It won't work in the current society. Like communism doesn't work because people are to selfish and think about themselves before they think about others.
In other words, communism wouldn't work because people are human. If we could just change human nature it would be perfect.
That is very true. Unfortunately, over time Representative Republics tend to degenerate into corrupt Plutocracies, so I think we're screwed.
Unfortunately true. That's why you need a constitution that restricts what the elected representatives can do -- limits the power of government. We used to have one of those -- and we used to have courts that would enforce it. Now we have courts that legislate, legislatures that lines their own pockets, and presidents ruling by decree.
However, it's not impossible to envision a direct democracy that moderates the group-think and trolling in a way similar to Slashdot(although considerably more sophisticated).
How much time is currently wasted on Slashdot reading and responding to these types of posts? Now we're going to include everyone and get everyone's opinion -- and the stakes are going to go way up. Currently if I ignore a post, who cares, I may or may not have influence one other person's thinking. If it's direct democracy, now I have someone raising my taxes or slashing important services (depending on which group is currently glued to the system).
Also, If your system had a way to establish a persons credibility on a particular subject, they're input might be "weighted" above the uninformed masses.
So now we're officially going to be controlled by unelected elitist just because they have high karma points.
In contrast, a strict republic inherently marginalizes *everyone* except for a select few representatives. Then the problem becomes that your representatives are "package-deals" who may or may not represent your interests(usually not).
I don't know anyone who's stated that the current system is perfect -- just better than alternatives (or at least the alternatives proposed).
A republic by itself is insufficient -- the elected government will fleece the people. The constitution -- deliberately designed to limit what the elected officials can do -- is required to protect the people from the ruling class.
The question is essentially, do we start from a point where we listen to everyone except for a select few?
What select few are you offering to not listen to? People who work for a living and have a life outside of work?
Or, do we listen to everyone and slowly add in controls and balances as they become apparent?
You can already have your say -- on the internet, newspapers, anywhere you can scrawl your name. In California, they even have a ballot initiative process so that you and your buddies can [try to] pass any law you want (as long is it passes constitutional muster).
But that does bring up an interesting point. Back before the 2008 (or 2010?) elections, a reporter on NPR was interviewing someone from Washington state regarding ballot initiatives. The reporter noted that every state with a ballot initiative process (the most direct democracy we currently have) is in financial difficulties.
People who actually have jobs and a life will be under represented as the people who have nothing better to do besides sit around and watch TV would be over represented.
Over time democracies degenerate into mob rule. A constitutional republic -- the constitution to protect individual rights, republic to pick someone to represent you -- is much preferred.
Maybe you shouldn't stop at the first sentence. The OP made it clear he has enough money in the bank that SS will never be needed to survive unless there is an economic catastrophe.
WTF are you smoking? The post I originally replied to said nothing of the sort. He stated:
That old saw doesn't get any smarter with age.
Personally, I got a lot more radical and left-leaning after I retired in 2007, because with the pressure to have to go out and earn a living every day lifted from me at age 50, I could really view the system more objectively. I wasn't afraid any more the way working people in America are required to be afraid. I realized just how much most people who work for a living and yet call themselves "conservatives" are suffering from the same disorder that keeps a battered woman married to, and even sticking up for, her abuser.
I hope you live long enough and gain enough perspective to see it the way I've seen it.
So maybe instead of accusing others of not reading for comprehension, you should learn to figure out WTF you're talking about.
It's a tired fable that only the poor and people seeking handouts have left leaning views.
You must really enjoy creating false strawman arguments. I've never said that and I've never believed that. The ultra rich that didn't really earn their money -- celebrities, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Rockefellers, DuPonts -- have this delusion that money grows on trees and we can soak people tax-wise as much as we want. Of course they're generally hypocritical about such things as well. Warren Buffet's company currently owes close to a billion to the IRS -- and I remember watching Alex Baldwin testifying before the California legislatures complaining that taxes were driving the film business out of Hollywood and California.
And in addition to the fact that they have paid their dues,
Notice that the grandparent post states that he retired at 50 so he probably contributed taxes for less than 30 years and meaningful taxes for less than 15. Given that he's already made it to 54, he'll probably live to 80. You cannot expect to work for only 30 years out of 80 and expect other people to finance you for the other 50. So of course he migrated to the left. He wants to make sure that the government trough he's eating out of stays well stocked.
