And the cowards in the mainstream media ding have the balls 🎱 🎱 to touch it . It’s blatant bribery, Musk paid Trump hundreds of Millions of Dollars to look the other way and do fies Tom Homan. Everyone knows , Musk lied and tricked himself in getting naturalized even thigh he was here ILLEGALLY! Guess immigration laws and federal law doesn’t apply to the wealthiest man on earth who bought Trump the election! I’m so happy@David Pakman is at least picking it up when all those cowards with their so called News shows are just bending down to Mango Mussolini and the ratings. Journalism is dead!
Why is he not shoring us his boss if he had one, we deserve transparency especially slice they are literally harassing targeting and deporting innocent Green Card or other non criminal Visa holders!
I find Mark Cuban fascinating, and would love to see him consult with the feds. I don't agree with everything he thinks, but he is a smart guy and is also respectful of what others have to say. He's actually a "good" billionaire.
Is the deficit and debt really related so much to the operation of Federal agencies so much as things like off-budget spending and wars we never taxed for and added to the credit card? Progressively cutting taxes, especially on the highest earners and large organizations, at the same time we continued to maintain or increase spending, seems like it's much more responsible to me than the number of Federal agencies that exist.
Mark Cuban is FASCINATING! I would LOVE sitting down with him and talking about his incredibly objective views....I never knew it was possible to be passionate about common sense practicality, but here I am! Thank you, Rick for having him on. I'll be looking more deeply into Mark Cuban.
Mark Cuban has a rich guy's solution to government efficiency, as well, it would seem. Their solution is always wrapped in a belief that the average person has to make the sacrifices. Give up their job. Make less money, etc.
when, in truth, it is the rich guy that can make the difference without suffering or sacrifice. Be willing to just pay YOUR FAIR SHARE.
Never having to "buy" into any politics makes a statement of its own...many of us "ignored" a lot of politics because , even though we voted, we thought everything would 'even out' in the end...a Balance. With Al Gore, I suddenly thought, because I'm an environmentalist, I thought getting our country to be more cognizant of what was happening to our planet on all levels..meant that we should center on the catastrophes happening...even then. I had read Rachel Carson back in the 1960s and because we are involved in our forests where we live..it was VITAL.
.So corporations...who DO run our country, whether its fossil fuels or over use of the land...clear cutting, DO eventually affect our planet.. Economics have been the ONLY thing that people seem to understand..So it has become politisised more than what was happening to OUR HOME... Population growth is the main reason of over use of our resources world wide.. This should've been BEYOND politics...People should be smarter and be aware of what's happening. With trump and musk who could care less..it's still all about control and cash. Too many people are still wrapped up in their own 'materiality'...more than the price of groceries.. Show me uneducated people who even care what's happening worldwide... Thank you!! This was a great conversation..
I'd be very careful about scourging population growth, Leigh. I used to be a professional canvasser for the League of Conservation Voters so I'm familiar with environmental issues. A book that was also popular in the 60s with Silent Spring is The Population Bomb, by Paul and Anne Ehrlich. Their Malthusian assumptions have been debunked; they didn't take into account the Green Revolution. Our planet is actually not close to carrying capacity provided we use our resources right, and that of course includes vigorous decarbonization.
There's a dark side of conservationism as old as Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, which is keeping the planet clean and safe for the right people; this is linked to eugenics, which went hand-in-hand with the early conservation movement in the US. There is no moral foundation to tell some groups that it's okay to breed but not others. This sort of environmentalism is directly linked to ethnonationalism in eco-fascism, a right-wing movement which equates purity of air, water and land with purity of blood. It's the ultimate NIMBY environmentalism and it's repugnant on every level.
I'm a child of the late 60s / early 70s. I made a personal choice not to breed based primarily on environmental reasons. But I have no right to preach that to others.
Careful??? It's beyond obvious... I belong to Population Connection which used to be " Zero Population Growth..ZPG" ..and all the resources used world wide and land loss to wild environments is due to the amount of humans USING and abusing these resources..NOT to mention the amount of extinctions world ide...and here in the USA.. I refuese to apologise for that statement...Everyone is burying their collective heads in the mire. And if you like living in cocrete cities...people stacked over each other that might be your choice...but I prefer WILDLANDS unfettered by humans who go into the wild areas and choose to make it look like another ugly tract of homes....using herbicides, pesticides to keep it "free" of all 'life ' that doesn't"agree" with their idea of what has the right to survive... ( I love almost all arthropods..including spiders) I feel that ALL KIDS need the education and the urge to defend our planet...we have become a virus on this planet...hence MUSK"S pushing to another world...and he has thirteen kids... We , too, made that commitment back in the 60s...my husband and I...totally for environmental reasons... I understand your reasoning...and THAT'S correct... Watch what's happening in Africa,...and already Asia...Orangutans, Rhinos and so many other innocent creatures that have been obliterated,, Thanks Bob, for your come back..it's always a way to make me think more...and ponder...
It should be obvious to you, Leah, that I'm not cheerleading civilization. I think the number one existential threat facing humanity is a climate catastrophe. But pointing to population increase, which has been done since the 18th century (recall Jonathan Swift's satire A Modest Proposal for eating Irish children) is not only simplistic, but carries very dangerous, morally ugly implications.
Most people like myself don't "choose" to live in cities because they especially like cities, although many people wealthier than I certainly do. We live in cities because it's the only affordable option, within walking distance of doctors, pharmacies, grocery stores and a governmental infrastructure to support us. Should I live in the boonies so I'd have to jump in my car every time I needed half-and-half for my coffee? City dwelling with mass transit is more sustainable.
Where would I get the land to live the way you and your husband do, in the forests of the PAC Northwest? In the 60s and 70s, the counterculture inspired a rural commune movement, all kinds of middle and upper middle class kids bailing out of the rat race to live off the land; there were thousands of communes all across the country at one point. But they quickly dwindled and there are less than a hundred left because living communally creates a whole suite of new problems. That would be the only choice I'd have if I wanted to pick up and move to the boonies.
I have been an environmentalist / conservationist my whole life; I have raised money and awareness for the cause. But there are different strains of environmentalism, sometimes at cross purposes with each other. There's the environmental justice movement which works to get redress for marginalized communities forced to live in pollution-ridden areas, which is about as far from the Sierra Club demographic as you can imagine. I strenuously object to NIMBY environmentalism; Trump is the ultimate NIMBY. I loathe Cape Codders who lobby against offshore wind farms because it spoils their precious view. I think there ought to be wholesale zoning reform so we can start to build desperately needed affordable housing. And while I am the last thing from an advocate for large families, I will not tell anyone to violate their genetic prerogative to reproduce. Who am I to do that? Is my life more valuable than theirs?
Leigh means Meadow...so I take Environment EXTREMELY seriously!! You know I agree with your stand..I went back to my reply and noted all my terrible misspellings.. That's embarrassing . I will try harder to be careful..
YOU are well read...that's obvious!!! I am delighted you care...As we , live in the wilds and are trying to save our tiny patch of wilderness, even though we are surrounded by magas.. We moved from SoCal in 1987 and found a HOVEL five miles from the nearsest neighbor, thinking that we could survive by finding work designomg natural gardens in the nearest communities thirty miles distant. I tell you this so you understand our position.. Our little shack ( we called it a cabin...)It had been hand made in the 1920s..had NO running water, no inside toilet facilities and no electricity.. In many ways we had stepped back over 100 years and thought we'd adjust. We managed to live this way for eight years. We were in our forties and it really gave us an appreciation of this wonderful land. It was inexpensive, but we had come from very good incomes in SoCal, working for for ten times as much as were were able to bring in that first year, designing gardens and making alpine troughs for fellow rock gardeners. We worked hard and the hardest part was cutting madrone for heating and cooking.. Everyone that lives in cified circumstances takes for granted all the various modern conviences, right??? We had... We had to cut at least five cords of madrone a year, split and dry. Madrone is a wonderful plant in that it regenerates from the roots when you cut it. and there were a lot of them.. A cord, for those who do NOT know is eight feet by four feetwide and four feet high. Imagine what the pioneers went through to survive..
Our area was originally inhabited by the local tribes..the "Latgawas"...peaceful mountain people who tried to survive the European ONSLAUGHT. by the late eighteen hundreds they had been killed, rounded up and marched off to a coastal town to be with tribes that had nothing incommon with each other. Terrible mistreatment!!
We found eveidence of these people on "our" land. These people had never mistreated the local areas that w had now taken to be our own.
I only mention all of this to give a certain perspective of mine and Walt's living in these mountains in the Lower Cascades. Wedid NOT hunt...except with camera. We did try to grow some veggies...but since we were on the road to find work so often our veggie gardens were not productive..We were NOT the "commune " variety of land people.
How does this information relate to what you wrote?? NONE of our lives are more valuable to this planet than those who live harnmoniously with nature as we are trying to do..We are NOT perfect...We have made mistakes. The land we are on now does have electricity and we have tried to keep the land as natural as possible.. Wwe choose native plants as our foundation for our garden which is basically a place for lizards, snakes, frogs, birds and other wildlife that we enjoy watching.. This IS vital to us.. I have to say that we all leave a foot print.. I look around this incredible country and I'm so grateful that we are surrounded by our mountains, our trees, our bears and deer..and I am certainly grateful that not all people choose to live as we do...We are simply caretakers.
In the 1800s we had not yet reached ONE BILLION...and even though the Europeans had effectively taken over much of the UN European continents. We, too support various Environmental causes ...including Sierra club.. here's, a tragedy...We are losing VAST amounts of native trees set off by climate change, beetle, fungus and over logging.. We drive the back roads and we see the horrendous CLEAR CUTS on private lands due to greed of Logging corporations.. saving Old growth has become a joke... We had tree stumps on the first place we'd lived in that were EIGHT FEET ACROSS!! These trees were Douglas firs...and Incense cedars...huge...Now we are lucky to find trees three feet across. Thank you BOB!! I do appreciate your comments!!!
