According to this, #2 behind Japan’s $1.21T in May 2022. $981B.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/246 ... sury-debt/
According to this, #2 behind Japan’s $1.21T in May 2022. $981B.
You're right. The right ain't gonna stop spending. And the Trump and Biden admins didnt have the money they were giving away. It was all smoke and mirrors.a fan wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 2:37 pmMeh. You better get on your knees and pray that Republicans don't win the midterms.kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 10:33 am This specific problem isn't helping the Democrats:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/politics ... index.html
White House assurances on inflation spark backlash from frustrated swing-state Democrats
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 12:10 AM ET, Thu July 14, 2022
You've got two tools in the tool chest for inflation, and your team despises either.....
-cut spending
-raise taxes
Those are your two choices to pull money out of circulation, reducing inflation.
So what is your team gonna do when the dog catches the car, Kram?
Because you have haven't done either for 20+ years and counting......
My guess? If they win, they'll keep right on spending, pass zero bills, beat Biden in 2024.....and then make Trump's spending look like a joke.
Borrowing ever penny, naturally.....
Bottom line: trumpublicans have NO governing concept whatsoever...they simply whine about what's wrong and play the blame game. Eternal victims.dislaxxic wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:50 am Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame
Ignorance is a dangerous thing.
Saying "the entire country can't afford milk and cereal in 2022 because the government took steps to help Americans through a pandemic" qualifies at best as an ill-informed attitude. Better we had plowed through it by keeping everything open and acting like it's just no BFD?
Bottom line: trumpublicans have NO governing concept whatsoever...they simply whine about what's wrong and play the blame game. Eternal victims.
..
China has plenty of money - what they are running out of is (oddly enough) people. At least that is what I think is going on. Their one-child policy is starting to rear its head, and they have an aging population with a shrinking labor pool. I think we are about to witness another major turn inward by Xi. They don't need money (see dis's post) they need resources and they have set themselves up as (essentially) the only manufacturer in the world. Now they need to keep everything they make in order to support the aging population - because pretty soon, they won't be able to make enough to share.
China and India have a surplus of young men and a marked shortage of women of reproductive age. In the past, a little land war would have reduced that imbalance…HooDat wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 10:44 amChina has plenty of money - what they are running out of is (oddly enough) people. At least that is what I think is going on. Their one-child policy is starting to rear its head, and they have an aging population with a shrinking labor pool. I think we are about to witness another major turn inward by Xi. They don't need money (see dis's post) they need resources and they have set themselves up as (essentially) the only manufacturer in the world. Now they need to keep everything they make in order to support the aging population - because pretty soon, they won't be able to make enough to share.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/14/china/ch ... index.html
https://www.ft.com/content/17314336-b7d ... a58e26ca3e
https://www.thinkchina.sg/china-turning ... to-its-own
'
No...we're still paying interest on the spending spree and tax cuts from George Bush, Kram.kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 11:54 pm All thanks to the many, many politicians who kept this country locked down much more severely and longer than needed.
NEW YORK — A victory in a bellwether House district in Hudson Valley gives fresh hope to Democrats ahead of a daunting 2022 midterm election and raises questions for Republicans who have been expecting a "red wave" this fall.DocBarrister wrote: ↑Wed Aug 24, 2022 12:12 am New York of all places just gave us solid proof that there will be no red wave in November. Doesn’t mean Democrats will hold the House or Senate, but it does suggest that the election will be much closer than political pundits thought it would be earlier in the year. Turns out women and others are p*ssed that a far-right Supreme Court is threatening their rights while protecting the profits of the gun industry over the lives of children.
The Democrats have held onto NY-19 in a House special election, which both candidates tried to nationalize. The Democrat, Pat Ryan, basically made it a referendum on reproductive rights. This is a true swing district that both Trump and Biden have won. The fact that Ryan won argues against a red wave that will sweep Democrats off the map.
Even more compelling is the result in NY-23, a heavily Republican district where the former GOP incumbent used to win by 9 to 16 points (the 9 point-win taking place in the blue wave 2018 election). The Republicans held onto the seat in a special House election, but by less than 7 points. That follows other Democratic over-performances in special elections since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Of course, we can’t forget the dominating pro-choice victory in conservative Kansas several weeks ago … looks like that overwhelming victory was not a fluke.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/election ... e-main-t-2
Republicans are still favored to take the House, but I think the Democrats have a real fighting chance. Democrats also have a real chance of holding the Senate, and maybe even net gain a seat or two.
Thing are looking up for our country and the Democrats.
DocBarrister
yup. Fascist.jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 24, 2022 8:30 am Fascist Governor and would be fascist Senator show what they are.
MAGA
Understand the differences in legislative or fiat rule (student loan cancellation) outcome/impact but what still ain’t understood is the price to go to college is the same for the rich kid and the poor kid. The sticker price. That’s what the money is predicated off of. So you’re still subsidizing the university and the rich kids who go to schools with lower income kids. It’s really not hard to understand. It’s one price point for all. Untying career training from education is ideal but impossible to unwind at this point.Seacoaster(1) wrote: ↑Thu Aug 25, 2022 10:31 am HCR:
"Yesterday’s elections suggest that American voters are concerned about the past year’s radicalization of the Republican Party. In a special election for a seat in the House of Representatives in a New York state swing district, the 19th congressional district, Democrat Pat Ryan beat his Republican opponent. Pundits looked at the race as a bellwether (named for the wether, or castrated sheep, fitted with a bell to indicate where the flock was going), and most thought the Republican would win, as he was a strong candidate and the midterm election in a president’s first term usually goes to the opposite party.
