Random political thought thread.

[yeghor]

Government shouldn't bail out banks or students or people.

They should instead implement a system where people enrolling to universities won't have to get into too much debt in the first place. Like subsidizing partially or completely some of the universities as part of a steady education programme, rather than abusing these kinds of populist gestures to increase votes before elections.

 

[Kephalos]

@yeghor
It's not even populism in the classic sense. Subsidies like student debt cancellation or the mortgage interest deduction or the SALT deduction or NIMBY are middle (barely) and upper-middle-class "populism". Or (hot take): white upper-middle class "populism":

 

[The Cat]

Government shouldn't bail out banks or students or people.

They should instead implement a system where people enrolling to universities won't have to get into too much debt in the first place. Like subsidizing partially or completely some of the universities as part of a steady education programme, rather than abusing these kinds of populist gestures to increase votes before elections.

What do you have against bailing out students and people?

 

[yeghor]

What do you have against bailing out students and people?

It's enabling fiscal irresponsibility and dependency. It's telling them that it's OK to act without forethought cause government will bail them out anyway.

Secondly, government money is public money. Any debt that the government cancels is eventually going to end up being financed from the public again thru other means by means of budget deficits and the sort.

The system should discourage people from purchasing money that they don't have the means to pay. Government should subsidize universities themselves if necessary so that students below a certain income level won't have to take loans.

That way, government parties won't resort to using it as a carrot to increase votes/support just before the election. It's populism and fiscal irresponsibility.

Same goes for banks and corporations. If they are not fiscally responsible, they should be allowed to go bankrupt and their CEOs and executive boards should suffer for their poor management. Money that is being used to bail out irresponsible entities are not coming out thin air, it's being financed by taxes and/or money printing, which then results in inflation of prices.

 

[The Cat]

It's enabling fiscal irresponsibility and dependency. It's telling them that it's OK to act without forethought cause government will bail them out anyway.

Secondly, government money is public money. Any debt that the government cancels is eventually going to end up being financed from the public again thru other means by means of budget deficits and the sort.

The system should discourage people from purchasing money that they don't have the means to pay. Government should subsidize universities themselves if necessary so that students below a certain income level won't have to take loans.

That way, government parties won't resort to using it as a carrot to increase votes/support just before the election. It's populism and fiscal irresponsibility.

Same goes for banks and corporations. If they are not fiscally responsible, they should be allowed to go bankrupt and their CEOs and executive boards should suffer for their poor management. Money that is being used to bail out irresponsible entities are not coming out thin air, it's being financed by taxes and/or money printing, which then results in inflation of prices.

Because all men are islands?
Secondly, if government money is public money, shouldn't the public take more of it? Aren't you part of the public who would benefit? Or is it that you've been convinced that for others to have more you must have less? Or is it that you like pretending to be an island?

You like to talk a lot about should, if there's a utopian vision of should that "should" be shouldn't part of that be empathy and helping the poor and weak rise up? Because surely the more people prosper in a society, the more individuals in that society prosper?

As for the rest; corporations are eating people, and the military industrial complex is just as hungry. Money is made up. They've got trillions for defense and not a penny for the poor... such things seem like madness and defending such things as fiscally responsible strikes me as either desperately deluded that sucking up to one's masters might put them on equal footing..."someday"... you have to "earn it" after all and its not moving the finish line, it's about not fostering dependency... Or whatever it is one tells themselves to bring sleep to their empty nights...It's a song that plays on...But I suppose I'm curious how you see your ideal should world coming to pass...

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

 

[yeghor]

Because all men are islands?
Secondly, if government money is public money, shouldn't the public take more of it? Aren't you part of the public who would benefit? Or is it that you've been convinced that for others to have more you must have less? Or is it that you like pretending to be an island?

You like to talk a lot about should, if there's a utopian vision of should that "should" be shouldn't part of that be empathy and helping the poor and weak rise up? Because surely the more people prosper in a society, the more individuals in that society prosper?

As for the rest; corporations are eating people, and the military industrial complex is just as hungry. Money is made up. They've got trillions for defense and not a penny for the poor... such things seem like madness and defending such things as fiscally responsible strikes me as either desperately deluded that sucking up to one's masters might put them on equal footing..."someday"... you have to "earn it" after all and its not moving the finish line, it's about not fostering dependency... Or whatever it is one tells themselves to bring sleep to their empty nights...It's a song that plays on...But I suppose I'm curious how you see your ideal should world coming to pass...

Using public funds to pay for a certain group of people's debt is like using public funds to pay for someone's private/personal debt. Why don't we pay for people's mortgage and car loans while we are at it then? The problem is education should be a public/common service and impoverished households should be subsizied by the government, preventing from going under student loan in the first place.

I don't know much about the details of the proposed programme. It has some requirements as to who can benefit from it, which is similar to what I suggested. It says "According to a Department of Education analysis, the typical undergraduate student with loans now graduates with nearly $25,000 in debt." This is not a very large sum, an average household should be able to pay back this debt.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...t-loan-relief-for-borrowers-who-need-it-most/

Who is providing the loans by the way? If private banks provided the loans, it would be a problem for the banks as well if people couldn't pay the loan back, so in a sense government is bailing out the banks as well using public funds. In other words, they are transferring public funds to private banks.

