Solution to our debt.

[Andylusion]

He paid a factory in China to make his products. He could have accepted a smaller profit margin and paid Americans

Correct, Trump should have led by example, "Do as I do and not what I say". So companies did, they went to China.

Nah. That's ridiculous. Do you really think CEOs are making business decisions based on what Trump did? Really? Truthfully, does that seem even remotely likely to you?

You actually think that executives are sitting around saying to each other:

"We need to open a manufacturing plant. How do we pick where to build our plant? We could base that on access to the market, or regulations, or cost of building the plant, or the cost of transportation, access to utilities, or the cost of labor, or ability to get through government red tape...... or..... or! We could just follow the example of whomever is in the White House! Let's see.... Trump had a tie made in China, so that's what we'll do!"

Really? Because that is what your nonsense implies. That somehow people in these companies are just blindly following the president, without any bases in reality? No I don't think so.

It's like Candycorn up there, who posted American Apparel. Wouldn't the executives at a company look at what happened to American Apparel? They would look to see how a company dedicated to making cloths in the US would end up? Which in American Apparels case, they went bankrupt after years of not making a profit, and ended up sold off in bankruptcy, all their factories were closed, and now all of their clothing is made cheaply in south America.

Would not executives look at that, and make decisions based on economic facts, rather than "Trump did it!"?

And by the way... who are these people who based their choices in life on the president?

I'm really baffled by this idea, that people change their lives, because the president did something.

In my entire life, I have never at any point choose to not do something because Clinton or Obama did X, nor have ever chosen to do something, because Reagan, Bush, Bush Jr, or Trump did something.

Lead by example? I can see someone following someone's example, if they say... open a company, or investing, or as a successful sales person, or a successful electrician or programmer.

But the president? Who does that? Ho sits around saying "Well what did Trump do today? I need to know, so I can decide how to live my life!" Who does that for any president? I didn't see ghetto people who supported Obama, changing their lives, to stop talking like a hoodrat, stop popping out kids unmarried, and living like a respectable person, because Obama did it. Who did? Where are these people?

 

[22lcidw]

From my understanding and I am not a financier,..... if the United States took control of its Fiat Currency from the mostly foreign owners of the Federal Reserve, which is a Private Bank that prints the currency, then we could cut a lot of debt with United States notes instead of Federal Reserve notes.

 

[Andylusion]

From my understanding and I am not a financier,..... if the United States took control of its Fiat Currency from the mostly foreign owners of the Federal Reserve, which is a Private Bank that prints the currency, then we could cut a lot of debt with United States notes instead of Federal Reserve notes.

Well first off, the Federal Reserve is owned and controlled by the Federal Government. Name one other bank, that has to report to Congress routinely, that has their chairmen appointed by the government?

Further, I don't know how your proposed solution would work.

The number one cause of debt, is spending more money, than you collect in taxes.

As long as the government spends more than it makes... what difference does it make if you cut the debt?

We would simply end up back in debt. If you owe $10,000, and you earn $5,000... and you spend $6,000.

Getting rid of the $10,000, is nifty but you will just end up back in $10,000 in debt after 10 months of spending $6,000 while earning $5,000.

The solution is to cut the spending. And here's the kicker... if you cut the spending, then you don't need to default on the debt. If you spend only $4,000, while you earn $5,000, in 10 months the debt is gone, and you have a savings fund for a rainy day.

Further, by the way, what you are talking about is utterly immoral. You are saying that we as a nation agreed to a borrow money, and pay it back. And you are saying you are not going to pay back that debt.

If I borrowed money from you, and then just decide, nope not going to pay it back. How would you view me morally?

I would be evil. Not paying back your debts is evil. Let's not be evil. Let's do what honorable people do, cut entitlements, cut spending, and pay back our debts.

Lastly, the new currency would have a low value. Replacing currency, and just ignoring the debts you owe in the old currency, would make the new currency have a low value.

Why? Well think about it. The only value any currency anywhere has, is the faith in the issuer of the currency.

Otherwise it's paper.

The value in any currency, is the trust you have in the person who issued the currency.

Again, if I issued you a loan, the value of that IOU, is your trust in me to pay back the IOU.

If I just declared the old IOUs all trash, and issued new ones, would you trust any of the IOUs that I issued? No you would not, and rightly so, because I just defaulted on all of the old ones.