US existed before social security and medicare and that we came up with those programs for a reason.
Nice binary world you live in -- the choice between the current economically unsustainable spending or going back to absolutely no safety net.
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."
That old saw doesn't get any smarter with age.
Congratulations! You're the second person I've seen admit that they don't have a heart and don't have a brain.
My general observation is that once someone isn't paying taxes and has their mouth firmly on the government teat they tend to migrate to the left. It could either be early stages Alzheimer's or just good old fashion greed -- after all, they no longer have to pay for the government largess and they get to benefit from it.
I mean, NOBODY is going to confuse them for the Apple Store. This is just petty.
Obligatroy, IANAL
In the U.S., with Trademarks, if you see someone that may be abusing your trademark, you are required to (a) ask them to cease and desist, and failing that, (b) sue them. If you do not, you can lose your trademark. Thermos, Frigidare did; Coca-Cola (Coke) and Xerox almost did.
Okay, so this is bad -- we have lawsuits over names. But isn't that what we want with patents in order to prevent submarine patents? Either defend it or it goes into the public domain.
In this case, hopefully there will be a speedy trial, the judge will say "no one will confuse the two, you both have my blessing to use the term" and that will be it. But Apple is required to sue in order to protect their trademark.
As opposed to writing code in an IDE and having it judged over the shoulder of your code reviewer or pair programmer?
While working at my first programming job out of school a 3rd level manager and a 4th level manager came to talk to my 2nd level manager asking for a developer. They needed a program written, debugged, and put into production by 5pm that night. The 2nd level PHB nominates me and as I'm coding in a new IDE in a language dialect I hadn't seen before, 3rd-level PHB stood over one shoulder while 4th level PHB stood over the other. They were passing a bucket of TUMS between them. I finally concluded that they cared a lot more about this program than I ever would -- so I started making the margin bell ding while saying "oh no" under my breath. They would panic, take a handful of TUMS each and ask what happened.
Households do not have their own currencies. Countries do.
Yes. And Bernanke is actively playing with the currency with "quantitative easing". The long term result is inflation -- which effectively is a hidden tax on all outstanding currency. This is a gripe of both China and Russia regarding the monetary policies of the United States.
A household can not change the behavior of its inhabitance with import/export taxes.
Oh, good one. And what do you think the results of a protracted trade war will be? Perhaps you should study the causes of the great depression, steps taken, and how they made it worse. Ultimately, the government can only raise taxes (inhibiting trade in a given area) or provide tax incentives (causing the market to invest in things that it otherwise would find foolish, like Solyndra).
I won't try to argue that spending more than tax revenue is a good idea.
Good.
Simplistic analogies block serious discussion
Bullshit. The analogy of the country (which has more mechanisms to hide the fact that it is in financial difficulties) to a state (which has less) to a company (which may or may not have more than a state, but certainly has less than a country) to a family works to drive home the point that overspending in certain areas, over time, will cause problems.
Grant it, we have grown accustom to a constant level of inflation -- a direct result of government over spending. A predictable, small level of inflation can be good in warding off deflation. However, the point still stands that you cannot continue to spend twice what you take in as revenue and survive long as a family, a company, a state, or a nation.
If I had stated that interest payments were 20% of the budget, you'd be correct. The interest payment is about 10% of the budget.
However, I compared the debt payments to tax revenues. Interest payments are about 20% of tax revenues. The difference highlights the fact that we are spending (the budget) about twice what we are bringing in in taxes.
(a decent job pretty much requires a degree of some kind these days)
Yes. But that doesn't mean that every degree is worth something. I know two people that received bachelors in psychology. Both racked up over $US60,000 in debt -- and neither of them will ever find a job in their field.
People need to be intelligent about what degrees they spend their time and money on.
Because the lender doesn't pay interest on the money they borrow in order to lend to the student. And there's no opportunity cost in not lending it out as credit card debt or anything. And of course there's no time value associated with money, $100,000 today is worth exactly $100,000 in 12 years time.
Extending your argument... and everyone always pays off their loan.
The [relatively] high interest rates on student loans is a direct consequence of the relative default rate on student loans.
Which means that there is the problem with the REVENUE, not debt.
The theoretical maximum revenue of the U.S. is also capped: at GDP at the maximum end (and of course, if you tried to tax 100% productivity would drop like a rock and revenue along with it). Given that 100% tax effectively yields no revenue (due to the fact that no-one would work) and 0% tax effectively yields no revenue (for hopefully obvious reasons), the trick is playing the "what-if" game to maximize revenue. But in the end, there is a theoretical max on revenue.