Hey, Leigh. Let me first say that I really enjoy posting to you, too, and please don't sweat the typos. Typos are only an issue if there's some syntactical confusion and I find none of that in your posts. I'm just old school and on a full-size QWERTY keyboard and post here from the web and not an app, so I have an edit function in substack which others don't.
I am deeply impressed by the life you and Walt made in the forest. I am deeply impressed by your attitude toward the land and the wild creatures you share it with. I also get incredibly demoralized by all the clear cutting and slash and burn agriculture that's making it harder and harder for wild creatures to survive. I'm a cat guy. I adore my Bronto to the ends of the earth, but I also love the smaller wildcats, the prionailurus and leopardus felinae in South America and Asia. The rusty spotted cats, manuls, ocelots and their relatives. Their habitat loss absolutely crushes me :(
I also get infuriated by the influencers trying to convince people to own these animals as pets. Every time I see a video of a "big floppa" caracal on somebody's couch I want to tear my hair out. Caracals are incredibly beautiful animals but they're not freakin' pets. Or the a-holes trying to convince people to own cheetahs. Cheetahs are the least aggressive of the bigger cats! Cheetahs don't have humans on the menu! Humans have trained cheetahs for thousands of years! Cheetahs can be incredibly affectionate to their human owners and make great family protection like German Shepherds! Yeah, and you're just goosing the poachers and normalizing the illegal wild animal trade. I want to KILL these people.
So I really hate having to disagree with you on one point, Leigh, since we agree on so many things. "The planet" doesn't have a morality. There have been at least five great extinction events before the Cenozoic. The planet wasn't upset that an asteroid hit the Yucatan peninsula and wiped out nearly all of the dinosaurs. The planet was okay with the newly-evolved phytoplankton creating so much oxygen with photosynthesis in the Great Oxygen Catastrophe that it wiped out nearly all other life (oxygen, being one of the most reactive elements, is extremely toxic to organisms that haven't evolved defenses for it). As Charles Darwin pointed out, there is not telos in evolution. Survival and reproduction are the only imperatives and they're entirely local. There is no inherent global intention that we evolve in one direction over another direction.
So when we talk about "what the planet wants," we're projecting our own morality onto it. This is the Naturalistic Fallacy. This includes the indigenous cultures with animist religions that posit a spirit in each and every thing. These are fine and noble notions, but they come from our own morality, which is entirely a human construction. So "the planet" doesn't take sides in who gets to survive and who doesn't. And because our morality is human, we don't get to decide who is more morally fit to survive without violating the basic tenet, in all major religions and ethical systems, of universal equality. I grew up in the 'burbs but I've lived in cities my entire adult life. That doesn't make me any more or any less worthy of survival than anyone else.
YOU ARE SO COTRRECT!!! Damn it!! I totally agree with your total position...Ain't SEMANTICS cool???
Love your stand on felidae...all of them...and i have to say I was guilty once of owning a Thai otter in my younger days after reading "Ring of Bright Water" by Gavin maxwell...My stupidity...and later fell in love with a Leopard Cat...raised in captivity....WRONG WRONG WRONG!! Mea culpa...We do have cougars that roam our mountains...and I just hope we can keep it wild enough here so they can survive...
We had four kitties, all adopted and wonderful...and the eldest "Seggy" was with us for twenty two years. One by one they "out grew" us and became a part of that unsympathetic UNIVERSE...we all do eventually...our atoms rearranging themselves into other parts of the planet...so I DO understand and do not knock your wisdom and education ...and if my silly morality offends please just laugh it off... I do know better...and while I believe in an Infinite Universe...and do not think of myself as "religious" it seems that I still talk to my trees...LOL!! Oh...and my Toyota RAV.. Take it with humor...we all need it right now!!! HUGS to you and BRONTO!!! ( brontosaurus???)
Apologies. Mr Cuban ain't my jam. I own a business. His reality and mine are worlds apart. Now, if he were to give money for healthy school lunches for kids, there might be less need for cheaper drugs. Just sayin'.
TRUTH!!! And finding ways to HELP the planet rather than just talking about the "Walmarts"..drugs are a big problem...because so many are just "cover-ups"...they do not 'cure'...
This Mark Cuban podcast was amazing!!! I love Mark! One of the smartest, most honest, down to earth people wo can explain concepts in plain language we can all understand. Love his drug and health care programs! More please!!!!
When Trump came into office in January our government had less employees than it did in 1980 and our deficit is huge where is the correlation? Bill Clinton shrank the government but he did it over five years and at the same time the middle class boomed he also raised taxes on the wealthy and of course he balanced the budget.
Clinton was wonderful in that regard!!! HE DID IT!! Then Bush Jr stepped in and we had '9-11"
which changed everything....at least our perspective ..and we spent a LOT on a war that shouldn't have happened. Then the economy tanked because certain greedy banks made it easy for people to over spend on buying their homes...and Obama did a reverse...Obama wasn't perfect but he did dig us out somewhat..( best speech maker ever!!!) .then back to the felon who NEVER should've been allowed to run after his FAKE UNIVERSITY SCANDAL!!! It was so obvious!! A crook running for presidency on lies...
I certainly think Mark Cuban's heart is in the right place. But I don't think he's a supergenius, either; I think he's a bright, motivated enthusiast. In America we're prone to idolizing entrepreneurs and glorifying them into things that they're not, which is not meant at all as a slight on Mark. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were inspired tinkerers, not scientific geniuses.
What Mark has, which is endemic to tech entrepreneurs, is Futurism Disease. And Futurism Disease can be a very dangerous thing; there are strains of it which are indistinguishable from Hitlerian fascism (hello, Curtis Yarvin!). Mark's is more the softer, humanitarian HG Wells strain, a vision of a benign technocracy that serves the people. I mean, he was like a little boy in a candy store, all lit up at the idea of robots and AI replacing all those jobs, you know, the _dangerous jobs_ that nobody wants to do, anyway. Heh, tell that to the average West Virginia coal miner.
Hillary tried telling that to the average West Virginia coal miner. They didn't like it very much.
Rick, being a little more connected to politics, to his credit has confronted this and entertained the idea of a UBI for all those thousands, maybe millions, of workers pink slipped by the coming AI / robotics revolution. I have mixed feelings about UBI, which is paying people not to work.
I mean, first and foremost it's a grave insult to self worth and human dignity to deprive people of a reason to get up in the morning. On a social level, I don't think it would be healthy, to say the least, to have all these butts glued to their couches going down rabbit holes on their devices.
This is why I'm an old school FDR / JM Keynes kinda guy (fuck the Austrian school and neoliberalsm forever). I'd rather the money that firms previously spent on payroll be taxed _heavily_ and used by the government for essential projects of civic improvement, including Green New Deal-type projects to retrofit / insulate homes and build affordable housing.
I was just teasing Rick because he likes to pal around with his free market dudebros, and Mark is a galaxy brain free marketeer (one of the reasons I refuse to call him a "genius"). Mark has a lot of experience as a celebrity, but he really does not have a holistic understanding of the economy, which Rick does. He was pushing the standard business school line about the inevitability of the free market, stuff that I heard from my neoliberal landlord in the 80s, you know, we should keep the high-tech manufacturing here but let the T-shirt makers go to China. A year ago before I moved into this building, I lived above a T-shirt silk screener. His job has to go to China, now? Mark didn't even pause for a femtosecond to reckon with this.
"Grass roots" are often a problem...they rarely "get it" ...there are too few are people who research and bother to separate the truth from the lies...it's all about THEIR CREATURE COMFORTS...Our nation is so wrapped up in "WHAT I WANT" ...rather than making sure our kids have the best educations , for the next generation...and the religious far right keeps them thinking that way..Taxes ARE necessary...but ALL should be taxed fairly...BUT ...damn it!!...EDUCATION IS VITAL!!! Drugs are a cover up..
I certainly agree with you, Leigh, that education is paramount. But it's hard to imagine any senior citizen sneering at the idea of exorbitant drug prices and calling concern about it a "cover up." Medical debt is a serious problem in this country and prices for generic drugs especially are becoming unaffordable. I'm extremely lucky; I'm a healthy 65-year-old currently with no need for prescription medications. But I am the exception, hardly the rule and I'd never sneer at my fellow seniors who struggle to pay for their prescriptions or have to choose between them and other essentials.
The Federal workforce has stayed about the same over the last decades while the US population has grown much larger. They are asked to do more with less over and over. It is shameful that we do not have beautiful government buildings with lovely lobbies set up to serve as post, social security, health, passports and other services in every large town.
The United States prints its own money. It has debt that is never due. It carries the lowest interest rate of any debt in the world.
The US has an economy of about 25 to 30 trillion per year. So debt to GDP is now about 110 percent, about the debt during WW2. That debt, by the way, was never paid off, it was just continually refinanced. Great Britian, during the height of its empire had a debt to gdp ratio of 250 percent.
Even though comparing kitchen table finances to government finances is silly, there is one comparison to make. If you bought a house for say 300,000 dollars and your income was 100000 dollars you were 300 percent in debt to your income. AND that debt was due in 30 years and carried a higher interest rate than US gov debt.
The biggest threat to American prosperity is not the debt, but the ignorance, stupidity and nihilism of the Republican Party. If our own citizens and the citizens and governments of the world loses confidence in American leadership, honesty, and capability, to run a government, collect taxes, etc, then all our ability to do anything financially will be in jeopardy.
The stupidity of tariffs, bullying, forsaking our allies for dictators, destroying government functions will not help our standing in the world. People will think twice about buying American bonds.
One last note. Our economy generates a GDP of 22 trillion dollars in 12 months! Why are you not freaked out about that! Its due in 12 months!!!! The debt is due, well, never.