The new currency would be worth a fraction of the old currency, because no one would trust the US government to honor the new currency...... because they trusted the US government with the old currency, and the government just declared the old currency trash.

Bad idea.

 

[Captain Caveman]

You actually think that executives are sitting around saying to each other:

No, I worded it badly. Companies go to China because it's cheap junk to fill their greedy hands with more profit. Done that for years.

Trump pushed Made in America manufacturing, he should have led by example and used such American companies.

 

[Andylusion]

You actually think that executives are sitting around saying to each other:

No, I worded it badly. Companies go to China because it's cheap junk to fill their greedy hands with more profit. Done that for years.

Trump pushed Made in America manufacturing, he should have led by example and used such American companies.

Again, I worked at a company that outsourced to China, and I was there when they were determining what to do.

If you can't build the product profitably in the US, you must outsource... or go bankrupt... or don't build the product.

It's isn't a matter of greed. If you were doing a job, that paid you so little, that you couldn't really pay for your family, and you decided to move to another city to get a job that paid more, would you accept the people of the town you were in calling you greedy for leaving?

No, you would not. Because it isn't greedy. It's a matter of economic fact.

 

[Captain Caveman]

You actually think that executives are sitting around saying to each other:

No, I worded it badly. Companies go to China because it's cheap junk to fill their greedy hands with more profit. Done that for years.

Trump pushed Made in America manufacturing, he should have led by example and used such American companies.

Again, I worked at a company that outsourced to China, and I was there when they were determining what to do.

If you can't build the product profitably in the US, you must outsource... or go bankrupt... or don't build the product.

It's isn't a matter of greed. If you were doing a job, that paid you so little, that you couldn't really pay for your family, and you decided to move to another city to get a job that paid more, would you accept the people of the town you were in calling you greedy for leaving?

No, you would not. Because it isn't greedy. It's a matter of economic fact.

The economic fact is, Americans have a much better standard of living than the Chinese. It costs more. Products coming in should be tariffed to make them a similar price to American manufacturing. Then the consumer can decide between quality v shite. But it's gone on far too long for it to change. So the money goes off to China which funds their military and poor conditions for their employees. And what do Americans get in return? Junk and a pandemic.

 

[Andylusion]

You actually think that executives are sitting around saying to each other:

No, I worded it badly. Companies go to China because it's cheap junk to fill their greedy hands with more profit. Done that for years.

Trump pushed Made in America manufacturing, he should have led by example and used such American companies.

Again, I worked at a company that outsourced to China, and I was there when they were determining what to do.

If you can't build the product profitably in the US, you must outsource... or go bankrupt... or don't build the product.

It's isn't a matter of greed. If you were doing a job, that paid you so little, that you couldn't really pay for your family, and you decided to move to another city to get a job that paid more, would you accept the people of the town you were in calling you greedy for leaving?

No, you would not. Because it isn't greedy. It's a matter of economic fact.

The economic fact is, Americans have a much better standard of living than the Chinese. It costs more. Products coming in should be tariffed to make them a similar price to American manufacturing. Then the consumer can decide between quality v shite. But it's gone on far too long for it to change. So the money goes off to China which funds their military and poor conditions for their employees. And what do Americans get in return? Junk and a pandemic.

If you want to tariff incoming products, then you will harm the US economy in multiple ways.

We tried that in the 1930s, and the result was economic decline.

There has never been any evidence, anywhere in the world, and at any point in US, or world history, where tariffs on incoming products resulted in an economic benefit.

I'll give you an example currently happening right now. There is a huge sanction on selling goods to Russia.

By your logic, preventing imported goods into Russia should result in protection of Russian workers and businesses, that give them an advantage over formerly imported goods, that now have to be smuggled in at high cost.

Is that what happened? No, instead the economy in Russia has dramatically suffered under these sanctions. It didn't benefit the workers of Russia to not have to compete with imported goods.

Why? Two reasons.

First, many companies rely on imported materials in their products. If the cost of goods goes up, then the cost to the business to produce products goes up.

How can I pay my employees a higher price, when the cost to me the employer to produce the product goes up? Well I can't.