So the ggp statement US government seems to have an infinite credit limit is patently false.
What do you do when other people do something that you disagree with?
I guess you missed the part where I said I'm not passing judgement.
Make laws to make it illegal.
Force ID systems on everyone so that they can't avoid you through privacy.
Treat everyone as a potential criminal so that you can weed out anyone doing anything you don't agree with. Random security pat-downs etc.
What you're brushing against is what if mob rule in the form of democracy stomps on your rights? Frankly, that's why the founders of the United States restricted what the federal government can do, leaving everything else to the states or individuals. Ultimately the purpose of the original constitution (regardless of how it has morphed over time) was to protect the individual from mob rule.
but unless our plans involve a shooting war with Mexico
Extending your argument, can you imagine how stupid a shooting war with Mexico would be? I'm not saying that Mexico could "win" (everyone would lose), but look at the negative impact on the economy if the people who hail from Mexico suddenly went home. What if instead of going home they decided to take out a few neighborhoods.
No, I'm not saying that Mexicans are inherently violent. I am saying that if the United States were stupid enough to start a shooting war with Mexico, some portion of the population that is currently here would not choose the American side.
When all the cost is counted, the Mexican people have paid a far higher price for the "war on drugs" than the Americans have. It would also appear that the Mexican government is more committed to the war on drugs than American politicians are.
someone want to remind me of how they're supposed to be the bad guys here when they're doing the jobs that the cops and politicians won't touch?
It's a philosophical question of vigilantism. Is it morally right to take the law into your own hands when you perceive that the police, judges, and juries aren't doing their job? We can probably come up with scenarios that all but the purist will sit back and snicker about (e.g., CP) -- and we can come up with scenarios that fewer people support (remember Bernhard Goetz?). We might even come up with scenarios that almost no-one supports (e.g., road rage -- yes, road-rage is a form of vigilantism where a person goes berserk over a perceived crime and seeks their version of justice).
When these unelected, unaccountable, <ahem> anonymous people do something you agree with is one thing; when they do something you disagree with, now what?
Note: I'm not passing judgement. I'm just answering your question.
That makes sense, but the US government seems to have an infinite credit limit.
Wow. Actually, no. It doesn't. It just feels like it right now because Europe is even more messed up financially than the U.S., but if the U.S. doesn't change things, it will become the next Greece with Treasury Bonds being near junk status and having to pay huge interest rates to attract investors. Also note that the Federal Reserve is actively buying Treasury Bonds to keep long term interest rates low (helping to feed your illusion of infinite credit). The net effect will be higher inflation (forcing interest rates up).
Even with rock bottom interest rates, interest on the U.S. national debt for FY2011 was $454,393,280,417.03. Tax revenues (estimated) for FY2011 were at $2,173,700,000,000 -- so with extremely low interest rates, 20% of the tax revenue has to go to just service the debt.
Averaged out. If you look at the line, it is pretty clear that it increased more under Republican administrations.
Especially under Bush the Lesser. But more important than who is president is who controls congress. Remember that Tip O'Neil required a $2 increase in social welfare spending for every $1 in increased military spending.
Prior to Republicans assuming control of Congress in 1995, President Clinton refused to embrace the idea of a balanced budget. Clinton's first budget called for an astronomical tax hike of $220 billion that Democrats in Congress increased to $240 billion. Clinton's first three budgets -- released in 1993, 1994, and 1995 (for FYs 1994, 1995, and 1996 respectively), left deficits of $241.4 billion, $201.2 billion, and $194 billion by his own estimation (which CBO scored at $228.5 billion, $206.2 billion, and $276 billion respectively). In the meantime he vetoed the Republicans' budget in 1995 -- a budget that would have cut taxes and been the first to have balanced since 1969. Not until election year 1996 did he even aspire to balance, producing a budget that left an $81 billion deficit in its final year.
And 1993 -- the year of the giant Clinton tax hike -- was not the turning point in the deficit wars, either. In fact, in 1995, two years after that tax hike, the budget baseline submitted by the president's own Office of Management and Budget and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted $200 billion deficits for as far as the eye could see. The figure shows the Clinton deficit baseline. What changed this bleak outlook?