(apologies for the delay, lots of commentary I need to get around)
> The United States prints its own money.
Here lies a huge portion of the problem.
We have an advantage due to global reserve currency, strong institutional trust, we manage interest rates and money supply somewhat effectively, and yes our economy is highly productive.
But, the goal should not be do spend like crazy on useless shinola and unnecessary programs not related to us. I'm not advocating a complete 0 deficit, but spending less money on interest can help more people.
> It has debt ... a debt to GDP ratio of 250 percent.
The worst of the G20 is Japan at around ~326%. Italy and US is around ~128% (depending on month/year). Would you believe Russia has the best debt ration in the G20 at ~16%?
Our WW2 was MUCH lower than you say (lie):
Year GDP (USD Billions) Debt (USD Billions) Debt-to-GDP Ratio (%)
1940 101.4 50.7 50.0%
1941 126.7 57.5 45.4%
1942 161.9 78.6 48.5%
1943 198.6 136.7 68.9%
That I could live with (%-wise) and afford more services to the people that need it.
> Even though comparing kitchen table ... of the Republican Party.
Incorrect. But, lettuce quell your emotions on this. Simply reducing the debt payment would lead to lower tax rates, cuts, free funds for other services (healthcare is TOO HIGH), infrastructure, reduced inflation, more capital for business/R&D, etc . Plus, we could demand lower interest rates on loans. Does this kitchen table finances make sense to you? And I never said it is the biggest thread (debt), but is one we can (and starting to) control.
If you don't believe this, then I cannot help you as you are too emotionally driven and the sting of cognitive dissonance will allow you to fall on your sword until you implode.
> If our own citizens and the citizens ..., well, never.
Well, I will say, I would like the current president to be more 'presidential', but as they say, you cant have everything.
To quell another lie, our own citizens have more confidence this country is on the right track than any other time since 2004. Go outside for a while, breath in alternate view points, try to improve (yourself) as a citizen of this country. It's ok to be in the minority, it makes all of us stronger. Relish in that, just don't ruin other people property and speak clearly and plainly.
Other countries. Yeah, I agree. They are all melting. Like Canada, in which, 75% of their exports are to the US. Mexico will likely going to a recession. The EU is waking up. These sh*tbags in Venezuela will get their due, etc. No, I am not wanting anyone to do poorly, but lets face it, we are the 800lb gorilla. Thankfully so. As the worlds policeman (which I do not like), its time for them (other countries) to unveil the harsh reality of life.
I'm not for bumping up the tariffs, but do agree on reciprocal tariffs. No other country would take care of us if we don't take care of ourselves by sane principals, fiduciary responsibilities, laws, free speech, etc. This is all hampered by crazy sh*tbags like Schiff, Crockett, McConnell, Ohmar, Watters, etc. go on. Note: the other side also has sh*tbags (MTG) as well, so I concede that.
Lastly, try imagine playing chess vs checkers. It is exactly what the current administration is doing. Once sovereignties come to their senses, American's strength can be sustainable for past our lifetimes , no thanks to the hurdles of turning a blind eye such as people in your camp.
Isolating our manufacturing behind trade walls will shrink its reach and make it less competitive. Pissing off trade partners, who recently agreed to redo trade agreements, will lead to less US trade and other nations seeing the US as a country that will not live up to any agreements, so why bother. This is all: me big strong man populism, its not chess. It will lead to fewer jobs, lousy products and fewer markets. Kind of a Putin like thing.
If on the other hand, we as a country heavily funded education, science, advanced manufacturing, and product development, Chips act anyone? Instead of alienating our trade partners and pushing fake economics, then our outlook would be sunnier.
US debt to gdp in ww2 is easy to find. Just look it up.
Consumer confidence is lower right now since at any point since the '08 financial meltdown, just sayin'.
The right track / wrong track numbers _collapsed_ in Dubya's second term. so holding '04 up as some sort of charmed era is more than a little ludicrous ;)
Apologies for the delay. I have not ignored you. As a contributing member of this countries GDP, coupled with a stack of responses I need to get to, there will be delays. I'm taking this one on 1st since it is the latest (of your rebuttals).
Ok, Consumer confidence.
Just a point of clarification here. We are talking about 2 different confidence levels.
Which is basically our fellow Americans overspending with money they do not have. While I can only offer wisdom to 'Not spend what you don't have.', lowering rates (last administration), will bring consumer confidence back up again. and (over) spending can happen again.
I'm talking about the confidence American citizens have in the current administration on 'righting the ship'.
Even your leftist news media says so (so, it must be true, right)? Click at your own mental stability peril:
The current administration is playing chess? Really? It looks more like they're eating the pieces and laughing about it over Signal, LOL
Ever since Nixon took us off the gold standard by ending Bretton Woods, people have been bellyaching about the deficit. But it's never been about the deficit. It's never been about government waste, which you haven't made a single coherent argument about and are reduced to the absurdity of saying that Elon is a smart guy and he'll know where the waste is. ROTFL
The last president to balance the budget was, of course, a Democrat, Bill Clinton. Republicans don't want balanced budgets because they're ideologically opposed to the government. They think they can shrink government by blowing massive holes in the budget through tax cuts targeted to the wealthiest, which Reagan, both Bushes and Trump did. These tax cuts do not lead to increased economic growth; the economy grew more under Clinton, Obama and Biden. Trump was, in fact, the first president to have a net job loss on his watch since Herbert Hoover.
The idea in this scam, which you are playing right along with despite cosplaying on this comment board as some kind of "centrist Democrat," is to create such a moral panic about "the deficit" that it convinces the public to support the idea that we have "too much government." That is the entire set of ideological talking points you're attempting to lay out here. I can't tell if you're a sincere fool or some kind of ideological whore, as if it matters.
Ask the American people right now how they feel about shock cuts in the FAA, NIH, USPS, NWS, NOAA, HHS, HUD, SSA. Not to mention the inspectors general who were summarily fired and all the regulatory agencies that were birddogging Elon's _massive_ grift, malfeasance and corrupt collusion with Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. You want to cut government waste? Remove Elon's US citizenship and deport him back to South Africa. He makes Sam Bankman-Fried look like amateur hour.
As popular as herpes. And that's why the Republicans are beginning to panic about losing the midterms. And no turd polisher like you is going to help them.
> But it's never been about the deficit. It's never been about government waste, which you haven't made a single coherent argument about and are reduced to the absurdity of saying that Elon is a smart guy and he'll know where the waste is. ROTFL
I'm not sure where you have been?!?!
You're path to clarity will never be complete if you do not open your eyes to this. If you take the red pill here, you'll find all sorts of truths you just do not want to believe. But I will lay some out:
1. We need to lower the interest on the deficit. See the posts (above) in this thread and you'll see why. So yes. the deficit does matter due to interest and the lack of funds needed to support our fellow citizens that have less.
2. Government waste is abhorrent. This is truly a marquise moment for you. I only ask for you to have courage here. You have two options:
a. Take the blue pill. Do nothing. Dismiss any truths that cause your pride, self absorption to not change course and heal. Continue with your hate, anxiety, violence, and dismal of facts.
b. Take the red pill. Go in with an open mind and take in some wild facts that help you combat your personal delusions and willful ignorance. It will sting at first, but you'll come out a better American. If you click the below (takes courage, I know), and come back to me with the same head case, I will be amazed:
On the former, I honestly got (only) 7 out of 10 right. Can you beat that score? I hope so.
3. I'll take Elon's patriotism, smarts, common sense over yours, however.
> The last president to balance the budget was, of course, a Democrat, Bill Clinton.
Agreed! Well done Bill!
> Republicans don't want balanced budgets because they're ideologically opposed to the government. They think they can shrink government by blowing massive holes in the budget through tax cuts targeted to the wealthiest, which Reagan, both Bushes and Trump did. These tax cuts do not lead to increased economic growth; the economy grew more under Clinton, Obama and Biden. Trump was, in fact, the first president to have a net job loss on his watch since Herbert Hoover.
See here. While your rhetoric is just what you want to believe, I actually provide proof to you. This is for your benefit. It would be nice if all these people I talk to provide proof and not emotional rhetoric. So, here is proof on who pays taxes. Another Red pill:
U.S. Federal Tax Burden by Income Group (2021-2022 Data)
Income Group % of Total Federal Income Taxes Paid Effective Federal Income Tax Rate Share of Total Income
1. The Wealthiest Pay the Majority of Federal Income Taxes
• The top 1% alone contributes nearly 46% of all federal income taxes, despite earning 22% of total U.S. income.
• The top 10% pays over 77% of all income taxes.
2. Middle and Upper-Middle Classes Bear a Significant Burden
• The top 25% (earning $87K+) pays nearly 90% of all federal income taxes.
• The top 50% (earning $45K+) contributes almost 98% of total income tax revenue.
3. Lower-Income Earners Pay Very Little or No Federal Income Tax
• The bottom 50% of earners contribute just 2.3% of all federal income taxes.
• Many in this group receive refunds, credits (EITC, CTC), and deductions that reduce or eliminate their tax liability.
• Roughly 40% of U.S. households effectively pay zero or negative federal income taxes after credits.
4. Payroll Taxes, Sales Taxes, and Local Taxes Impact Lower Earners More
• Lower earners pay less in income taxes but still contribute through payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare), sales taxes, and state/local taxes.
• The payroll tax burden is flat (15.3% split between employer and employee) and hits all workers regardless of income.
If you product more in GDP, you get taxed. If you provide nothing, you do not (get taxed as much). Due to we all have free will and can choose to be successful or just survive, this makes sense.
