran by people who are metaphorically (possibly literally) vampires. Think of whatever way we can to do a tax raise and then imagine a loophole that only big powerful people or corporations could exploit due to their resources and logistical capabilities. That's what will happen. I have that little faith in the United States government's ability to put in sound fiscal policy, especially with who is in the cabinet.
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@BowsacNoodle @sj_zero i like how you descibe exactly what already happens everywhere
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@sj_zero I'll play devil's advocate here, despite agreeing with your larger point. Austerity measures tend to screw over the middle and working class and turn into another wealth boon for the wealthiest. If they're done in any way, they should be done in tandem with "job killing" taxation. Adding revenue based taxes for megacorps, luxury taxes, and taxing CEOs based on the disparity between their total real compensation and the median employee compensation should be a part of any austerity measure. I picked these three because, despite the tax code being written by and for the uber wealthy, compensation-disparity tax would specifically mitigate austerity impacts on working class people. Should a corporation choose to automate and downsize a sizeable portion of their people, the revenue tax kicks in and prevents them from using write downs and depreciation to offset taxes. The decision to kill off jobs for a stock price bump doesn't mean you skip out on taxes. In fact, it will be worse now because we can make revenue vs total employees (employee productivity) a metric in progressive revenue taxation.
If there's ever a regime change and we need some people to reign in the capitalist elites without killing industry, call me up. I'm not interested in power, but I know how they think.
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Unfortunately, that's the thing with debt: it feels great when you're racking it up but feels like shit when you're paying for it.
The most evil thing is when people go "so it'll hurt so let's never balance the budget or pay down the debt ever". Because there's no such thing as never in this case. If we don't do it, our kids will have to do it, or our kids kids. This is why I call going into debt the way we do "selling our kids into slavery", because they have to work and suffer because we refuse to.
Whether we like it or not, when dealing with deficits as large as any given western country operates under, it is a requirement that not only should the spending be cut, but also that taxes rise. People don't want to pay higher taxes (I sure don't), but it's the consequence of excess government spending.
The most effective way to implement a tax immediately that would bring in the sort of revenue required that wouldn't be immediately dodged would be a sales tax. You could exempt many basics such as groceries, rent/homes, and bills for personal consumption, but leave it for everything else. In that way you can try to limit the immediate impact on people's essentials despite it being a broad tax. Such taxes do bring in massive revenue, which is good because that's what's required to get back to 0.
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@thatguyoverthere @Zealist @sj_zero Hah! I don't want things to collapse into uselessness. A lot of things we've done during the golden age of chemistry and physics were products of cheap and widely available energy. Until we get a real solid breakthrough in energy generation, it's going to be slow incremental boosts to any sort of scientific progress while we spend a ton of resources keeping the machine of society moving. We will get to a point where we have to replace things like critical infrastructure ASAP and will likely come at a time when we aren't ready for it.
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@BowsacNoodle @Zealist @sj_zero
> I don't want things to collapse into uselessness
it's just a matter of scale :blobsmirk:
I am a supporter of decentralization of basically everything. I think there are plenty of low cost energy production solutions available, but the bulk of attention is being focused on a few that can be easily centrally produced or scaled up to the same scale as a power plant. Solar panels, wind turbines, and lithium batteries are not the only alternatives to being tied to the grid, but there is almost no one highlighting other technologies like vibration energy harvesting and gravity batteries.
I also think if people really gave a shit about saving the planet they'd stop patenting and copyrighting the technologies that are supposed to do the job.
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@thatguyoverthere @BowsacNoodle @sj_zero "wow that's a whole lot of words, too bad i'm not readin' them thoroughly"
sj_zero
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