Newt Gingrich and company -- for all their faults -- have received virtually no credit for balancing the budget. Yet today's surplus is, in part, a byproduct of the GOP's single-minded crusade to end 30 years of red ink. Arguably, Gingrich's finest hour as Speaker came in March 1995 when he rallied the entire Republican House caucus behind the idea of eliminating the deficit within seven years.
That's because Bush's tax cuts weren't promised to you.
If you're paying 0 in taxes, a 100% tax cut still leaves you paying 0 -- so any tax cut isn't going to directly benefit you (and why should it?)
For amusement, calculate what you'd have to pay today if the tax code of 2000 was still in effect. Then calculate it based on Bush's tax cuts. Assuming you would pay anything in 2000, you'll probably be paying less now.
... logical thing for me to do might be to borrow lots of money and invest it into projects... The bad decision was to borrow a shitload of money and have a huge party of wasteful spending
Absolutely correct.
Businesses have the concept of capital expenditures (generally plant, property, and equipment) and operational expenditures (labor, utilities, rent). For a family, capital expenditures are buying a house; operational expenditures are going out to dinner. Borrowing for capital expenditures when interest rates are low is an intelligent maneuver. Borrowing to cover operational costs is unsustainable.
(Yes, I know, you can use your credit card to buy dinner [operational cost] and pay it off at the end of the month... you're not incurring long term debt. However, using the credit card for dinning out all the time and then only paying the monthly minimum, you're heading for trouble.)
If the world moves oil deals into another currency and the US no longer sold treasury bonds there would be no hope for the dollar to remain a reserve currency. In that case I don't think that the global economy would blink, but how about the US economy.
If the US had balanced the budget -- stabilizing the currency -- there would be no talk of moving oil off the dollar. It is the massive deficits combined with "quantitative easing" that are causing the erosion of faith in the dollar.
Slashdot Mirror
It won't work in the current society. Like communism doesn't work because people are to selfish and think about themselves before they think about others.
In other words, communism wouldn't work because people are human. If we could just change human nature it would be perfect.
That is very true. Unfortunately, over time Representative Republics tend to degenerate into corrupt Plutocracies, so I think we're screwed.
Unfortunately true. That's why you need a constitution that restricts what the elected representatives can do -- limits the power of government. We used to have one of those -- and we used to have courts that would enforce it. Now we have courts that legislate, legislatures that lines their own pockets, and presidents ruling by decree.
The U.S. Constitution was such a good plan too.
However, it's not impossible to envision a direct democracy that moderates the group-think and trolling in a way similar to Slashdot(although considerably more sophisticated).
How much time is currently wasted on Slashdot reading and responding to these types of posts? Now we're going to include everyone and get everyone's opinion -- and the stakes are going to go way up. Currently if I ignore a post, who cares, I may or may not have influence one other person's thinking. If it's direct democracy, now I have someone raising my taxes or slashing important services (depending on which group is currently glued to the system).
Also, If your system had a way to establish a persons credibility on a particular subject, they're input might be "weighted" above the uninformed masses.
So now we're officially going to be controlled by unelected elitist just because they have high karma points.
In contrast, a strict republic inherently marginalizes *everyone* except for a select few representatives. Then the problem becomes that your representatives are "package-deals" who may or may not represent your interests(usually not).
I don't know anyone who's stated that the current system is perfect -- just better than alternatives (or at least the alternatives proposed).
A republic by itself is insufficient -- the elected government will fleece the people. The constitution -- deliberately designed to limit what the elected officials can do -- is required to protect the people from the ruling class.
The question is essentially, do we start from a point where we listen to everyone except for a select few?
What select few are you offering to not listen to? People who work for a living and have a life outside of work?
Or, do we listen to everyone and slowly add in controls and balances as they become apparent?
You can already have your say -- on the internet, newspapers, anywhere you can scrawl your name. In California, they even have a ballot initiative process so that you and your buddies can [try to] pass any law you want (as long is it passes constitutional muster).
But that does bring up an interesting point. Back before the 2008 (or 2010?) elections, a reporter on NPR was interviewing someone from Washington state regarding ballot initiatives. The reporter noted that every state with a ballot initiative process (the most direct democracy we currently have) is in financial difficulties.
People who actually have jobs and a life will be under represented as the people who have nothing better to do besides sit around and watch TV would be over represented.