> Ask the American people right now how they feel about shock cuts in the FAA, NIH, USPS, NWS, NOAA, HHS, HUD, SSA. Not to mention the inspectors general who were summarily fired and all the regulatory agencies that were birddogging Elon's _massive_ grift, malfeasance and corrupt collusion with Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. You want to cut government waste? Remove Elon's US citizenship and deport him back to South Africa. He makes Sam Bankman-Fried look like amateur hour.
As an American, this is what I voted for. Welcome to the real world.
Not sure on the collusion you are referring to. Again, lets try to provide facts than listening to 'The View.' I did think your comment on Elon's citizenship/revoking was funny, nice! (I mean that, I like comedy which is basically an ironic statement).
> As popular as herpes. And that's why the Republicans are beginning to panic about losing the midterms. And no turd polisher like you is going to help them.
Looks like herpes is popular (G7 countries):
Country HSV-1 HSV-2 Total HSV Prevalence
United States 🇺🇸 47.8% 12.1% ~55-60%
Canada 🇨🇦 50% 10-12% ~55-62%
United Kingdom 🇬🇧50-60% 8-10% ~55-65%
Germany 🇩🇪 60% 10-12% ~65-70%
France 🇫🇷 67% 17% ~70-75%
Italy 🇮🇹 70% 10-12% ~70-75%
Japan 🇯🇵 50-60% 7-10% ~55-65%
Turd polisher? I respect your opinion as an American. That said, I have a stack of responses to get to. I realize that people who make decisions based on emotions take much longer to console. I will have to start triaging who can be helped (red pill) and who cannot (blue pill). So, *IF* I don't respond to more claims, its because of this triage decision making.
Dude, are you on the spectrum? Because you're illustrating some of the tics of high-functioning autism. You take snark literally. "As popular as herpes" is _an expression_ and you hit me with a large list of herpes rates by country. Did you actually have to google that? Why? You're trying to argue that herpes is _popular?_ Who would do that? Someone with a stunted social intelligence who cannot parse emotional intent is who.
Your go-to attack on people who disagree with you is that we're being "emotional." Yes, we're humans and we're being appropriately emotional. You, OTOH, seem to have an emotional intelligence deficit which Elmo has convinced you is some kind of superpower. It's not.
You address me like a wannabe cult leader and cite the most tired alt-right trope of all from the Wachowskis (who are both, incidentally, trans women, which is an irony that never stops being delicious), "take the red pill."
Dude, I'm a 65-year-old on Social Security. You haven't the tiniest clue how to interpret your audience. Elon Musk had some talent as a teenage coder but he also inherited a huge emerald fortune and made a few lucky investments during the dot.com boom. He didn't start Tesla, he essentially hijacked the company and his design input was relegated to their most recent, disastrous marque, the CyberTruck, essentially a giant FU to Tesla's previous customer base and an engineering failure on its own terms.
Elon didn't innovate anything from SpaceX, NeuraLink, StarLink or The Boring Company, either. Elon is not an engineer or a technologist; he's an entrepreneur and he hires engineers and technologists. He's a "visionary." He has galaxy brain visions of a dystopian future. He's gone from being a poster boy for weaning us off fossil fuels (more a Tesla marketing pose than a true belief) to an evangelist for Mars colonization because there are more planets out there to wreck like this one.
As for Elmo's grift, you wouldn't know a thing about it because you get your news from X, and Elmo the "free speech absolutist" (ROTFL !) deletes all tweets which are critical of his businesses. It is a well known fact in the real world that Elmo's _entire wealth_ is predicated on government subsidies and contracts, in particular Tesla, SpaceX and StarLink. Musk's businesses were also under at least 17 federal investigations for securities fraud, labor and OSHA violations among other things. Trump replaced the heads of all those agencies and the investigations went away. Elmo is in the middle of attempting to buy a WI Supreme Court seat with a million dollar lottery and $100 giveaways to voters. This is so luridly corrupt it makes Teapot Dome look like a shoplifting teenager. The idea that Elon Musk is "fighting waste, fraud and abuse" while gorging himself on the government trough with all oversight castrated is revolting.
Elon, like Peter Theil and Marc Andreessen, is a devotee of Curtis Yarvin and the so-called Dark Enlightenment. His view of humanity is beyond dystopian and he is an old-school "scientific" racialist (rebooting apartheid in South Africa is on his bucket list). He believes that people like me, beyond their productive years, should be rendered into biomass diesel fuel.
These guys all believe in the so-called Singularity when AI and robots become self-replicating and automate the vast majority of humanity out of jobs and Elon can then enjoy it while they starve to death with no public support. They foresee an inevitable climate catastrophe that will cause resource wars all around the globe and send desperate climate refugees streaming north, and he can watch while Trump massacres them at the border. The Matrix really isn't the sci-fi key here. It's more like Mad Max.
As for your economic points about who pays taxes, I'll simply note -- and this fact is indisputable -- that the ultra-wealthy pay less taxes in America than anywhere else in the civilized world, including tax havens like Liechtenstein. The Nordic social democracies are the happiest countries in the world by objective metrics because they appropriately tax their wealthy.
Finally, you're entitled to vote how you want. But to quote the immortal Dude, yeah, but that's just like _your opinion,_ man. None of your sources are credible. Hint: X is a propaganda mill, not an honest source. DogeTracker is a shill site. You want to cut government waste? You do it with accredited, independent auditors, not with a crew of 20-something autistic incels who worship Elon Musk like cult members.
One last point: You cannot gaslight me. I am not overly proud, self-absorbed, hateful, anxious or violent. I am righteously and deservedly pissed. And like our host Rick Wilson, I am a happy warrior. You? You claim to contribute to the GDP, but I can't imagine you're anything more than a low-level YouTube influencer. If you actually ran a company you wouldn't have time for these massive dumps of ideological screed and wingnut talking points.
Yea, sorry, I do get tired of the debt commentary when there is so little understanding. I have relatives that spew FOX talking points, only of course on que. When the debt is increased for stupid tax cuts to the wealthy, (that pay for themselves of course) FOX tells viewers to embrace debt. When a D president is elected, FOX tells viewers it is an existential crisis. And round and round it goes.
Paying down debt during good economic times and expanding debt to head off depressions is good policy. But, our Murdoch controlled populace demands stupid policy.
If the GOP just let the last tax cut to the wealthy expire, the debt and deficit would start to ease. But no. That is too logical.
To support your themes, tax cuts for the wealthy are NEVER stimulative to demand growth. Empirically, since WW2, the rate of growth in capital investment (the 'I' in C+I+G) during Dem administrations is more than double the rate of 'I' growth during GOP admins. The actual facts completely debunk the 'supply side' economic premises. Rather, it is faster growth in demand ('C+G') that causes businesses to invest in capacity expansion. Every business on earth will tell you this (and I have asked hundreds of them). Who knew? (sarcasm.)
Who said this: 'We are all Keynesians now' ?
It was Milton Friedman in 1965, quoted in Time magazine, and later paraphrased by President Nixon. They were both correct.
Junior - I am never surprised by all the name calling, misuse of fake news, and willful delusions of your 'type.' If you cannot have a reasonable debate centered around facts. Continue with your violence to the rest of the American people.
It's unfortunate, that I/we have such emotional control over you. The inability to control your emotions is sheer weakness.
This is the weakness we are attempting to gut from society and make America stronger.
Hands down, the pre-DOGE federal worker is absolute sheet (and I know several). So, I stand by my proclamation. Not saying ALL are terrible, but the recent culling has decreased the dilution substantially. So, bravo for America!
As far as name calling, the president recently signed an EO making this legal, so libtard is something you should get use to. For proof, see here: https://tinyurl.com/533t879a
I do not own a gun, but do carry zip-ties, you never know when a violent, emotional libtard is lurking as most do not have jobs (save the $25/hr to protest gigs).
INTEREST is our 3rd largest expense. More so than Defense. Think how much our interest payments would be if this grows? More interest payments, with a lower population and the SS Ponzi scheme is kaput. Sure we have $$$/GDP, but having the Govt spend less on B.S. means more services for common Americans. Why do I feel I am talking with a socialist? Oh, I probably am.
I learned a lot on this episode. Good stuff about Mark Cuban’s prescription & medical services. I am concerned about hacking our government with a chainsaw. I mean, the government is supposed to work for the people, yet there’s no rhyme or reason for the cuts. They didn’t plan any of it.
Yes work for the people. We need accountability. And those organizations, people, that do not meet the needs of the people, for the people, need to go.
I would call it logic, math, accountability. Elon does not make cuts. He is not a govt employee. He provides data, it's the Dept heads that make cuts, modifications, etc.
Michael, you've apparently been in a coma the past three months. Elon has been cutting wildly and unilaterally, firing people on his own determination, pissing off the agency heads and getting reversed time and again by the courts.
Elon Musk is here illegally and everyone knows it, however mainstream media are too scared to get to the bottom of this!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/26/elon-musk-immigration-status/
And the cowards in the mainstream media ding have the balls 🎱 🎱 to touch it . It’s blatant bribery, Musk paid Trump hundreds of Millions of Dollars to look the other way and do fies Tom Homan. Everyone knows , Musk lied and tricked himself in getting naturalized even thigh he was here ILLEGALLY! Guess immigration laws and federal law doesn’t apply to the wealthiest man on earth who bought Trump the election! I’m so happy@David Pakman is at least picking it up when all those cowards with their so called News shows are just bending down to Mango Mussolini and the ratings. Journalism is dead!
Why is he not shoring us his boss if he had one, we deserve transparency especially slice they are literally harassing targeting and deporting innocent Green Card or other non criminal Visa holders!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/26/elon-musk-immigration-status/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/26/elon-musk-illegal-immigration
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/10/28/us/elon-musk-immigration-washington-post-cec
I find Mark Cuban fascinating, and would love to see him consult with the feds. I don't agree with everything he thinks, but he is a smart guy and is also respectful of what others have to say. He's actually a "good" billionaire.
