Comment on Trump on Vaccine Mandates, Biden's COVID Failures, & Ignoring Fauci
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 2 years ago"Careful spender" is a tough thing to say, because it's a soft measure. What is "careful spending"? It's sort of meaningless. I go by the actual numbers.
I'm measuring absolute and inflation adjusted (to 2007 dollars since that's when I did the math) increases in federal debt, and in terms of that, Reagan was horrible. Going into his presidency, the federal debt was about 900 billion dollars, and when he left office the federal debt was about 2.3 trillion, the largest % increase since the second world war, absolutely massive. The inflation adjusted numbers look worse. H. W. Bush was worse, but in inflation adjusted terms, Clinton (granted with a Republican congress iirc) was by far the best. He increased the annual federal budget in 8 years about as much as H. W. Bush increased it in 4, both are less than half of the inflation adjusted change in spending by Reagan over 8 years, he balanced the budget by the end of his term and increased the inflation adjusted debt by an amount comparable to Bush, and at a rate lower than any president since Carter. George W. Bush spent a huge amount which I think is one thing that crushed the Republican party at that time -- how do you run on fiscal responsibility when you increased the debt from about 4 billion to over 10 trillion?
Obama blew everyone else out of the water. 9 trillion dollars(not inflation adjusted), almost more than all other presidents combined, leaving office with about 19T in federal debt. When Trump left office, it was about 29T. Some of that was pandemic spending, but Trump's federal budgets were each the largest in history by a huge order of magnitude.
You could maybe argue that Clinton had it easy comparatively because he had a growing economy with shrinking debt, but you could also argue that Trump was running up record budget deficits and record budgets with unemployment at 4% up until the pandemic in his last year in office, which is one of the lowest numbers in history. By all accounts, he should have been showing record shrinking budgets and similarly shrinking debts.
Beyond that, I agree with you totally. I think the prevalence of glowie ops shows that they are solving problems they create. We didn't need these organizations previously, what changed? Only the desire to have a federal state that has overarching power over everything, the opposite of what the constitution calls for.
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
I really appreciate that you took the time to look into this and share this info. Wow, its the opposite of what I had expected. I always thought Reagan and Trump were hard core debt slashers.
What did he blow so much money on ? Don't remember him having any signature spending bills before Covid. Was all the spending just the usual budget inflation + military ?
Dollar's lost so much value since 2000, its crazy... ofc its the same with all Fiat. I can see why Bitcoin shot through the roof. No one can run the printers on that thing.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 2 years ago
The problem is that both parties have found the promises to make, and they're opposite and don't take the other into account.
Democrats promise to spend more. Republicans promise to cut taxes. Neither promise to cut spending or increase taxes (and 'on the rich' doesn't count) because that would be really unpopular!
When democrats promise to spend more you might assume they intend to pay for it with new tax. They don't. Even during good times they just increase debt.
I think most people assume when Republicans talk about cutting taxes that they mean cutting spending. They don't. Even during good times they too just increase debt.
For the most part it means you get new democrat spending and new republican spending and new republican tax cuts.
Since inflation is here, I think we'll need to see a huge paradigm shift. Rates must rise and soon, and when they do governments around the world will find their time is up. Basically all money will go directly to bankers and programs will be crippled by lack of money. The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of someone else's money.
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
Bitcoin
Fed can't print it. Right now its 1% of global paper currency, after USD, EUR, Yuan (Deutsche Bank was wrong, since it didn't count Yuan, Bitcoin is #4 not #3 paper currency)
Money always moves to "rare" currency, i.e. from sea shells to silver to gold. Bitcoin will always be finite, USD infinite. You can only dilute USD for so long before its worthless
Ofc, govt's will tax Bitcoin earnings, which is still better, since they won't be able to fool people by taxing through inflation.
Taxes will be more transparent and spending more difficult when USD gets phased out. Question is not IF, but when. Upto 10 years is the prediction from many, and seeing the past 10 years of Bitcoin, its a reasonable prediction.