America - The Official Thread

  • Thread starter ///M-Spec
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On this anniversary of a tragedy, I'd like to offer a reminder that everyone has their own way of dealing with grief.

never-forget.jpg

Never forget.
 
I want to talk about the US national debt for a second. This chart is from 2023 data.

to-whom-does-the-US-government-owe-money-202309-first-estimate.png



This chart shows who owns the debt. It's kindof a bummer that it links US individuals and institutions because part of that (the institutions part) is the government owing money to itself which is not really public debt. If you took that fraction and the federal reserve portion it would be about 1/2 of the debt. The rest of it is what we're really talking about when we talk about the US national public debt.

A lot of times people talk about paying interest on the debt as a bad thing, like the interest is just money lost. And to foreign investors you might really consider it money lost, but I would argue that that money is actually buying something. For domestic investors, you're just paying people domestically for lending, and the money you pay them goes right back into the US economy. For example, a lot of seniors hold treasuries and get paid interest on those treasuries to make ends meet in retirement. You can think of this almost like another kind of social security, except to qualify for it you have to give the US government cash instead of labor. One could even argue that this is an important service for the US government to provide to seniors - a stable method of retirement income in exchange for savings.

So what about that third that is owned by foreign investors. That's just our tax dollars getting shipped off outside of our economy right? Let's see who those foreign investors are.

Biggest one is China. No surprise there. But China's holding of US debt immediately gets nullified if we were to go to war with China. So you can think of this as something of a peace fund. China gave us a ton of money in exchange for interest payments. The interest payments have not exceeded our inflation rate recently, so recently we've actually been taking money from China on that exchange. But perhaps under normal circumstances, some portion of the interest exceeds inflation (like it does for seniors) and so some portion of our taxes go to China to compensate for their investment. But again, you can think of that as a peace fund.

Japan owning a bunch of our debt means that some portion of our taxes go to them as well to compensate for their investment, and that might actually be more typical debt in terms of the way people might be thinking about it form a personal finance perspective. We borrowed money from Japan, and we pay interest on that in way that actually does get paid out of the US economy.

When we inflate our money supply, we reduce the US national debt (though it obviously does have other real costs to individual savings accounts, especially seniors on a fixed income). When we borrow money from the American public, we pay interest back into the economy. And when we borrow money from China, it represents a loss to them if they ever attack us.
 
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You're going to have an extremely hard time convincing me that deficit spending of the current order of magnitude is even remotely a good thing.

If the government spent a reasonable amount so that US individuals could keep more of their own money, they are not all going to stuff the extra cash in their mattresses. They will spend it on items that benefit them directly.

And China would be foolish in the extreme to attack their single largest trade partner. China exports almost twice as much to the US as they do to their next largest importer. I don't really see how we need to hold our debt over their heads for safety.

While I get your point, your posts reads like an exercise in rationalization.
 
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Duke
You're going to have an extremely hard time convincing me that deficit spending of the current order of magnitude is even remotely a good thing.

If the government spent a reasonable amount so that US individuals could keep more of their own money, they are not all going to stuff the extra cash in their mattresses. They will spend it on items that benefit them directly.

And China would be foolish in the extreme to attack their single largest trade partner. China exports almost twice as much to the US as they do to their next largest importer. I don't really see how we need to hold our debt over their heads for safety.

While I get your point, your posts reads like an exercise in rationalization.
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I'm not sure you understood if you were thinking that I was trying to convince you that debt is good or bad. It should read like an exercise in exploration of the shades of grey that debt represents. Granted, I spent more time talking about the benefits, but that's because the negatives in terms of budget and inflation are well known.

The debt is often talked about like it's purely bad. I'm not entirely sure why it gets viewed so differently than it actually is, even economists sometimes fall into this trap. They talk about interest on the debt like it's just a drain, but interest on the debt is something our public very much leverages for additional financial stability.