Is the deficit and debt really related so much to the operation of Federal agencies so much as things like off-budget spending and wars we never taxed for and added to the credit card? Progressively cutting taxes, especially on the highest earners and large organizations, at the same time we continued to maintain or increase spending, seems like it's much more responsible to me than the number of Federal agencies that exist.
Mark Cuban is FASCINATING! I would LOVE sitting down with him and talking about his incredibly objective views....I never knew it was possible to be passionate about common sense practicality, but here I am! Thank you, Rick for having him on. I'll be looking more deeply into Mark Cuban.
Mark Cuban has a rich guy's solution to government efficiency, as well, it would seem. Their solution is always wrapped in a belief that the average person has to make the sacrifices. Give up their job. Make less money, etc.
when, in truth, it is the rich guy that can make the difference without suffering or sacrifice. Be willing to just pay YOUR FAIR SHARE.
Amen, Kathleen. Mark is a good guy, but he very clearly lives in a gazillionaire's bubble.
Example of obscene profiting by the owner of health care cancer treatments. This is a huge seasonal home on Lake Leelanau Michigan.
Never having to "buy" into any politics makes a statement of its own...many of us "ignored" a lot of politics because , even though we voted, we thought everything would 'even out' in the end...a Balance. With Al Gore, I suddenly thought, because I'm an environmentalist, I thought getting our country to be more cognizant of what was happening to our planet on all levels..meant that we should center on the catastrophes happening...even then. I had read Rachel Carson back in the 1960s and because we are involved in our forests where we live..it was VITAL.
.So corporations...who DO run our country, whether its fossil fuels or over use of the land...clear cutting, DO eventually affect our planet.. Economics have been the ONLY thing that people seem to understand..So it has become politisised more than what was happening to OUR HOME... Population growth is the main reason of over use of our resources world wide.. This should've been BEYOND politics...People should be smarter and be aware of what's happening. With trump and musk who could care less..it's still all about control and cash. Too many people are still wrapped up in their own 'materiality'...more than the price of groceries.. Show me uneducated people who even care what's happening worldwide... Thank you!! This was a great conversation..
I'd be very careful about scourging population growth, Leigh. I used to be a professional canvasser for the League of Conservation Voters so I'm familiar with environmental issues. A book that was also popular in the 60s with Silent Spring is The Population Bomb, by Paul and Anne Ehrlich. Their Malthusian assumptions have been debunked; they didn't take into account the Green Revolution. Our planet is actually not close to carrying capacity provided we use our resources right, and that of course includes vigorous decarbonization.
There's a dark side of conservationism as old as Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, which is keeping the planet clean and safe for the right people; this is linked to eugenics, which went hand-in-hand with the early conservation movement in the US. There is no moral foundation to tell some groups that it's okay to breed but not others. This sort of environmentalism is directly linked to ethnonationalism in eco-fascism, a right-wing movement which equates purity of air, water and land with purity of blood. It's the ultimate NIMBY environmentalism and it's repugnant on every level.
I'm a child of the late 60s / early 70s. I made a personal choice not to breed based primarily on environmental reasons. But I have no right to preach that to others.
Careful??? It's beyond obvious... I belong to Population Connection which used to be " Zero Population Growth..ZPG" ..and all the resources used world wide and land loss to wild environments is due to the amount of humans USING and abusing these resources..NOT to mention the amount of extinctions world ide...and here in the USA.. I refuese to apologise for that statement...Everyone is burying their collective heads in the mire. And if you like living in cocrete cities...people stacked over each other that might be your choice...but I prefer WILDLANDS unfettered by humans who go into the wild areas and choose to make it look like another ugly tract of homes....using herbicides, pesticides to keep it "free" of all 'life ' that doesn't"agree" with their idea of what has the right to survive... ( I love almost all arthropods..including spiders) I feel that ALL KIDS need the education and the urge to defend our planet...we have become a virus on this planet...hence MUSK"S pushing to another world...and he has thirteen kids... We , too, made that commitment back in the 60s...my husband and I...totally for environmental reasons... I understand your reasoning...and THAT'S correct... Watch what's happening in Africa,...and already Asia...Orangutans, Rhinos and so many other innocent creatures that have been obliterated,, Thanks Bob, for your come back..it's always a way to make me think more...and ponder...
It should be obvious to you, Leah, that I'm not cheerleading civilization. I think the number one existential threat facing humanity is a climate catastrophe. But pointing to population increase, which has been done since the 18th century (recall Jonathan Swift's satire A Modest Proposal for eating Irish children) is not only simplistic, but carries very dangerous, morally ugly implications.
Most people like myself don't "choose" to live in cities because they especially like cities, although many people wealthier than I certainly do. We live in cities because it's the only affordable option, within walking distance of doctors, pharmacies, grocery stores and a governmental infrastructure to support us. Should I live in the boonies so I'd have to jump in my car every time I needed half-and-half for my coffee? City dwelling with mass transit is more sustainable.
Where would I get the land to live the way you and your husband do, in the forests of the PAC Northwest? In the 60s and 70s, the counterculture inspired a rural commune movement, all kinds of middle and upper middle class kids bailing out of the rat race to live off the land; there were thousands of communes all across the country at one point. But they quickly dwindled and there are less than a hundred left because living communally creates a whole suite of new problems. That would be the only choice I'd have if I wanted to pick up and move to the boonies.
I have been an environmentalist / conservationist my whole life; I have raised money and awareness for the cause. But there are different strains of environmentalism, sometimes at cross purposes with each other. There's the environmental justice movement which works to get redress for marginalized communities forced to live in pollution-ridden areas, which is about as far from the Sierra Club demographic as you can imagine. I strenuously object to NIMBY environmentalism; Trump is the ultimate NIMBY. I loathe Cape Codders who lobby against offshore wind farms because it spoils their precious view. I think there ought to be wholesale zoning reform so we can start to build desperately needed affordable housing. And while I am the last thing from an advocate for large families, I will not tell anyone to violate their genetic prerogative to reproduce. Who am I to do that? Is my life more valuable than theirs?
Leigh means Meadow...so I take Environment EXTREMELY seriously!! You know I agree with your stand..I went back to my reply and noted all my terrible misspellings.. That's embarrassing . I will try harder to be careful..
YOU are well read...that's obvious!!! I am delighted you care...As we , live in the wilds and are trying to save our tiny patch of wilderness, even though we are surrounded by magas.. We moved from SoCal in 1987 and found a HOVEL five miles from the nearsest neighbor, thinking that we could survive by finding work designomg natural gardens in the nearest communities thirty miles distant. I tell you this so you understand our position.. Our little shack ( we called it a cabin...)It had been hand made in the 1920s..had NO running water, no inside toilet facilities and no electricity.. In many ways we had stepped back over 100 years and thought we'd adjust. We managed to live this way for eight years. We were in our forties and it really gave us an appreciation of this wonderful land. It was inexpensive, but we had come from very good incomes in SoCal, working for for ten times as much as were were able to bring in that first year, designing gardens and making alpine troughs for fellow rock gardeners. We worked hard and the hardest part was cutting madrone for heating and cooking.. Everyone that lives in cified circumstances takes for granted all the various modern conviences, right??? We had... We had to cut at least five cords of madrone a year, split and dry. Madrone is a wonderful plant in that it regenerates from the roots when you cut it. and there were a lot of them.. A cord, for those who do NOT know is eight feet by four feetwide and four feet high. Imagine what the pioneers went through to survive..
Our area was originally inhabited by the local tribes..the "Latgawas"...peaceful mountain people who tried to survive the European ONSLAUGHT. by the late eighteen hundreds they had been killed, rounded up and marched off to a coastal town to be with tribes that had nothing incommon with each other. Terrible mistreatment!!
We found eveidence of these people on "our" land. These people had never mistreated the local areas that w had now taken to be our own.
I only mention all of this to give a certain perspective of mine and Walt's living in these mountains in the Lower Cascades. Wedid NOT hunt...except with camera. We did try to grow some veggies...but since we were on the road to find work so often our veggie gardens were not productive..We were NOT the "commune " variety of land people.
How does this information relate to what you wrote?? NONE of our lives are more valuable to this planet than those who live harnmoniously with nature as we are trying to do..We are NOT perfect...We have made mistakes. The land we are on now does have electricity and we have tried to keep the land as natural as possible.. Wwe choose native plants as our foundation for our garden which is basically a place for lizards, snakes, frogs, birds and other wildlife that we enjoy watching.. This IS vital to us.. I have to say that we all leave a foot print.. I look around this incredible country and I'm so grateful that we are surrounded by our mountains, our trees, our bears and deer..and I am certainly grateful that not all people choose to live as we do...We are simply caretakers.
In the 1800s we had not yet reached ONE BILLION...and even though the Europeans had effectively taken over much of the UN European continents. We, too support various Environmental causes ...including Sierra club.. here's, a tragedy...We are losing VAST amounts of native trees set off by climate change, beetle, fungus and over logging.. We drive the back roads and we see the horrendous CLEAR CUTS on private lands due to greed of Logging corporations.. saving Old growth has become a joke... We had tree stumps on the first place we'd lived in that were EIGHT FEET ACROSS!! These trees were Douglas firs...and Incense cedars...huge...Now we are lucky to find trees three feet across. Thank you BOB!! I do appreciate your comments!!!
Hey, Leigh. Let me first say that I really enjoy posting to you, too, and please don't sweat the typos. Typos are only an issue if there's some syntactical confusion and I find none of that in your posts. I'm just old school and on a full-size QWERTY keyboard and post here from the web and not an app, so I have an edit function in substack which others don't.