Ryan’s opponent emphasized inflation and crime, but Ryan told Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: “We centered the concept of freedom…. When rights and freedoms are being taken away from people,” Ryan told Sargent, they “stand up and fight.” The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision of two months ago overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protected abortion rights was a key sign of the erosion of freedom. Ryan told Sargent that “ripping away reproductive rights from tens of millions of people” was “visceral.”
So, too, are gun safety and threats to democracy. “There’s sort of this power grab of the far, far right,” Ryan told Sargent. “It’s just wildly out of step with where the vast majority of Americans are.”
This is the fourth special election since the Dobbs decision that has shown at least a two-point movement toward the Democrats. A referendum on preserving abortion rights in Kansas also went to those in favor of them.
Tom Bonier, who runs the political data firm TargetSmart, noted that women have outregistered men to vote since the Dobbs decision by large margins: 11 points in Ohio, for example. And a Pew poll released yesterday shows that 56% of voters say that the right to abortion is very important to them for their midterm votes, up from 46% before the Dobbs decision.
The trend is clear, but so is the reality that a number of states are operating under extreme Republican gerrymanders—some, like those in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio, still in force although the state judges have said they are illegal—that will give Republicans a structural advantage.
Biden administration officials are currently touring the country to call attention to how the administration is “Building a Better America.” In 35 trips to 23 states, they will “make clear that the President and Congressional Democrats beat the special interests and delivered what was best for the American people.” They are emphasizing the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the gun safety law, and so on. They are urging Americans to unite not by party, but against the extremism on display in the leadership of the current Republican Party. “Every step of the way, Congressional Republicans sided with the special interests—pushing an extreme MAGA agenda that costs families.”
Since the 1980s, Republicans have argued for cutting public programs because they cost too much money, while also arguing that tax cuts for the wealthy would pay for themselves by expanding the economy, thus increasing tax revenues. It has never worked—when government computers showed that President Ronald Reagan’s first tax cut would explode the deficit, the budget director simply reprogrammed them—but that has not stopped the Republicans from passing repeated tax cuts for the wealthy, one as recently as December 2017.
Republicans have warned that the massive investment the Democrats have made in the country during Biden’s term would rack up enormous deficits. But, in fact, today the Office of Management and Budget forecast that this year’s budget deficit will decline by $1.7 trillion, the single largest drop in the deficit in U.S. history. (The record deficit was $3.13 trillion in 2020, during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.) This number is simply a benchmark, and the deficit remains at $1.03 trillion, but it suggests that numbers are currently moving downward.
Today, Biden announced another key change in American policy, this time in education. The Department of Education will cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the federal government and up to $10,000 for other borrowers. Pell Grants are targeted at low-income students. Individuals who make less than $125,000 a year or couples who make less than $250,000 a year are eligible. The current pause on federal student loan repayment will be extended once more, through the end of 2022, and the Education Department will try to negotiate a cap on repayments of 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from the current 10%.
The Department of Education estimates that almost 90% of the relief in the measure will go to those earning less than $75,000 a year, and about 43 million borrowers will benefit from the plan.
Opponents of the plan worry that it will be inflationary and that it will not address the skyrocketing cost of four-year colleges. But its supporters worry that the education debt crisis locks people into poverty. They also note that there was very little objection to the forgiveness of 10.2 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans issued as of July 2022, with $72,500 being the average dollar amount forgiven.
The administration’s plan is a significant pushback to what has happened to education funding since the 1980s. After World War II, the U.S. funded higher education through a series of measures that increased college attendance while also keeping prices low. Beginning in the 1980s, that funding began to dry up and tuition prices rose to make up the difference.
A college education became crucial for a high-paying job, but wages didn’t rise along with the cost of tuition, so families turned to borrowing. Many of them choose the lowest monthly repayment amounts, and some put their loans on hold, meaning their debt balances grow far beyond what they originally borrowed. The shift to “high-tuition, high-aid” caused a “massive total volume of debt,” Assistant Professor of Economics Emily Cook of Tulane University told Jessica Dickler and Annie Nova of CNBC in May. Today, around 44 million Americans owe about $1.7 trillion of educational debt.
Because of the wealth gap between white and Black Americans—the average white family has ten times the wealth of the average Black family—more Black students borrow to finance their education.
Canceling a portion of student debt is a resumption of the older system, ended in the 1980s, under which the government funded cheaper education in the belief it was a social good. In his explanation of the plan, White House National Economic Council Director Bharat Ramamurti told reporters today that “87% of the dollars…are going to people making under $75,000 a year, and 0 dollars, 0%, are going to anybody making over $125,000 in individual income.” He told them it was “instructive” to compare this plan “to what the Republican tax bill did in 2017. It’s basically the reverse. Fifteen percent of the benefits went to people making under $75,000 a year, and 85% went to people making over $75,000 a year. And if you zoom in even more on that, people making over $250,000 a year got nearly half of the benefits of the GOP tax bill and are getting 0 dollars under our [plan].”
depends on where you go to school. My experience (5 kids) - is the schools do a rectal exam of your finances and charge what they think the parent can eek out - including dumping debt on the parents. If I was smart, I would have had all my kids emancipate themselves - give up my dependent tax deduction and let them apply as wards of the state. I probably would have saved a solid 6 figures in higher ed costsFarfromgeneva wrote: ↑Thu Aug 25, 2022 10:40 am what still ain’t understood is the price to go to college is the same for the rich kid and the poor kid.