Consider it this way, social security is a program that has a lot of problems. And yet, it is also not entirely a drain - it has a lot of positive effects economically and socially. We can talk about what's bad about the debt, or social security, but we can also talk about what's good about both.
 
www.kcur.org

Missouri Supreme Court allows Marcellus Williams execution to proceed, governor won't intervene

Without intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court, Marcellus Williams will be executed after 6 p.m. Tuesday. Gov. Mike Parson has said he will not grant clemency to Williams.
www.kcur.org www.kcur.org

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Williams has always denied that he played any role in the 1998 stabbing death of former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Felicia Gayle. Earlier this year, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell wrote that he no longer had confidence in the conviction and asked for it to be vacated. A circuit court judge denied that motion, which Bell appealed to the state Supreme Court.

No forensic evidence such as hair, fingerprints or DNA had ever tied Williams to the crime, although detectives believed the killer may have worn gloves. Police did find some of Gayle’s belongings in Williams’ car, and he also pawned a laptop belonging to her husband. He was convicted largely on the testimony of a former girlfriend, Laura Asaro, and a jailhouse informant named Henry Cole.
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How strong does a conviction need to be when killing a prisoner?
 
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That can not be a smart idea. Surely, everything would come out in discovery & CNN would be able to prove their story even more.

But, he's probably bluffing to draw what little support he has left.
 
This didn't really fit in any of the other threads so I'm putting it here.

Tim McGraw Breaks Silence Following Backlash From His Bold Political Statement

And what was his horribly political comment?
Our girls could not have a better role model in their lives as how to be an incredibly strong woman. And how to believe in themselves and be in charge of their lives (every aspect of their lives)! Let's honor the women in our lives with respect and make sure that we fight for their rights right alongside them!
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How dare he commend and support his wife and daughters! He should stick to singing and stop sticking his nose in politics.
 
TB
How dare he commend and support his wife and daughters! He should stick to singing and stop sticking his nose in politics.
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Yeah! Just like Toby Keith, right?
Joey D
That doesn't seem political in any way. Like not even a little, unless respecting your wife and daughters is political now.
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Yew g.d. baby murderer. Go back to Russkieland! Or as one ex-fan recently put it:

Screenshot_20240929-173350.png
 
No individual has a natural claim to any part of another's body. Another's body may be availed consensually to the individual. Use of another's body absent consent is a violation of rights rather than exercise thereof. The remedy for concurrent violation is use of force, including that which is lethal.
 
TexRex
No individual has a natural claim to any part of another's body. Another's body may be availed consensually to the individual. Use of another's body absent consent is a violation of rights rather than exercise thereof. The remedy for concurrent violation is use of force, including that which is lethal.
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Rabid anti-abortionists are only slightly saner than anti-circumcisionists. At least there is some kind of argument to be made that a potential human life is important. It's easily defeated, as you just did here, but...
 
Duke
Rabid anti-abortionists are only slightly saner than anti-circumcisionists. At least there is some kind of argument to be made that a potential human life is important. It's easily defeated, as you just did here, but...
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That abortion eliminates the potential for specific human life (and I'm not mincing words at all here--a successful termination is exactly that) isn't substantive as potential is far removed from guarantee, and ultimately even a guaranteed life recognized as an individual with rights is not one which has the natural right to occupy another's body without their consent. Any such right is a legal one...an entitlement...and it violates the natural rights of another.

It's increasingly the case that a state will at once require the deceased to give consent to having their organs harvested for even the express purpose of saving lives (though, again, this is merely potential and not a guarantee) and at the same time disregard the consent of a living human being on the basis that they are pregnant...and that's insane. I don't know if the consent of the deceased should be so respected but I tend to be okay with it even as it may be rooted in religious delusion (as Jewish and other belief sets dictate that the deceased be preserved in a specific manner) because it is at least consistent with respect for the consent of the living, even as that respect may not itself be consistent or principled.
 

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