I am deeply impressed by the life you and Walt made in the forest. I am deeply impressed by your attitude toward the land and the wild creatures you share it with. I also get incredibly demoralized by all the clear cutting and slash and burn agriculture that's making it harder and harder for wild creatures to survive. I'm a cat guy. I adore my Bronto to the ends of the earth, but I also love the smaller wildcats, the prionailurus and leopardus felinae in South America and Asia. The rusty spotted cats, manuls, ocelots and their relatives. Their habitat loss absolutely crushes me :(
I also get infuriated by the influencers trying to convince people to own these animals as pets. Every time I see a video of a "big floppa" caracal on somebody's couch I want to tear my hair out. Caracals are incredibly beautiful animals but they're not freakin' pets. Or the a-holes trying to convince people to own cheetahs. Cheetahs are the least aggressive of the bigger cats! Cheetahs don't have humans on the menu! Humans have trained cheetahs for thousands of years! Cheetahs can be incredibly affectionate to their human owners and make great family protection like German Shepherds! Yeah, and you're just goosing the poachers and normalizing the illegal wild animal trade. I want to KILL these people.
So I really hate having to disagree with you on one point, Leigh, since we agree on so many things. "The planet" doesn't have a morality. There have been at least five great extinction events before the Cenozoic. The planet wasn't upset that an asteroid hit the Yucatan peninsula and wiped out nearly all of the dinosaurs. The planet was okay with the newly-evolved phytoplankton creating so much oxygen with photosynthesis in the Great Oxygen Catastrophe that it wiped out nearly all other life (oxygen, being one of the most reactive elements, is extremely toxic to organisms that haven't evolved defenses for it). As Charles Darwin pointed out, there is not telos in evolution. Survival and reproduction are the only imperatives and they're entirely local. There is no inherent global intention that we evolve in one direction over another direction.
So when we talk about "what the planet wants," we're projecting our own morality onto it. This is the Naturalistic Fallacy. This includes the indigenous cultures with animist religions that posit a spirit in each and every thing. These are fine and noble notions, but they come from our own morality, which is entirely a human construction. So "the planet" doesn't take sides in who gets to survive and who doesn't. And because our morality is human, we don't get to decide who is more morally fit to survive without violating the basic tenet, in all major religions and ethical systems, of universal equality. I grew up in the 'burbs but I've lived in cities my entire adult life. That doesn't make me any more or any less worthy of survival than anyone else.
YOU ARE SO COTRRECT!!! Damn it!! I totally agree with your total position...Ain't SEMANTICS cool???
Love your stand on felidae...all of them...and i have to say I was guilty once of owning a Thai otter in my younger days after reading "Ring of Bright Water" by Gavin maxwell...My stupidity...and later fell in love with a Leopard Cat...raised in captivity....WRONG WRONG WRONG!! Mea culpa...We do have cougars that roam our mountains...and I just hope we can keep it wild enough here so they can survive...
We had four kitties, all adopted and wonderful...and the eldest "Seggy" was with us for twenty two years. One by one they "out grew" us and became a part of that unsympathetic UNIVERSE...we all do eventually...our atoms rearranging themselves into other parts of the planet...so I DO understand and do not knock your wisdom and education ...and if my silly morality offends please just laugh it off... I do know better...and while I believe in an Infinite Universe...and do not think of myself as "religious" it seems that I still talk to my trees...LOL!! Oh...and my Toyota RAV.. Take it with humor...we all need it right now!!! HUGS to you and BRONTO!!! ( brontosaurus???)
Leigh...the dragonlady...har har...
Apologies. Mr Cuban ain't my jam. I own a business. His reality and mine are worlds apart. Now, if he were to give money for healthy school lunches for kids, there might be less need for cheaper drugs. Just sayin'.
TRUTH!!! And finding ways to HELP the planet rather than just talking about the "Walmarts"..drugs are a big problem...because so many are just "cover-ups"...they do not 'cure'...
This Mark Cuban podcast was amazing!!! I love Mark! One of the smartest, most honest, down to earth people wo can explain concepts in plain language we can all understand. Love his drug and health care programs! More please!!!!
When Trump came into office in January our government had less employees than it did in 1980 and our deficit is huge where is the correlation? Bill Clinton shrank the government but he did it over five years and at the same time the middle class boomed he also raised taxes on the wealthy and of course he balanced the budget.
Clinton was wonderful in that regard!!! HE DID IT!! Then Bush Jr stepped in and we had '9-11"
which changed everything....at least our perspective ..and we spent a LOT on a war that shouldn't have happened. Then the economy tanked because certain greedy banks made it easy for people to over spend on buying their homes...and Obama did a reverse...Obama wasn't perfect but he did dig us out somewhat..( best speech maker ever!!!) .then back to the felon who NEVER should've been allowed to run after his FAKE UNIVERSITY SCANDAL!!! It was so obvious!! A crook running for presidency on lies...
I certainly think Mark Cuban's heart is in the right place. But I don't think he's a supergenius, either; I think he's a bright, motivated enthusiast. In America we're prone to idolizing entrepreneurs and glorifying them into things that they're not, which is not meant at all as a slight on Mark. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were inspired tinkerers, not scientific geniuses.
What Mark has, which is endemic to tech entrepreneurs, is Futurism Disease. And Futurism Disease can be a very dangerous thing; there are strains of it which are indistinguishable from Hitlerian fascism (hello, Curtis Yarvin!). Mark's is more the softer, humanitarian HG Wells strain, a vision of a benign technocracy that serves the people. I mean, he was like a little boy in a candy store, all lit up at the idea of robots and AI replacing all those jobs, you know, the _dangerous jobs_ that nobody wants to do, anyway. Heh, tell that to the average West Virginia coal miner.
Hillary tried telling that to the average West Virginia coal miner. They didn't like it very much.
Rick, being a little more connected to politics, to his credit has confronted this and entertained the idea of a UBI for all those thousands, maybe millions, of workers pink slipped by the coming AI / robotics revolution. I have mixed feelings about UBI, which is paying people not to work.
I mean, first and foremost it's a grave insult to self worth and human dignity to deprive people of a reason to get up in the morning. On a social level, I don't think it would be healthy, to say the least, to have all these butts glued to their couches going down rabbit holes on their devices.
This is why I'm an old school FDR / JM Keynes kinda guy (fuck the Austrian school and neoliberalsm forever). I'd rather the money that firms previously spent on payroll be taxed _heavily_ and used by the government for essential projects of civic improvement, including Green New Deal-type projects to retrofit / insulate homes and build affordable housing.
Just call me a Communist, LOL
If you are a communist, I am also one - though I prefer "Left-wing Lunatic".
I was just teasing Rick because he likes to pal around with his free market dudebros, and Mark is a galaxy brain free marketeer (one of the reasons I refuse to call him a "genius"). Mark has a lot of experience as a celebrity, but he really does not have a holistic understanding of the economy, which Rick does. He was pushing the standard business school line about the inevitability of the free market, stuff that I heard from my neoliberal landlord in the 80s, you know, we should keep the high-tech manufacturing here but let the T-shirt makers go to China. A year ago before I moved into this building, I lived above a T-shirt silk screener. His job has to go to China, now? Mark didn't even pause for a femtosecond to reckon with this.
"Grass roots" are often a problem...they rarely "get it" ...there are too few are people who research and bother to separate the truth from the lies...it's all about THEIR CREATURE COMFORTS...Our nation is so wrapped up in "WHAT I WANT" ...rather than making sure our kids have the best educations , for the next generation...and the religious far right keeps them thinking that way..Taxes ARE necessary...but ALL should be taxed fairly...BUT ...damn it!!...EDUCATION IS VITAL!!! Drugs are a cover up..
I certainly agree with you, Leigh, that education is paramount. But it's hard to imagine any senior citizen sneering at the idea of exorbitant drug prices and calling concern about it a "cover up." Medical debt is a serious problem in this country and prices for generic drugs especially are becoming unaffordable. I'm extremely lucky; I'm a healthy 65-year-old currently with no need for prescription medications. But I am the exception, hardly the rule and I'd never sneer at my fellow seniors who struggle to pay for their prescriptions or have to choose between them and other essentials.
Mark, run for Governor of Texas. We need to get new representation in TX.
The Federal workforce has stayed about the same over the last decades while the US population has grown much larger. They are asked to do more with less over and over. It is shameful that we do not have beautiful government buildings with lovely lobbies set up to serve as post, social security, health, passports and other services in every large town.
You understand we have 36Trillion in debt, right?
You sound like someone who has never defaulted on a loan, congrats!
This would be a completed disaster if the country did, and these CRs are no joke.
The United States prints its own money. It has debt that is never due. It carries the lowest interest rate of any debt in the world.
The US has an economy of about 25 to 30 trillion per year. So debt to GDP is now about 110 percent, about the debt during WW2. That debt, by the way, was never paid off, it was just continually refinanced. Great Britian, during the height of its empire had a debt to gdp ratio of 250 percent.
Even though comparing kitchen table finances to government finances is silly, there is one comparison to make. If you bought a house for say 300,000 dollars and your income was 100000 dollars you were 300 percent in debt to your income. AND that debt was due in 30 years and carried a higher interest rate than US gov debt.
The biggest threat to American prosperity is not the debt, but the ignorance, stupidity and nihilism of the Republican Party. If our own citizens and the citizens and governments of the world loses confidence in American leadership, honesty, and capability, to run a government, collect taxes, etc, then all our ability to do anything financially will be in jeopardy.
The stupidity of tariffs, bullying, forsaking our allies for dictators, destroying government functions will not help our standing in the world. People will think twice about buying American bonds.
One last note. Our economy generates a GDP of 22 trillion dollars in 12 months! Why are you not freaked out about that! Its due in 12 months!!!! The debt is due, well, never.
(apologies for the delay, lots of commentary I need to get around)
> The United States prints its own money.
Here lies a huge portion of the problem.
We have an advantage due to global reserve currency, strong institutional trust, we manage interest rates and money supply somewhat effectively, and yes our economy is highly productive.