Over time democracies degenerate into mob rule. A constitutional republic -- the constitution to protect individual rights, republic to pick someone to represent you -- is much preferred.
Maybe you shouldn't stop at the first sentence. The OP made it clear he has enough money in the bank that SS will never be needed to survive unless there is an economic catastrophe.
WTF are you smoking? The post I originally replied to said nothing of the sort. He stated:
That old saw doesn't get any smarter with age. Personally, I got a lot more radical and left-leaning after I retired in 2007, because with the pressure to have to go out and earn a living every day lifted from me at age 50, I could really view the system more objectively. I wasn't afraid any more the way working people in America are required to be afraid. I realized just how much most people who work for a living and yet call themselves "conservatives" are suffering from the same disorder that keeps a battered woman married to, and even sticking up for, her abuser. I hope you live long enough and gain enough perspective to see it the way I've seen it.
So maybe instead of accusing others of not reading for comprehension, you should learn to figure out WTF you're talking about.
It's a tired fable that only the poor and people seeking handouts have left leaning views.
You must really enjoy creating false strawman arguments. I've never said that and I've never believed that. The ultra rich that didn't really earn their money -- celebrities, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Rockefellers, DuPonts -- have this delusion that money grows on trees and we can soak people tax-wise as much as we want. Of course they're generally hypocritical about such things as well. Warren Buffet's company currently owes close to a billion to the IRS -- and I remember watching Alex Baldwin testifying before the California legislatures complaining that taxes were driving the film business out of Hollywood and California.
And in addition to the fact that they have paid their dues,
Notice that the grandparent post states that he retired at 50 so he probably contributed taxes for less than 30 years and meaningful taxes for less than 15. Given that he's already made it to 54, he'll probably live to 80. You cannot expect to work for only 30 years out of 80 and expect other people to finance you for the other 50. So of course he migrated to the left. He wants to make sure that the government trough he's eating out of stays well stocked.
US existed before social security and medicare and that we came up with those programs for a reason.
Nice binary world you live in -- the choice between the current economically unsustainable spending or going back to absolutely no safety net.
That old saw doesn't get any smarter with age.
Congratulations! You're the second person I've seen admit that they don't have a heart and don't have a brain.
My general observation is that once someone isn't paying taxes and has their mouth firmly on the government teat they tend to migrate to the left. It could either be early stages Alzheimer's or just good old fashion greed -- after all, they no longer have to pay for the government largess and they get to benefit from it.
I mean, NOBODY is going to confuse them for the Apple Store. This is just petty.
Obligatroy, IANAL
In the U.S., with Trademarks, if you see someone that may be abusing your trademark, you are required to (a) ask them to cease and desist, and failing that, (b) sue them. If you do not, you can lose your trademark. Thermos, Frigidare did; Coca-Cola (Coke) and Xerox almost did.
Okay, so this is bad -- we have lawsuits over names. But isn't that what we want with patents in order to prevent submarine patents? Either defend it or it goes into the public domain.
In this case, hopefully there will be a speedy trial, the judge will say "no one will confuse the two, you both have my blessing to use the term" and that will be it. But Apple is required to sue in order to protect their trademark.
AppleRGay
And then they could use a rainbow apple for a logo ...
As opposed to writing code in an IDE and having it judged over the shoulder of your code reviewer or pair programmer?
While working at my first programming job out of school a 3rd level manager and a 4th level manager came to talk to my 2nd level manager asking for a developer. They needed a program written, debugged, and put into production by 5pm that night. The 2nd level PHB nominates me and as I'm coding in a new IDE in a language dialect I hadn't seen before, 3rd-level PHB stood over one shoulder while 4th level PHB stood over the other. They were passing a bucket of TUMS between them. I finally concluded that they cared a lot more about this program than I ever would -- so I started making the margin bell ding while saying "oh no" under my breath. They would panic, take a handful of TUMS each and ask what happened.
I think I resigned a month or so later.
Households do not have their own currencies. Countries do.
Yes. And Bernanke is actively playing with the currency with "quantitative easing". The long term result is inflation -- which effectively is a hidden tax on all outstanding currency. This is a gripe of both China and Russia regarding the monetary policies of the United States.
A household can not change the behavior of its inhabitance with import/export taxes.
Oh, good one. And what do you think the results of a protracted trade war will be? Perhaps you should study the causes of the great depression, steps taken, and how they made it worse. Ultimately, the government can only raise taxes (inhibiting trade in a given area) or provide tax incentives (causing the market to invest in things that it otherwise would find foolish, like Solyndra).
