Madison320
Member

Trump increased spending a lot more than Obama, even before the pandemic. Obama (in trillions) 3.4 3.6 3.5 3.4 3.5

Sonny Tufts is a prog who is paid to post here. In case you don't know--just a heads up.

I can smell the curry powder oozing thru your pores. Even thru the computer.

Yeah, little things like doubling the size of government. Doubling the monetary base.

I agree if your only argument is that it would've been a lot worse with Hillary. It's when you start imaging that somehow a Trump miracle would've avoided the inflationary depression we are entering.

That reminds me of when a football team is down by 6 touchdowns in the fourth quarter and the other team scores a meaningless touchdown and starts dancing. Then the players on the winning team say "Scoreboard". Trump kicked a field goal with 20 seconds left but the US lost by 15 trillion.

Only if you think massive central government is a good thing. Do you really think some of those piddly good things Trump did outweighs DOUBLING the size of the federal govt in 4 years?

Ok, that proves it. You're a certified Trumpster. Under Trump the national debt went from 20 trillion to 30 trillion. Interest rates were at 0% at the request of Trump. Out of the 9 trillion on the Fed's balance sheet, 3.5 trillion came while Trump was in office. That's where 99% of the inflation came from. Global oil production is currently about 80 million barrels a day, it peaked around 85 before covid. Basic math will tell you the rise in oil is coming from the printing not the supply. It's not a supply problem it's a demand problem caused by printing. The money supply was inflated from 1 trillion to 9 trillion. That's the problem. Trump would've helped on the supply side but that's microscopic compared to the demand side from the spending and printing. And don't forget when Trump left office our trade deficits were setting all time records. So much for the manufacturing resurgence. The bottom line doesn't lie.

I posted probably a dozen times here that I wanted Biden to win so that the coming inflationary depression would get blamed on democrats and socialism. I don't think anybody else here saw it coming. If Trump had won the media would be blaming the economic collapse on Trump and "capitalism". The problem being that Trump was more of a socialist than a capitalist which is why I knew we were headed for this crisis.

It's a given that Trump was better than any democrat. What bothered me was when Trump supporters here were actually arguing that the things Trump was doing were increasing liberty! A couple of examples were the massive spending programs and the targeted tariffs. I get that Trump is better than Biden but don't tell me making government bigger and targeted tariffs is actually INCREASING our liberty. The correct response would've been yeah, it sucks but it would've been worse if it was a democrat.

It's been real quiet the two months or so. I have a feeling something is going to break soon. Our economy is addicted to stimulus and can't go without for very long. Watch the federal debt. I think that's going to start to spike. When there's a recession the debt usually start to ramp up. Less tax revenue from income and more spending from unemployment, etc.

Suppose you voluntarily collect enough money from everyone living on the island to buy a defense contract from SecurityRUs. Forget about the freeloader problem and just assume that you can voluntarily collect it. So far so good. So you hire SecurityRUs and they set up a base with well armed soldiers and some missiles. Then some of those soldiers start raping the women on the island. What happens then? SecurityRUs ignores you. So you try to fire them. Instead they tell you you need to renew your contact for 10 times the original amount or they'll launch a missile at the island. Since they are now the "most force" there's nothing you can do. This won't happen if you hire SecurityRUs within the United States because SecurityRUs is dwarfed by the US police and military. In that case you can shop for your defense as anarchists like to point out. But that only works within the framework of an existing "most force" or state.

Ok, forget about the term "state". My point is that there's always going to be someone forcing you to do stuff against your will. I don't care what you call it. So the trick is to control as best you can the people that are trying to use force against you. And the only way to do that is to have more force than that person/group.

Not always. Only when they have the most collective force in a given area.

I really have no idea what your question is. What does building an embassy in watts mean?

I've said this a million times so this'll be a million and one. We've probably applied the greatest amount of stimulus in the history of mankind over the last 12 years. 20 trillion in debt, 8 trillion in printed money, 5-7 trillion in trade deficits, 0% rates. We have to crash from all that stimulus, it's inevitable. And it's logical that the crash is proportional to the stimulus so hang on. My guess over the next couple months is that price inflation comes down a little and at the same time the economy is going to continue to slow and unemployment will start to pickup. At some point soon recession is going to be a bigger political problem than inflation and at that point the Fed is going to pivot to lower rates and more QE.

My argument is that whoever has the most collective force in a given area is the state. In the caveman days it was the big guy with a club. In somalia it's the local warlord. In most countries now it's an elected government. But in every single case there's someone who exerting physical force over you anywhere on earth. So what difference does it make if the entity that's making you do stuff is officially recognized as a state? So absolutely the only option is to try to form a state that spends more of it's time protecting your rights than violating them.

The catch is that as soon as you hire someone to defend the island you've got a state. and if you don't hire someone, you're going to get invaded and you'll get a state. It doesn't make sense if you assume all states are equally bad.

Unfortunately the only way to defend yourself against collective force is with collective force. So if a bunch of anarchists form Anarchy Island, it will be short lived. There's only 2 choices. Do nothing and get invaded or form a collective defense.

Ok, so describe a simple example of what an island of anarchists would look like?

I asked for an island and you gave me a novel. I want to see some palm trees.

Maybe anarchists are afraid of water? The reason I like the island thought experiment is that it exposes the fatal flaw in the idea of anarchism. How to defend yourself? So the response from anarchists is always to avoid the thought experiment at all costs.

So the concept of an anarchy only exists in your mind? You can't form one on an island?

So it's impossible for a group of anarchists to get together and live on an island?

There's no such thing as an anarchy. There's always a state. It's the nature of force. It's easy to demonstrate this with a simple question. How are you going to defend your anarchy from invaders?

Militaries have never existed? I agree with most of the above but you're missing the most important point. You can affirm all day long that it's wrong to conquer people but that won't stop it. If you define a state as the group of people in a geographic location that has the most force then there's no such thing as "no state". It's impossible. There's ALWAYS going to be a state forcing you do do things. That the nature of force. So the whole idea of anarchism is irrelevant. There's no such thing. In the caveman days it was Grog, the big guy with the club. Now it's government police and military. The best you can do is manage the state. How are you going to protect your island anarchy?

I don't think you have a right to separate from your government unless you move or never interact with other citizens. Over the years I've boiled down the whole argument to this: "You want to start an anarchy on an island so you get a bunch of like minded people to make it happen. How are you going to defend the island? More importantly, "Whose going to be in charge of defense?". Because guess what? That guy is now the head of your government, like it or not.

Again, he signed every single bill that covered his term and we doubled our spending. Now we know why he calls himself "The King of Debt".

He didn't veto that bill because it was too expensive. If anything it wasn't expensive enough for him. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-116hdoc174/pdf/CDOC-116hdoc174.pdf That was the only bill that he vetoed that was overridden. And that bill was for 2021. That means that Trump approved ALL of the spending from 2016-2020. And that resulted in the doubling of the debt.