So if the USA defaults August 2nd, what will happen?

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aussiesniper

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The Gnome King said:
Kopikatsu said:
...I think people are vastly overestimating the US's military strength.

We had the strongest military in the world...once upon a time. If another major first world country wanted to take something from us, I'm pretty sure that they could nowadays.
Do some research; I think you are vastly underestimating the US military's strength. We still spend more on our military than any other country; in fact:

The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.

---> http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=594_1310199627 (Though you can find this information in many places on the web.)

SEVEN times as much. As much as China, Russia, Japan, India, and NATO combined. Think on that.

#1 - it's part of the reason we're in this debt mess and
#2 - it pretty much guarantees that no other country is going to mess with us in a strictly military sense; we still have the conventional military power to blow them out of the water.

We still, very much, have the strongest military in the world. Who else do you even think comes close?

Again... this isn't necessarily a good thing; but I wouldn't worry about any country taking anything from us by force. Terrorism is a far greater threat now than invasion by a foreign power.

Oh, and to fix this problem requires a two prong approach - people don't like to hear it but yes, we need to increase revenue/raise taxes. They're as low as they've been in decades and it is NOT increasing jobs; it's actually just harming government services. Bring taxes back to Clinton-era levels. Remember the 90's? They were pretty good, economically; we had a surplus, not a debt. Bush decided to "give back" all those "excess dollars" to Americans and, well, we saw how that worked out.

The other end of the prong is to work on entitlement programs; I favor means testing for social security and Medicare, personally, because I don't think the wealthy need the help. I also favor decreasing the size of our military; we could cut spending in half and we would still be spending more than any other country in the WORLD on our military budget.

Viola; raise revenue and cut spending - problem solved without hurting the poor or neediest people.
You have the right idea, but especially so on the military budget. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost around $1.2 trillion total, which would be a comfortable gap between the debt ceiling and actual debt.
 

Thaluikhain

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The Gnome King said:
The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.

---> http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=594_1310199627 (Though you can find this information in many places on the web.)

SEVEN times as much. As much as China, Russia, Japan, India, and NATO combined. Think on that.
7 times as much as the next nation isn't the same as 7 times as much as all those combined, but yeah.

On the other hand, it's more or less irrelevant. It doesn't matter how much money the US spends on its military, as long as it has a powerful second strike capability, such as its SSBN fleet.

You do not invade a nuclear capable nation with the intent to steal its resources. Britain, with its much smaller military spending, is more or less just as un-invadable (well, unless you talk in terms of greater or lesser impossibility), because it has a (smaller) SSBN fleet.
 

Sansha

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Nov 16, 2008
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Stop fighting someone else's wars in the Middle East.

Until you stop wasting so many billions of dollars on that, you are not entitled to complain about how fucked up your economy is.

And stop fucking around with taxing the rich - bleed those motherfuckers dry.
 

Techsmart07

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first
1) Obama came into a less than optimistic situation, but it was manageable. He just didn't manage it well.
2) Stop saying it's "republicans" or "democrats" at fault, because both sides are bloody morons or hate-mongers against the other side. Taking a side is only helping support them being stupid. If we wanna start pointing fingers, tell all of congress to GTFO. Both sides have valid points which should be respected, and both have some things screwed up. Honestly, we should drop the 2-party system and force voters to understand what a politician's platforms are instead of just saying "o, he has (R) or (D), I'll vote for him, Derp derp."

To the point of the thread
As said
Immediate - Not much from the government, although you will see stock values begin to drop.
short term - dollar value drops, economy begins to fall
long term - 3 possibilities 1)the US will get its act together and get itself straightened out, 2) some other country will fill in the financial gap the US left behind and leave the US as a much weaker nation than its been, 3) Global depression.
 

aussiesniper

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Sansha said:
Stop fighting someone else's wars in the Middle East.

Until you stop wasting so many billions of dollars on that, you are not entitled to complain about how fucked up your economy is.

And stop fucking around with taxing the rich - bleed those motherfuckers dry.
It's not the fault of the US people, but rather their system. The system of "Campaign donations" lets big business (especially the arms industry) buy out politicians on both sides, and make ending the wars and increasing taxes on the rich (i.e. the people who can afford campaign donations) politically impossible.
 

Berethond

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All I have to say is, "God DAMMIT why the fuck did anyone listen to John Maynard Keynes."
 

scar_47

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The credit rating gets dropped interest rates rise, huge spending cuts would have to take place in order to balance the budget, the stock market would decline as investors lost their confidence in the US and the world economy would take a hit since the US has such a large presence in the global economy. It won't happen overnight the US still has a rather large slush fund to keep things going until expenditures get cut so the government isn't going to collapse and with our military power any aggressive actions by another nation are highly unlikely. As for who's to blame really pretty much everyone the Democrats and Obama keep spending more money then we have the Republicans weren't doing much better before and have only now decided our current situation can't continue but at least they've proposed several plans th Democrats say they need more give but haven't proposed a real bill While Obama pisses and moans while doing nothing, the populace elected all these idiots and kept them in power and other nations such as China kept giving us loans so we could continue to over spend so really its a whole lot of idiots and looters at fault.

Face the music well if that isn't an appropriate captcha.
 

