So......what exactly happens if the US can't raise the debt ceiling?
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WHY THE FUCK IS THIS A PROBLEM!?
Yes, Currence is supposed to be a representation of gold in a vault somewhere hidden away. But does anyone ever truly NEED this gold? NO!! We all rely only on money to pay our bills. the gold is just rotting away in a vault under a fucking mountain or something, 10 dollars is worth 10 dollars, gold has nothing to fucking do with it otherwise everything would have a price measured in gold. if everyone were to ignore the gold nothing would change, we are only holding on to a system that can never fully provide for our needs, if we all just switch to a currency that has its worth on its own merit then more could just be produced.
Example: If i were to print 1 trillion dollars, yet no one found out about the printed money in any way, would anything change? no, because in daily life money has its own value and that's the only thing we need but if someone finds out about it the value of the dollar would magically decrease, even though there was no problem before. it's bullshit, all of it
Yes, Currence is supposed to be a representation of gold in a vault somewhere hidden away. But does anyone ever truly NEED this gold? NO!! We all rely only on money to pay our bills. the gold is just rotting away in a vault under a fucking mountain or something, 10 dollars is worth 10 dollars, gold has nothing to fucking do with it otherwise everything would have a price measured in gold. if everyone were to ignore the gold nothing would change, we are only holding on to a system that can never fully provide for our needs, if we all just switch to a currency that has its worth on its own merit then more could just be produced.
Example: If i were to print 1 trillion dollars, yet no one found out about the printed money in any way, would anything change? no, because in daily life money has its own value and that's the only thing we need but if someone finds out about it the value of the dollar would magically decrease, even though there was no problem before. it's bullshit, all of it
Um...that's a very good question...I'm assuming China will come in and repossess all of your things...on another note I don't really think 14.3 trillion dollars even exist.
Wrong. the US hasn't had gold based currency since WW2. Most countries don't have gold based currency anymore. It's called Fiat money, and the value of Fiat money is dependent on imports and exports, mostly. The US kinda defies that cuz we're the reserve currency, so other countries have to buy our money in order to trade with other countries, which i guess kinda means we export money. printing massive amounts of money still decreases the value of the currency, but not as much or as rapidly as it would in a gold-based system. BTW, the US has printed money to pay it's debts twice already, which is bad idea. Also, if we switched to a digital credit system, we would still owe. Money is a representation of value, you can change the unit of that value, but it doesn't make that value disappear.Kopikatsu said:
Once again, no modern country has a currency backed by gold. They haven't in years. and credit cards are stand-ins for money, but debit cards and checks work on money you have stored in the bank, it's an actual transaction of money, unlike credit cards which create money from nowhere.
while i do agree we need to "internalize" our spending, such as bringing the troops home an whatnot, i don't agree on the tax plan, i've been believin in it for a few years now and i'll say it again, the "fair tax" plan is the way to go, it transfers all taxes into a nice and easy "sales" tax which is next to impossible to dodge unless you literally don't buy anything, so therefore illegal immigrants/the filthy rich/drug lords, they all end up paying their taxes by buying all the expensive shit they would normally buy and tax evade with, that would skyrocket our revenue and get rid of the ridiculously overpaid and unorganized IRS (literally it would like cut the spending in half, i can't remember exactly)Tiger Sora said:
Wrong. the US hasn't had gold based currency since WW2. Most countries don't have gold based currency anymore. It's called Fiat money, and the value of Fiat money is dependent on imports and exports, mostly. The US kinda defies that cuz we're the reserve currency, so other countries have to buy our money in order to trade with other countries, which i guess kinda means we export money. printing massive amounts of money still decreases the value of the currency, but not as much or as rapidly as it would in a gold-based system. BTW, the US has printed money to pay it's debts twice already, which is bad idea. Also, if we switched to a digital credit system, we would still owe. Money is a representation of value, you can change the unit of that value, but it doesn't make that value disappear.Kopikatsu said:
Once again, no modern country has a currency backed by gold. They haven't in years. and credit cards are stand-ins for money, but debit cards and checks work on money you have stored in the bank, it's an actual transaction of money, unlike credit cards which create money from nowhere.
There is evidence that hyperinflation is already occurring and that the US gov't is just hiding it. If you go to the IMF website, they have records of the prices of commodity goods since 1980. If you look at those prices from 1980-2000, the change was minimal, like a 10% increase on average. If you look at those prices from 2000 to march of 2011, the prices rose over 200% on average. a 200% increase, on average. Tin went up over 600%. Go look at the data, you can download it and use excel to do the math. We're on a massive up trend of commodity prices right now.Kopikatsu said:
And those aren't the only cases of hyperinflation in the past. Dozens of nations have tried to inflate their way out of debt. germany, zimbabwae, japan, and England are 4 i can think of right now. It never ends well. We authorized the printing of billions of dollars more than we planned to twice in the last year, just to pay our debts. We are in a very tough spot right now, and I don't think we're going to pull out of it. It's going to be very bad.
Actually, it would change things. Suddenly, you have 1,000,000,000,000. But, of course, money isn't worth anything unless you spend it. So, for a few days, you go on a shopping spree. Million dollar houses, sports cars, nice clothes, you buy anything you want. And now all of THOSE people see a sudden windfall of money. So they start doing the same. Suddenly, that money is getting around town. You go to your favorite restaurant, only to find out that so many other people are spending that money you've been throwing around that the head chef has decided he doesn't really need that job anymore. But he offers to make one more meal for you, at five times the normal price. But you're a trillionaire, right? Sure, you pay it, what's a few hundred?robincb said:
Congratulations, that's inflation. Money is available in such excess that it is no longer worth what you used to be paid for the job you do. This isn't a hypothetical scenario. It actually happens. Not that quickly, obviously, but over the course of a few years, suddenly injecting a trillion dollars into the economy with no backing WILL do that.