But, the goal should not be do spend like crazy on useless shinola and unnecessary programs not related to us. I'm not advocating a complete 0 deficit, but spending less money on interest can help more people.
> It has debt ... a debt to GDP ratio of 250 percent.
The worst of the G20 is Japan at around ~326%. Italy and US is around ~128% (depending on month/year). Would you believe Russia has the best debt ration in the G20 at ~16%?
Our WW2 was MUCH lower than you say (lie):
Year GDP (USD Billions) Debt (USD Billions) Debt-to-GDP Ratio (%)
1940 101.4 50.7 50.0%
1941 126.7 57.5 45.4%
1942 161.9 78.6 48.5%
1943 198.6 136.7 68.9%
That I could live with (%-wise) and afford more services to the people that need it.
> Even though comparing kitchen table ... of the Republican Party.
Incorrect. But, lettuce quell your emotions on this. Simply reducing the debt payment would lead to lower tax rates, cuts, free funds for other services (healthcare is TOO HIGH), infrastructure, reduced inflation, more capital for business/R&D, etc . Plus, we could demand lower interest rates on loans. Does this kitchen table finances make sense to you? And I never said it is the biggest thread (debt), but is one we can (and starting to) control.
If you don't believe this, then I cannot help you as you are too emotionally driven and the sting of cognitive dissonance will allow you to fall on your sword until you implode.
> If our own citizens and the citizens ..., well, never.
Well, I will say, I would like the current president to be more 'presidential', but as they say, you cant have everything.
To quell another lie, our own citizens have more confidence this country is on the right track than any other time since 2004. Go outside for a while, breath in alternate view points, try to improve (yourself) as a citizen of this country. It's ok to be in the minority, it makes all of us stronger. Relish in that, just don't ruin other people property and speak clearly and plainly.
Other countries. Yeah, I agree. They are all melting. Like Canada, in which, 75% of their exports are to the US. Mexico will likely going to a recession. The EU is waking up. These sh*tbags in Venezuela will get their due, etc. No, I am not wanting anyone to do poorly, but lets face it, we are the 800lb gorilla. Thankfully so. As the worlds policeman (which I do not like), its time for them (other countries) to unveil the harsh reality of life.
I'm not for bumping up the tariffs, but do agree on reciprocal tariffs. No other country would take care of us if we don't take care of ourselves by sane principals, fiduciary responsibilities, laws, free speech, etc. This is all hampered by crazy sh*tbags like Schiff, Crockett, McConnell, Ohmar, Watters, etc. go on. Note: the other side also has sh*tbags (MTG) as well, so I concede that.
Lastly, try imagine playing chess vs checkers. It is exactly what the current administration is doing. Once sovereignties come to their senses, American's strength can be sustainable for past our lifetimes , no thanks to the hurdles of turning a blind eye such as people in your camp.
Isolating our manufacturing behind trade walls will shrink its reach and make it less competitive. Pissing off trade partners, who recently agreed to redo trade agreements, will lead to less US trade and other nations seeing the US as a country that will not live up to any agreements, so why bother. This is all: me big strong man populism, its not chess. It will lead to fewer jobs, lousy products and fewer markets. Kind of a Putin like thing.
If on the other hand, we as a country heavily funded education, science, advanced manufacturing, and product development, Chips act anyone? Instead of alienating our trade partners and pushing fake economics, then our outlook would be sunnier.
US debt to gdp in ww2 is easy to find. Just look it up.
Consumer confidence is lower right now since at any point since the '08 financial meltdown, just sayin'.
The right track / wrong track numbers _collapsed_ in Dubya's second term. so holding '04 up as some sort of charmed era is more than a little ludicrous ;)
Apologies for the delay. I have not ignored you. As a contributing member of this countries GDP, coupled with a stack of responses I need to get to, there will be delays. I'm taking this one on 1st since it is the latest (of your rebuttals).
Ok, Consumer confidence.
Just a point of clarification here. We are talking about 2 different confidence levels.
You are talking Consumer confidence:
https://x.com/ceteraIM/status/1904579475896991794
Which is basically our fellow Americans overspending with money they do not have. While I can only offer wisdom to 'Not spend what you don't have.', lowering rates (last administration), will bring consumer confidence back up again. and (over) spending can happen again.
I'm talking about the confidence American citizens have in the current administration on 'righting the ship'.
Even your leftist news media says so (so, it must be true, right)? Click at your own mental stability peril:
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1901278700244439504
Does this make sense?
You actually quoted the Libs of TikTok, ROTFL
The current administration is playing chess? Really? It looks more like they're eating the pieces and laughing about it over Signal, LOL
Ever since Nixon took us off the gold standard by ending Bretton Woods, people have been bellyaching about the deficit. But it's never been about the deficit. It's never been about government waste, which you haven't made a single coherent argument about and are reduced to the absurdity of saying that Elon is a smart guy and he'll know where the waste is. ROTFL
The last president to balance the budget was, of course, a Democrat, Bill Clinton. Republicans don't want balanced budgets because they're ideologically opposed to the government. They think they can shrink government by blowing massive holes in the budget through tax cuts targeted to the wealthiest, which Reagan, both Bushes and Trump did. These tax cuts do not lead to increased economic growth; the economy grew more under Clinton, Obama and Biden. Trump was, in fact, the first president to have a net job loss on his watch since Herbert Hoover.
The idea in this scam, which you are playing right along with despite cosplaying on this comment board as some kind of "centrist Democrat," is to create such a moral panic about "the deficit" that it convinces the public to support the idea that we have "too much government." That is the entire set of ideological talking points you're attempting to lay out here. I can't tell if you're a sincere fool or some kind of ideological whore, as if it matters.
Ask the American people right now how they feel about shock cuts in the FAA, NIH, USPS, NWS, NOAA, HHS, HUD, SSA. Not to mention the inspectors general who were summarily fired and all the regulatory agencies that were birddogging Elon's _massive_ grift, malfeasance and corrupt collusion with Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. You want to cut government waste? Remove Elon's US citizenship and deport him back to South Africa. He makes Sam Bankman-Fried look like amateur hour.
As popular as herpes. And that's why the Republicans are beginning to panic about losing the midterms. And no turd polisher like you is going to help them.
> But it's never been about the deficit. It's never been about government waste, which you haven't made a single coherent argument about and are reduced to the absurdity of saying that Elon is a smart guy and he'll know where the waste is. ROTFL
I'm not sure where you have been?!?!
You're path to clarity will never be complete if you do not open your eyes to this. If you take the red pill here, you'll find all sorts of truths you just do not want to believe. But I will lay some out:
1. We need to lower the interest on the deficit. See the posts (above) in this thread and you'll see why. So yes. the deficit does matter due to interest and the lack of funds needed to support our fellow citizens that have less.
2. Government waste is abhorrent. This is truly a marquise moment for you. I only ask for you to have courage here. You have two options:
a. Take the blue pill. Do nothing. Dismiss any truths that cause your pride, self absorption to not change course and heal. Continue with your hate, anxiety, violence, and dismal of facts.
b. Take the red pill. Go in with an open mind and take in some wild facts that help you combat your personal delusions and willful ignorance. It will sting at first, but you'll come out a better American. If you click the below (takes courage, I know), and come back to me with the same head case, I will be amazed:
i) https://doge-tracker.com/wtf
ii) https://x.com/RepDanBishop/status/1905424044444316110
On the former, I honestly got (only) 7 out of 10 right. Can you beat that score? I hope so.
3. I'll take Elon's patriotism, smarts, common sense over yours, however.
> The last president to balance the budget was, of course, a Democrat, Bill Clinton.
Agreed! Well done Bill!
> Republicans don't want balanced budgets because they're ideologically opposed to the government. They think they can shrink government by blowing massive holes in the budget through tax cuts targeted to the wealthiest, which Reagan, both Bushes and Trump did. These tax cuts do not lead to increased economic growth; the economy grew more under Clinton, Obama and Biden. Trump was, in fact, the first president to have a net job loss on his watch since Herbert Hoover.
See here. While your rhetoric is just what you want to believe, I actually provide proof to you. This is for your benefit. It would be nice if all these people I talk to provide proof and not emotional rhetoric. So, here is proof on who pays taxes. Another Red pill:
U.S. Federal Tax Burden by Income Group (2021-2022 Data)
Income Group % of Total Federal Income Taxes Paid Effective Federal Income Tax Rate Share of Total Income
Top 1% ($652K+ annual income) 45.8% 25.9% 22.2%
Top 5% ($289K+ annual income) 66.9% 22.4% 38.6%
Top 10% ($173K+ annual income) 77.5% 20.3% 50.3%
Top 25% ($87K+ annual income) 89.6% 16.8% 70.4%
Top 50% ($45K+ annual income) 97.7% 13.1% 88.5%
Bottom 50% (<$45K annual income) 2.3% 3.5% 11.5%
Source: IRS Statistics of Income, Tax Foundation, Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
Here are your key takeaways:
1. The Wealthiest Pay the Majority of Federal Income Taxes
• The top 1% alone contributes nearly 46% of all federal income taxes, despite earning 22% of total U.S. income.
• The top 10% pays over 77% of all income taxes.
2. Middle and Upper-Middle Classes Bear a Significant Burden
• The top 25% (earning $87K+) pays nearly 90% of all federal income taxes.
• The top 50% (earning $45K+) contributes almost 98% of total income tax revenue.
3. Lower-Income Earners Pay Very Little or No Federal Income Tax
• The bottom 50% of earners contribute just 2.3% of all federal income taxes.
• Many in this group receive refunds, credits (EITC, CTC), and deductions that reduce or eliminate their tax liability.
• Roughly 40% of U.S. households effectively pay zero or negative federal income taxes after credits.