Aprilgold

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And I'll be in Canada when shit drops here, why, because Canada is peaceful and won't get invaded. Other reason, because THATS where a Extra Credit guy works, so I can statistically live near him, which would be NEAT-O!
 

Merkavar

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im hoping that the US splits into 2 or more countries. i heard that might happen somewhere. it would be interesting to see a world with out a USA

maybe the US should have a "civil war" and then claim to be under new management and all there debts belong to the unites states of america but now they are called the commonwealth of america.
 

scar_47

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Sansha said:
Stop fighting someone else's wars in the Middle East.

Until you stop wasting so many billions of dollars on that, you are not entitled to complain about how fucked up your economy is.

And stop fucking around with taxing the rich - bleed those motherfuckers dry.
So we should allow all the countries that supply the worlds oil to blow themselves up were their to ensure that oil production isn't hurt while regime changes occur, were also attempting to provide a stable society for those people it ain't cheap and no other country is willing to step up and do it so it falls to the US we've been cleaning up other countries messes for some time it isn't fun but the alternatives are worse. As for taxing the rich really yes lets hurt the producers the people who create sustainable jobs and can easily move their money and businesses elsewhere when they feel taxes are too high. The rich alread pay 40% income taxes along with the other tax revenue they generate by being investors how much do you thin their willing to bear before they up and leave. The US needs to drastically reduce spending in every area higher taxes hurt the ecomony because you leave people with less disposable income which means less spending and a slower ecomony. Look at what Regan did it worked Obamas spending us out of a recession clearly doesn't who the hell tries to jump start the ecomony by creating jobs that don't last ans taking on more debt to sustain bad programs and create more of them?
 

aussiesniper

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scar_47 said:
Sansha said:
Stop fighting someone else's wars in the Middle East.

Until you stop wasting so many billions of dollars on that, you are not entitled to complain about how fucked up your economy is.

And stop fucking around with taxing the rich - bleed those motherfuckers dry.
So we should allow all the countries that supply the worlds oil to blow themselves up were their to ensure that oil production isn't hurt while regime changes occur, were also attempting to provide a stable society for those people it ain't cheap and no other country is willing to step up and do it so it falls to the US we've been cleaning up other countries messes for some time it isn't fun but the alternatives are worse. As for taxing the rich really yes lets hurt the producers the people who create sustainable jobs and can easily move their money and businesses elsewhere when they feel taxes are too high. The rich alread pay 40% income taxes along with the other tax revenue they generate by being investors how much do you thin their willing to bear before they up and leave. The US needs to drastically reduce spending in every area higher taxes hurt the ecomony because you leave people with less disposable income which means less spending and a slower ecomony. Look at what Regan did it worked Obamas spending us out of a recession clearly doesn't who the hell tries to jump start the ecomony by creating jobs that don't last ans taking on more debt to sustain bad programs and create more of them?
Look at this link [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms#Gross_federal_debt].

Notice that under Regan, the debt went up by 20% of GDP? And before him, it had been steadily going down since 1945, almost unbroken?

Yeah. Regan did a fine job with the economy.
 

Sinclair Solutions

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Joseph375 said:
I'm not completely sure. Either nothing or the fucking rapture from what I've been hearing.

Here's some answers.

Cut down on unneeded spending.
Cut down on government corruption.
Legalize and tax drugs.
CUT OUR FUCKING DEFENSE BUDGET!!!!
STOP BORROWING SO MUCH GODDAMN MONEY WE CAN'T PAY OFF!!!
Do you mind if I play a little Devil's Advocate?

1) What is needed to some is unneeded to others. It would be nice if we could determine what was needed and unneeded, but since this American politics, we can't determine anything.
2) Unless someone walks around with a sign that says "HA HA! I'm corrupt!", cutting down on corruption is harder than you think. Congressmen often protect their own, and lobbyists seem to run DC. They aren't going anywhere.
3) Even if drugs like marijuana was legalized, the intake from drugs that were taxed would be so minimal it would barely put a chip in our debt. Plus, there would no doubt be a black market that was not taxed that many people would go to. And asking people to do the right thing for the betterment of the country is harder than you might think.
4) I'll agree with you here. It needs to be cut, but not completely or even significantly. As much as I hate our world police persona, I do find our military somewhat necessary.
5) Don't really know the circumstances of this, so I can't really say anything.

EDIT: To the "bleed the mother fuckers dry" poster: as much as I'd like to agree that the rich need to be taxed, I don't think that solves the problem. When you think rich, you think of the dudes with five yachts, yes? The government sees the rich as anybody who makes more than (I believe) $200,000 a year. That not only includes the aforementioned five yacht club, but most small business owners, the people that hire the middle and lower class. If they get taxed, they don't have the money to hire someone else. This doesn't create jobs, which means more people can't pay their taxes and need to go on welfare, which drains money. A very, VERY generalized explanation, but this is how I understand it.
 

Harlief

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You'll have a massive tourism boom because suddenly the US dollar will have a favourable exchange rate to many overseas countries.
 

Akytalusia

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i heard they'll stop sending out social security checks starting on august 3. that's gonna hurt alot of people right off the bat, then it's all downhill from there.