Personally, I always get sick to my stomach this time of year seeing all the hoopla and exuberance (and money) that centers around two rather relatively average and flawed human beings. What the ■■■■ is so special about any of these politicians (or non-politicians)? Can any of them walk on water, raise the dead, guarantee us eternal life in paradise? Please tell me what are the new and intellectually profound ideas that anyone of them is bringing to this election cycle? The problems that we have now are so systemic and have developed over numerous decades. Number 1 likely being the debt:
Some key points:
For the first time since the wartime economy of the late 1940s, U.S. debt is roughly equal to the value of all the goods and services our economy produces in a year. When World War II ended, all that spending on tanks and aircraft came to a quick end. But the major drivers of today’s debt crisis are Medicare and Social Security, and their price tags are set to keep rising. So what does President Joe Biden promise to do about this looming crisis? Absolutely nothing. And Republican lawmakers have cheered him on.
We already spend more on paying interest on the federal debt than we do on Medicaid and defense. Even if rates remain at 4 percent for the next few decades, annual interest payments are projected to surpass what we spend on Medicare and Social Security.
Interest rates are like a time bomb. If they rise to 5, 6, or 7 percent, the cost of borrowing will increase so much that federal debt would be on track to surpass 300 percent of gross domestic product—or three times higher than World War II levels. Eventually, interest costs would consume nearly all of annual U.S. tax revenues.
Social Security and Medicare have special revenue sources, but if nothing changes by 2034, these two programs will be collecting $2.6 trillion annually in payroll taxes and related revenues while spending $4.8 trillion in benefits and associated interest costs.
Republicans like to talk about slashing social spending, but to balance the budget we’d need to completely eliminate all funding for veterans’ benefits, child credit payments, the earned income tax credit, school lunches, disability benefits, K-12 schooling, health research, unemployment benefits, food stamps, homeland security, infrastructure, embassy security, federal prisons, border security, and much more.
The most basic progressive narrative is that deficits don’t matter and that taxing the rich can eliminate the deficit. But approximately 70 percent of the 2001 and 2017 tax cut costs and subsequent extensions went to the middle and lower classes. If you size up their fiscal impact, only a tiny sliver can be attributed to “tax cuts for the rich.”
Seizing every home, yacht, business, and investment from America’s 800 billionaires would fund the federal government for just nine months. And then the money would be gone. So would your 401(k), given that most of this wealth would be seized from the stock market, causing the S&P 500 to crater.
There simply aren’t enough millionaires, billionaires, and undertaxed corporations to close Social Security and Medicare’s projected $124 trillion cash shortfall over three decades or—as some Democrats propose—to finance a generous social democracy for 330 million Americans.
Some more on this issue:
For the full fiscal year, the U.S. deficit totaled $1.52 trillion with two months to go. That’s down slightly from $1.61 trillion in the same span in the prior fiscal year.
Still, the deficit in 2024 is on track to end up somewhat bigger at $1.9 trillion compared to $1.7 trillion in the prior year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
A big contributor are rising interest payments on the nation’s record $35 trillion in debt.
The number 2 issue is the cost of living as highlighted to some extent here:
Associated with that is inflation, which has seen the highest and quickest rise in prices in a long time, and prices are still going up albeit at a slower pace than before.
Number 3 is the political divide. Let’s be honest those on the Left and the Right have two radically different visions of what America should be. How often do the conversations here result in a compromise position in which we conclude by holding hands and singing Kum Ba Yah? No matter who wins there will be a very angry and bitter other side along with a more divided country.
Clearly there’s plenty of blame to go around, which I’m not getting into here. There’s no magic fix, or any real fix, no matter who gets elected. Is there anything else you would like to add to this list or change the order?