Yes, they should find out the root cause why they had to bail out banks, corps or students in the first place and deal with the root cause so it won't come to that again. The programme in the link says cost of education has increased 3-fold since 1980s discounting inflation. Probably because the government have underreported the inflation. The real problem is that governments since 1980s have kept printing excess dollars, which is the root cause of inflation. If they had been responsible, it wouldn't have come to that.

This is FED's M2 money supply chart since 1980s. Blue line is the Money supply. I plotted the red line to show you the natural slope it should've followed, which would take it to 8 Trillion USD today, whereas the actual Money supply is around 22 Trillion USD.

22/8 =around 3x increase in money supply since 1980s. More money going around means more demand for goods and assets, which means you now have to pay 3x the amount of USD for a house/car/service that you could buy for 1x USD in 1980. Of course they won't mention that cause they and their corporate collaborators are the ones pocketing that increase in the money supply while average Joe gets poorer and poorer.

 

[The Cat]

Using public funds to pay for a certain group of people's debt is like using public funds to pay for someone's private/personal debt. Why don't we pay for people's mortgage and car loans while we are at it then? The problem is education should be a public/common service and impoverished households should be subsizied by the government, preventing from going under student loan in the first place.

I don't know much about the details of the proposed programme. It has some requirements as to who can benefit from it, which is similar to what I suggested. It says "According to a Department of Education analysis, the typical undergraduate student with loans now graduates with nearly $25,000 in debt." This is not a very large sum, an average household should be able to pay back this debt.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...t-loan-relief-for-borrowers-who-need-it-most/

Who is providing the loans by the way? If private banks provided the loans, it would be a problem for the banks as well if people couldn't pay the loan back, so in a sense government is bailing out the banks as well using public funds. In other words, they are transferring public funds to private banks.

Yes, they should find out the root cause why they had to bail out banks, corps or students in the first place and deal with the root cause so it won't come to that again. The programme in the link says cost of education has increased 3-fold since 1980s discounting inflation. Probably because the government have underreported the inflation. The real problem is that governments since 1980s have kept printing excess dollars, which is the root cause of inflation. If they had been responsible, it wouldn't have come to that.

This is FED's M2 money supply chart since 1980s. Blue line is the Money supply. I plotted the red line to show you the natural slope it should've followed, which would take it to 8 Trillion USD today, whereas the actual Money supply is around 22 Trillion USD.

22/8 =around 3x increase in money supply since 1980s. More money going around means more demand for goods and assets, which means you now have to pay 3x the amount of USD for a house/car/service that you could buy for 1x USD in 1980. Of course they won't mention that cause they and their corporate collaborators are the ones pocketing that increase in the money supply while average Joe gets poorer and poorer.

View attachment 26882

Not really seeing any answers to my questions, just some side steps, and random graph none of which really address what was being discussed, so I suppose we're done for the day. Oh well. Tomorrow is another day I guess...until then...good night and good luck with all that...boot strap pulling?.....not the segregation though, that sounds sus to me....whomever is planting those ideas in your brain garden is not your friend.

 

[yeghor]

Not really seeing any answers to my questions, just some side steps, and random graph none of which really address what was being discussed, so I suppose we're done for the day. Oh well. Tomorrow is another day I guess...until then...good night and good luck with all that...boot strap pulling?.....not the segregation though, that sounds sus to me....whomever is planting those ideas in your brain garden is not your friend.

I am sidestepping it cause I am not interested in petty left wing/right wing quabbles, you guys are failing to see that the whole thing is a show to keep you occupied and distracted. Both sides should question why the FED has had to print so much money, and why all the governments since 1980s allowed that to happen, and how they will prevent it from happening again.

And why does US have 30 Trillion USD outstanding national debt? Why does it currently have 1.5 Trillion USD budget deficit for year 2022? Why does US keep spending money it doesn't actually have?

https://www.usdebtclock.org/#

 

[Kephalos]

The "Chump" Effect: Student Debt Edition. James B. Meigs.

The Chump Effect is Meigs’s clever term for the bipartisan, broadly shared feeling that various systems are rigged in favor of elites, insiders, and favored groups, which leads to a breakdown in societal trust and trust in institutions. If those guys don’t have to play by the rules, we think, why should I? Meigs delves into social-science experiments that show people motivated by the Chump Effect can act irrationally by effectively volunteering to pay a cost in order that others be punished for ignoring norms.

"Stupidity is an indiscriminate privilege of all human groups and is uniformly distributed according to a constant proportion...A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses...A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person." Carlo M. Cipolla, "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity."

 

[The Cat]

Seeing as how this is relevant for some of the above.​

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

 

[yeghor]

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

Female Russian spy posed as jewellery designer for ten years & infiltrated NATO by ‘luring commanders into honeytraps’.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/19631611/female-russian-spy-nato-commanders-honeytraps/

 

[yeghor]

This must be a joke, corporal punishment is not legal. Is it even legal in the army?

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

What do you have against bailing out students and people?

I don't find offloading law students debt loads onto janitors, a very smart political strategy.

 

[The Cat]

You find what you look for.
​