We don't hate them. We just think that it's appropriate that they give a little more money than the rest of us. Makes sense to me. They still end up keeping more money than we doKopikatsu said:
Not in half, but it would cut spending immensely. Many of the arguments against it are that it would hurt the lower and middle classes, but if you continue to have lower or no sales tax on food, water, cheap clothing, cheap cars, cheap houses, and prolly add gasoline, then it wouldn't crush the lower class like many of the opponents of the plan say it would.gmaverick019 said:
They already give more money than the rest of us. I, personally, feel that if we need to raise taxes (and we do), that we raise taxes on all of us. This isn't just their problem, it can't be just their solution. We're all in this together, and we should all have to work our way out together.spartan231490 said:
We don't hate them. We just think that it's appropriate that they give a little more money than the rest of us. Makes sense to me. They still end up keeping more money than we doKopikatsu said:
Not in half, but it would cut spending immensely. Many of the arguments against it are that it would hurt the lower and middle classes, but if you continue to have lower or no sales tax on food, water, cheap clothing, cheap cars, cheap houses, and prolly add gasoline, then it wouldn't crush the lower class like many of the opponents of the plan say it would.gmaverick019 said:
Once again. The dollar does not represent gold anywhere. It hasn't in decades. It's dependent on how much we spend, not how much gold we have. If we print more money, more money gets spent, prices go up.robincb said:
yeah the last time i did research on it was over a year ago so i can't remember exactly, but it would cut more than a 1/3 of it (which is in the billions)spartan231490 said:
and i also call bullshit (against them not you), it wouldn't hurt the middle/lower class, the rich just don't want to get taxed on their big ticket items so they can fuck off if they think that argument will work, plus the monthly rebate that would be in effect with the plan would make sure all lower/middle class would be fine.
basically the only people getting screwed in the slightest are somewhat the rich and bastards who don't pay taxes anyways, so if this tax plan did get implemented then i would welcome every illegal immigrant to bring it on, they'll only add to the revenue instead of taking away from it as usual. (i have nothing against immigrants, its just i'm sick and tired of seeing 1 in 4 people around me not paying taxes and driving a escalade while i'm stuck with a shitty old ass honda paying 1/4th of my paycheck each time to taxes)
Short mandatory explanation on debt ceilings: A debt ceiling is how much the government decided it would spend on debt. Our government has more debt that our current debt ceiling will allow. We aren't directly increasing our debt by raising the ceiling although it would allow the ability to issue more bonds/acquire addition debt if the government desired to.Saucycardog said:
What happens if we don't raise it: If we don't raise the debt ceiling we won't be able to pay back all of the debt we currently owe (primarily the interest) or acquire any additional debt besides the interest on what we already owe. That in turn will cripple our credit credibility and will make it so the USA is no longer as great an investment as we currently are. This leads to less investment which leads to less growth which leads to a smaller economy which leads to =(
Well, the debt ceiling needs to be raised. Balancing the budget instead sounds like a great idea in theory, and in general circumstances having a balanced budget is a good idea. However, when we are in the middle/still coming out of a recession the way we are now, cutting spending is not what the country needs. Instead we need stimulus to get the economy moving again, which by necessity means taking on more debt. Once economic conditions improve, tax income rises, and it will become easier to balance the budget/start paying off debt. But for now, the debt ceiling must be raised or things will be very ugly.
My thoughts are that sales tax is the way to go. by not taxing necessities like gas; food; utilities; houses and cars under the 40-50% mark for value in your region; and clothing, then you only tax luxury items. It still hits the richer harder, but not as badly as an effective graduated tax system. However, If I was going to stick with graduated income taxes, i would add tax brackets above the current highest. If you make several million dollars a year, you can afford to pay a lot more than they pay now. They currently pay 35% at the highest tax bracket for federal income tax. In 1944, it was 94%. I think they could afford 50-60. both times previously when we were in a major war with deficit spending we raised taxes on the highest income tax bracket. By a lot. Yet now we absolutely refuse to do so, idiotic.Aris Khandr said:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/02inpetr.pdf
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
We need more revenue, the middle class and lower class can't really afford more taxes, they can barely afford it now. therefore the upper class must pay. we also need to cut spending, but we need more revenue as well.
I suspect it's just temporary because they can't green-light any spending for post August 2 because they haven't agreed that there will be any spending after that point. I suspect that when the ceiling is raised, his benefits will be paid.commodore96 said:
No. Normally, you would be right, but right now, part of what is dragging the economy down is the insane amount of debt we have. If it keeps going up, our economy will keep declining. We need a realistic plan of reducing the debt within a couple years, or circumstances will not improve.Zakarath said:
Here's an idea that'd help: Tax the fucking rich. USA is full of obscenely wealthy individuals who, thanks to various loopholes, offshore accounts, creative accounting, and just plain tax cheating, pay a ridiculously tiny fraction of the tax they should be paying. Stop mollycoddling the rich, tell them "Too bad", and take the fucking money they should have paid over the years.
I don't feel that the government ha the right to ask for half of what you make in a year, no matter how much that is. We do need more revenue, but I'm not the kind of person who says "Take it from him, he can afford it." This is all of our problem, and it needs to be all of us working together to solve it.