Equally, while the price of the product might go up, that doesn't mean people will buy it. People that support protectionism like you just outlined, seem to assume that people are still going to buy the product, even at a higher price. No, they won't. That's ridiculous to even claim. If the price of a car doubled, do you still think they would sell 4.7 million cars, if the price of a cheap car was $40,000? Well we know the answer to that, because Denmark tried to tax cars at 100%, and *shockingly* car sales fell.

Well if the sales fall, what happens to employees? They get laid off. And that's what happens.

The second problem is, if raise the cost of products, then logically people have less money to buy stuff, and the economy suffers.

Just think about it logically. If you ban imports of TVs from China, and now a TV costs $1,000 instead of $500... then I have less money now. Which means the amount of goods and services that I can purchase in this economy, goes down. That means people are laid off.

This is what happened in Russia. This is what happened in the 1930s in the US.

Tariffs have never had a positive effect on any economy in the world, or in history.

And lastly, I should mention that those jobs are not coming back no matter what.

Even if somehow you got Apple for example, to move production back to the US, which isn't likely no matter what tariff you put in place.... but let's pretend.

You still are not going to have jobs coming back. Production might come back, but not the jobs.

Do you really think they are going to put iphones together by hand, like they do in China? Not happening. If production comes back to the US, it won't provide millions of jobs. It will be automated, with one guy hitting the start button in the control room. Not going to be that 1950s, with everyone working at the factory.

And honestly, the 1950s factory jobs sucked. I'm not sure why people want to pretend things were so much better in factories.

 

[donttread]

So using a similar analagy Biden should fly commercial because he's an envirnmentalist candidate?

All the environmentist whackos use commercial jets, the problem is, the planet has idiots that believe the crap they speak. David Attenborough flew around the planet on jets with a large camera crew etc.. and he's on the climate change rhetoric band wagon.

How do people get to climate change summits? Wind powered ships??

Al Gore didn't he literally flew around the world in a charter or private jet bitching about the evils of fossil fuel usage. I'm guessing Gretta likely does the same

 

[g5000]

Cancel our debt to China as partial payment for the pandemic.

If we defaut on our debts, no one lend us credit unless we pay screamingly high interest rates.

You really didn't think this through.

 

[g5000]

Maybe we could just be more fiscally responsible.

That's crazy talk!

 

[g5000]

Maybe we could just be more fiscally responsible.

or maybe the opposite...
the way to cheat the liability is to artificially debase the value of the currency...
which means: keep stimulating and pumping like there is no tomorrow...

Hyperinflation never ends well.

 

[g5000]

Maybe we could just be more fiscally responsible.

What a novel concept! Pity those in DC can't manage to do that.

Our politicians do exactly what we tell them to do.

If you want to find the culprit, look in the mirror.

We get the politicians we deserve.

 

[g5000]

A bit of both, cut spending and raise income.

The debt is still lower than what it was just after WWII, I think.

No, we are at the same level as the end of WWII after all of the Covid spending.

 

[boedicca]

That's not a solution. Defaulting on debt will cause interest rates to skyrocket.

 

[g5000]

We spend $1.4 trillion annually on tax expenditures.

To balance the budget, we simply need to ban them.

Easy peasy!

 

[g5000]

1. Ban tax expenditures.

2. Raise the Social Security and Medicare eligibility age to 70.

3. Cut back on defense spending.

We'd be rolling in it if we did these simple, smart things.

 

[donttread]

Cancel our debt to China as partial payment for the pandemic.

If we defaut on our debts, no one lend us credit unless we pay screamingly high interest rates.

You really didn't think this through.

That is exactly the only thing that will stop the debt train. The government being told no mo money just like individuals, families and businesses who over borrow.

 

[Captain Caveman]

A bit of both, cut spending and raise income.

The debt is still lower than what it was just after WWII, I think.

No, we are at the same level as the end of WWII after all of the Covid spending.

As a percentage of GDP

 

[d0gbreath]

Cancel our debt to China as partial payment for the pandemic.

We do not yet know, and possibly may never discover, the origin of the novel coronavirus and what species of animal passed it to humans. It was detected in Wuhan China and was supposed to have come from eating bats, so that was blown all over news globally, like it was scientific and not just supposed.

It most likely didn't originate there and didn't come from bats, but once the word hits the streets you can't reel it back in. Ask Michael Jackson (RIP) about his trial.

Italy potentially had COVID-19 outbreak 'earlier than Wuhan', study shows - Global Times

www.globaltimes.cn