4. Payroll Taxes, Sales Taxes, and Local Taxes Impact Lower Earners More
• Lower earners pay less in income taxes but still contribute through payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare), sales taxes, and state/local taxes.
• The payroll tax burden is flat (15.3% split between employer and employee) and hits all workers regardless of income.
If you product more in GDP, you get taxed. If you provide nothing, you do not (get taxed as much). Due to we all have free will and can choose to be successful or just survive, this makes sense.
> Ask the American people right now how they feel about shock cuts in the FAA, NIH, USPS, NWS, NOAA, HHS, HUD, SSA. Not to mention the inspectors general who were summarily fired and all the regulatory agencies that were birddogging Elon's _massive_ grift, malfeasance and corrupt collusion with Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. You want to cut government waste? Remove Elon's US citizenship and deport him back to South Africa. He makes Sam Bankman-Fried look like amateur hour.
As an American, this is what I voted for. Welcome to the real world.
Not sure on the collusion you are referring to. Again, lets try to provide facts than listening to 'The View.' I did think your comment on Elon's citizenship/revoking was funny, nice! (I mean that, I like comedy which is basically an ironic statement).
> As popular as herpes. And that's why the Republicans are beginning to panic about losing the midterms. And no turd polisher like you is going to help them.
Looks like herpes is popular (G7 countries):
Country HSV-1 HSV-2 Total HSV Prevalence
United States 🇺🇸 47.8% 12.1% ~55-60%
Canada 🇨🇦 50% 10-12% ~55-62%
United Kingdom 🇬🇧50-60% 8-10% ~55-65%
Germany 🇩🇪 60% 10-12% ~65-70%
France 🇫🇷 67% 17% ~70-75%
Italy 🇮🇹 70% 10-12% ~70-75%
Japan 🇯🇵 50-60% 7-10% ~55-65%
Turd polisher? I respect your opinion as an American. That said, I have a stack of responses to get to. I realize that people who make decisions based on emotions take much longer to console. I will have to start triaging who can be helped (red pill) and who cannot (blue pill). So, *IF* I don't respond to more claims, its because of this triage decision making.
Dude, are you on the spectrum? Because you're illustrating some of the tics of high-functioning autism. You take snark literally. "As popular as herpes" is _an expression_ and you hit me with a large list of herpes rates by country. Did you actually have to google that? Why? You're trying to argue that herpes is _popular?_ Who would do that? Someone with a stunted social intelligence who cannot parse emotional intent is who.
Your go-to attack on people who disagree with you is that we're being "emotional." Yes, we're humans and we're being appropriately emotional. You, OTOH, seem to have an emotional intelligence deficit which Elmo has convinced you is some kind of superpower. It's not.
You address me like a wannabe cult leader and cite the most tired alt-right trope of all from the Wachowskis (who are both, incidentally, trans women, which is an irony that never stops being delicious), "take the red pill."
Dude, I'm a 65-year-old on Social Security. You haven't the tiniest clue how to interpret your audience. Elon Musk had some talent as a teenage coder but he also inherited a huge emerald fortune and made a few lucky investments during the dot.com boom. He didn't start Tesla, he essentially hijacked the company and his design input was relegated to their most recent, disastrous marque, the CyberTruck, essentially a giant FU to Tesla's previous customer base and an engineering failure on its own terms.
Elon didn't innovate anything from SpaceX, NeuraLink, StarLink or The Boring Company, either. Elon is not an engineer or a technologist; he's an entrepreneur and he hires engineers and technologists. He's a "visionary." He has galaxy brain visions of a dystopian future. He's gone from being a poster boy for weaning us off fossil fuels (more a Tesla marketing pose than a true belief) to an evangelist for Mars colonization because there are more planets out there to wreck like this one.
As for Elmo's grift, you wouldn't know a thing about it because you get your news from X, and Elmo the "free speech absolutist" (ROTFL !) deletes all tweets which are critical of his businesses. It is a well known fact in the real world that Elmo's _entire wealth_ is predicated on government subsidies and contracts, in particular Tesla, SpaceX and StarLink. Musk's businesses were also under at least 17 federal investigations for securities fraud, labor and OSHA violations among other things. Trump replaced the heads of all those agencies and the investigations went away. Elmo is in the middle of attempting to buy a WI Supreme Court seat with a million dollar lottery and $100 giveaways to voters. This is so luridly corrupt it makes Teapot Dome look like a shoplifting teenager. The idea that Elon Musk is "fighting waste, fraud and abuse" while gorging himself on the government trough with all oversight castrated is revolting.
Elon, like Peter Theil and Marc Andreessen, is a devotee of Curtis Yarvin and the so-called Dark Enlightenment. His view of humanity is beyond dystopian and he is an old-school "scientific" racialist (rebooting apartheid in South Africa is on his bucket list). He believes that people like me, beyond their productive years, should be rendered into biomass diesel fuel.
These guys all believe in the so-called Singularity when AI and robots become self-replicating and automate the vast majority of humanity out of jobs and Elon can then enjoy it while they starve to death with no public support. They foresee an inevitable climate catastrophe that will cause resource wars all around the globe and send desperate climate refugees streaming north, and he can watch while Trump massacres them at the border. The Matrix really isn't the sci-fi key here. It's more like Mad Max.
As for your economic points about who pays taxes, I'll simply note -- and this fact is indisputable -- that the ultra-wealthy pay less taxes in America than anywhere else in the civilized world, including tax havens like Liechtenstein. The Nordic social democracies are the happiest countries in the world by objective metrics because they appropriately tax their wealthy.
Finally, you're entitled to vote how you want. But to quote the immortal Dude, yeah, but that's just like _your opinion,_ man. None of your sources are credible. Hint: X is a propaganda mill, not an honest source. DogeTracker is a shill site. You want to cut government waste? You do it with accredited, independent auditors, not with a crew of 20-something autistic incels who worship Elon Musk like cult members.
One last point: You cannot gaslight me. I am not overly proud, self-absorbed, hateful, anxious or violent. I am righteously and deservedly pissed. And like our host Rick Wilson, I am a happy warrior. You? You claim to contribute to the GDP, but I can't imagine you're anything more than a low-level YouTube influencer. If you actually ran a company you wouldn't have time for these massive dumps of ideological screed and wingnut talking points.
I'm retired, so I have an excuse ;)
Nice work, Jeff ;)
Yea, sorry, I do get tired of the debt commentary when there is so little understanding. I have relatives that spew FOX talking points, only of course on que. When the debt is increased for stupid tax cuts to the wealthy, (that pay for themselves of course) FOX tells viewers to embrace debt. When a D president is elected, FOX tells viewers it is an existential crisis. And round and round it goes.
Paying down debt during good economic times and expanding debt to head off depressions is good policy. But, our Murdoch controlled populace demands stupid policy.
If the GOP just let the last tax cut to the wealthy expire, the debt and deficit would start to ease. But no. That is too logical.
To support your themes, tax cuts for the wealthy are NEVER stimulative to demand growth. Empirically, since WW2, the rate of growth in capital investment (the 'I' in C+I+G) during Dem administrations is more than double the rate of 'I' growth during GOP admins. The actual facts completely debunk the 'supply side' economic premises. Rather, it is faster growth in demand ('C+G') that causes businesses to invest in capacity expansion. Every business on earth will tell you this (and I have asked hundreds of them). Who knew? (sarcasm.)
Who said this: 'We are all Keynesians now' ?
It was Milton Friedman in 1965, quoted in Time magazine, and later paraphrased by President Nixon. They were both correct.
You could look it up.
econfacts.com
And too Keynesian.
There is little more economically inane than the persistent wingnut analogy between the federal debt and personal finances.
Hint: Your household is not backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States. As long as we can sell government bonds, we're good.
Junior - I am never surprised by all the name calling, misuse of fake news, and willful delusions of your 'type.' If you cannot have a reasonable debate centered around facts. Continue with your violence to the rest of the American people.
It's unfortunate, that I/we have such emotional control over you. The inability to control your emotions is sheer weakness.
This is the weakness we are attempting to gut from society and make America stronger.
Hands down, the pre-DOGE federal worker is absolute sheet (and I know several). So, I stand by my proclamation. Not saying ALL are terrible, but the recent culling has decreased the dilution substantially. So, bravo for America!
As far as name calling, the president recently signed an EO making this legal, so libtard is something you should get use to. For proof, see here: https://tinyurl.com/533t879a
I do not own a gun, but do carry zip-ties, you never know when a violent, emotional libtard is lurking as most do not have jobs (save the $25/hr to protest gigs).
You just don't get, junior, do you?
INTEREST is our 3rd largest expense. More so than Defense. Think how much our interest payments would be if this grows? More interest payments, with a lower population and the SS Ponzi scheme is kaput. Sure we have $$$/GDP, but having the Govt spend less on B.S. means more services for common Americans. Why do I feel I am talking with a socialist? Oh, I probably am.
Is that what you’re aiming for? If so, Whoot!
I learned a lot on this episode. Good stuff about Mark Cuban’s prescription & medical services. I am concerned about hacking our government with a chainsaw. I mean, the government is supposed to work for the people, yet there’s no rhyme or reason for the cuts. They didn’t plan any of it.
Yes work for the people. We need accountability. And those organizations, people, that do not meet the needs of the people, for the people, need to go.
Who gets to decide that? Based on what criteria?
Elon Musk and his merry band of autistic incels?
I would call it logic, math, accountability. Elon does not make cuts. He is not a govt employee. He provides data, it's the Dept heads that make cuts, modifications, etc.
I enjoy educating others.
Michael, you've apparently been in a coma the past three months. Elon has been cutting wildly and unilaterally, firing people on his own determination, pissing off the agency heads and getting reversed time and again by the courts.
BTW, Thanks so much for this today! I enjoyed listening to you and I have great respect for both of you!