I won't try to argue that spending more than tax revenue is a good idea.
Good.
Simplistic analogies block serious discussion
Bullshit. The analogy of the country (which has more mechanisms to hide the fact that it is in financial difficulties) to a state (which has less) to a company (which may or may not have more than a state, but certainly has less than a country) to a family works to drive home the point that overspending in certain areas, over time, will cause problems.
Grant it, we have grown accustom to a constant level of inflation -- a direct result of government over spending. A predictable, small level of inflation can be good in warding off deflation. However, the point still stands that you cannot continue to spend twice what you take in as revenue and survive long as a family, a company, a state, or a nation.
The realistic estimate is around 10%.
If I had stated that interest payments were 20% of the budget, you'd be correct. The interest payment is about 10% of the budget.
However, I compared the debt payments to tax revenues. Interest payments are about 20% of tax revenues. The difference highlights the fact that we are spending (the budget) about twice what we are bringing in in taxes.
(a decent job pretty much requires a degree of some kind these days)
Yes. But that doesn't mean that every degree is worth something. I know two people that received bachelors in psychology. Both racked up over $US60,000 in debt -- and neither of them will ever find a job in their field.
People need to be intelligent about what degrees they spend their time and money on.
Because the lender doesn't pay interest on the money they borrow in order to lend to the student. And there's no opportunity cost in not lending it out as credit card debt or anything. And of course there's no time value associated with money, $100,000 today is worth exactly $100,000 in 12 years time.
Extending your argument ... and everyone always pays off their loan.
The [relatively] high interest rates on student loans is a direct consequence of the relative default rate on student loans.
Which means that there is the problem with the REVENUE, not debt.
The theoretical maximum revenue of the U.S. is also capped: at GDP at the maximum end (and of course, if you tried to tax 100% productivity would drop like a rock and revenue along with it). Given that 100% tax effectively yields no revenue (due to the fact that no-one would work) and 0% tax effectively yields no revenue (for hopefully obvious reasons), the trick is playing the "what-if" game to maximize revenue. But in the end, there is a theoretical max on revenue.
So the ggp statement US government seems to have an infinite credit limit is patently false.
What do you do when other people do something that you disagree with?
I guess you missed the part where I said I'm not passing judgement.
Make laws to make it illegal. Force ID systems on everyone so that they can't avoid you through privacy. Treat everyone as a potential criminal so that you can weed out anyone doing anything you don't agree with. Random security pat-downs etc.
What you're brushing against is what if mob rule in the form of democracy stomps on your rights? Frankly, that's why the founders of the United States restricted what the federal government can do, leaving everything else to the states or individuals. Ultimately the purpose of the original constitution (regardless of how it has morphed over time) was to protect the individual from mob rule.
After all, on what basis do you call them vigilantes?
From The Free Dictionary:
vigilante (vj-lnt)
n.
1. One who takes or advocates the taking of law enforcement into one's own hands.
2. A member of a vigilance committee.
So to answer your question -- on the basis of the definition of the word.
but unless our plans involve a shooting war with Mexico
Extending your argument, can you imagine how stupid a shooting war with Mexico would be? I'm not saying that Mexico could "win" (everyone would lose), but look at the negative impact on the economy if the people who hail from Mexico suddenly went home. What if instead of going home they decided to take out a few neighborhoods.
No, I'm not saying that Mexicans are inherently violent. I am saying that if the United States were stupid enough to start a shooting war with Mexico, some portion of the population that is currently here would not choose the American side.
When all the cost is counted, the Mexican people have paid a far higher price for the "war on drugs" than the Americans have. It would also appear that the Mexican government is more committed to the war on drugs than American politicians are.
someone want to remind me of how they're supposed to be the bad guys here when they're doing the jobs that the cops and politicians won't touch?
It's a philosophical question of vigilantism. Is it morally right to take the law into your own hands when you perceive that the police, judges, and juries aren't doing their job? We can probably come up with scenarios that all but the purist will sit back and snicker about (e.g., CP) -- and we can come up with scenarios that fewer people support (remember Bernhard Goetz?). We might even come up with scenarios that almost no-one supports (e.g., road rage -- yes, road-rage is a form of vigilantism where a person goes berserk over a perceived crime and seeks their version of justice).
