Thank GOD Demented Donnie backed out

@whowasthatmaskedman

The Relationship Between Canada and the United States: A Debate Between "President Trump" and Becky Romero
https://similarworlds.com/politics/5274950-The-Relationship-Between-Canada-and-the-United-States-A

@beckyromero Becky... You have way too much time on your hands😷

@whowasthatmaskedman

That others can use the points I've made is the rationale.

We need a better politically astute opposition if we're going to save democracy as we know it.

@beckyromero That ship sailed ran aground, broke up caught fire and they still cant get the oil out of those penguins😷

Though bouncing back is not a given, don't doubt America's resilience. There have been dark times before.

@beckyromero I believe that with a different approach, which America has so far resisted and denied exists, America could learn to live within its means. Now tell me where you are going to come up with the forty Trillion dollars and I will believe you..😷

@whowasthatmaskedman

We just need to grow the economy more than the percent increase in interest payments on the debt.

Last year the national debt was about 123% of GDP. It was around 120% in 1946. So it is certainly not impossible to stabilize it.

@beckyromero Small point of order. Not that you were there at the time. But 1946 was the year after ww2 ended. So 4 years of direct military economy production, plus all the VA costs, PLUS the Marshall plan expenses for both Germany and Japan is a pretty considerable line item to be dealing with there. It hardly compares to the current situation of total economic mismanagement from both sides...😷

@whowasthatmaskedman

Yes, the debt grew because of the Great Depression and World War II. But my point is that we eventually reduced it (the percentage of GDP) by growing the economy.

And it's not that anything else wasn't going on at the time. The Korean War, Vietnam, the Cold War, an increased NASA budget, etc. By the time of the hostage crisis began in Iran in 1979 the national debt as a percentage of GDP was down to only 30.98%. Even at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968 it was only 38.42%.

The biggest culprit in the increase of the national debt as a percentage of GDP hasn't been the military budget or our safety net programs (i.e. "entitlements"). It has been income tax cuts for corporations and the uber wealthy.

Economists and historians often cite the Reagan tax cuts as the beginning of the trend, with leftists harping on the military budget (forgetting that it was those military budget increases that helped lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union, freedom for hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe and the so-called "peace dividend" that came in the Clinton years. Even 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq during the Bush 43 years didn't raise the percentage all that much.

The mortgage crisis at the end of Bush's second term and the big bailout of banks hurt but even that should have been manageable had the economy grew at a bigger rate in the Obama years.

Instead, it was Trump's tax cuts (and, to be fair, Covid) which has cause the national debt as a percentage of GDP to remain over 100%.

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Here's a chart for reference of the U.S. national debt as a percentage of GDP:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

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Annual GDP, inflation adjusted:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1

@beckyromero Your facts are all correct. But the master enabler that made everything else possible was the dropping of the gold standard under Nixon. Americas issues are far too complex to isolate one cause. Its everything really. But the rock that started the avalanche was dropping the gold standard and making deficits a legal way of life. You no longer had to add value to the economy,. You just had to roll the printing presses.
And it worked as long as the world believed that the Emperor had new clothes..😷

@whowasthatmaskedman Soon the printing presses will be gone (once cash is abolished if UN 'Agenda 2030' comes about) and all central banking decisions will be done via a 'bank' (sic) of AI's running the global financial system out of faceless cloud-based data centres. The 'Skynet' of money if you will.

@zonavar68 And it might even work. As long as Americans arent in charge..😷

@whowasthatmaskedman @zonavar68

Why not sub-contract out to China? They'd be perfect and tracking every dollar you spend.

Which is exactly what the authoritarians in the U.S. would like to do, too.

@beckyromero If you are saying that the Chinese could run America better than the Americans, I completely agree. 😷