When these unelected, unaccountable, <ahem> anonymous people do something you agree with is one thing; when they do something you disagree with, now what?
Note: I'm not passing judgement. I'm just answering your question.
That makes sense, but the US government seems to have an infinite credit limit.
Wow. Actually, no. It doesn't. It just feels like it right now because Europe is even more messed up financially than the U.S., but if the U.S. doesn't change things, it will become the next Greece with Treasury Bonds being near junk status and having to pay huge interest rates to attract investors. Also note that the Federal Reserve is actively buying Treasury Bonds to keep long term interest rates low (helping to feed your illusion of infinite credit). The net effect will be higher inflation (forcing interest rates up).
Even with rock bottom interest rates, interest on the U.S. national debt for FY2011 was $454,393,280,417.03. Tax revenues (estimated) for FY2011 were at $2,173,700,000,000 -- so with extremely low interest rates, 20% of the tax revenue has to go to just service the debt.
Averaged out. If you look at the line, it is pretty clear that it increased more under Republican administrations.
Especially under Bush the Lesser. But more important than who is president is who controls congress. Remember that Tip O'Neil required a $2 increase in social welfare spending for every $1 in increased military spending.
It was the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 Clinton and the Democratic
Nonsense.
From http://rpc.senate.gov/releases/1997/BUDDEAL2.JT.htm:
Prior to Republicans assuming control of Congress in 1995, President Clinton refused to embrace the idea of a balanced budget. Clinton's first budget called for an astronomical tax hike of $220 billion that Democrats in Congress increased to $240 billion. Clinton's first three budgets -- released in 1993, 1994, and 1995 (for FYs 1994, 1995, and 1996 respectively), left deficits of $241.4 billion, $201.2 billion, and $194 billion by his own estimation (which CBO scored at $228.5 billion, $206.2 billion, and $276 billion respectively). In the meantime he vetoed the Republicans' budget in 1995 -- a budget that would have cut taxes and been the first to have balanced since 1969. Not until election year 1996 did he even aspire to balance, producing a budget that left an $81 billion deficit in its final year.
From No, Bill Clinton Didn't Balance the Budget:
And 1993 -- the year of the giant Clinton tax hike -- was not the turning point in the deficit wars, either. In fact, in 1995, two years after that tax hike, the budget baseline submitted by the president's own Office of Management and Budget and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted $200 billion deficits for as far as the eye could see. The figure shows the Clinton deficit baseline. What changed this bleak outlook?
Newt Gingrich and company -- for all their faults -- have received virtually no credit for balancing the budget. Yet today's surplus is, in part, a byproduct of the GOP's single-minded crusade to end 30 years of red ink. Arguably, Gingrich's finest hour as Speaker came in March 1995 when he rallied the entire Republican House caucus behind the idea of eliminating the deficit within seven years.
I didn't notice any decline in taxes
That's because Bush's tax cuts weren't promised to you.
If you're paying 0 in taxes, a 100% tax cut still leaves you paying 0 -- so any tax cut isn't going to directly benefit you (and why should it?)
For amusement, calculate what you'd have to pay today if the tax code of 2000 was still in effect. Then calculate it based on Bush's tax cuts. Assuming you would pay anything in 2000, you'll probably be paying less now.
... logical thing for me to do might be to borrow lots of money and invest it into projects ... The bad decision was to borrow a shitload of money and have a huge party of wasteful spending
Absolutely correct.
Businesses have the concept of capital expenditures (generally plant, property, and equipment) and operational expenditures (labor, utilities, rent). For a family, capital expenditures are buying a house; operational expenditures are going out to dinner. Borrowing for capital expenditures when interest rates are low is an intelligent maneuver. Borrowing to cover operational costs is unsustainable.
(Yes, I know, you can use your credit card to buy dinner [operational cost] and pay it off at the end of the month ... you're not incurring long term debt. However, using the credit card for dinning out all the time and then only paying the monthly minimum, you're heading for trouble.)
If the world moves oil deals into another currency and the US no longer sold treasury bonds there would be no hope for the dollar to remain a reserve currency. In that case I don't think that the global economy would blink, but how about the US economy.
If the US had balanced the budget -- stabilizing the currency -- there would be no talk of moving oil off the dollar. It is the massive deficits combined with "quantitative easing" that are causing the erosion of faith in the dollar.
So, your scenarios of if A and B wouldn't happen.