[ExI] eput this crazy system out of our misery: was RE: Euthanasia

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 1:36 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: [ExI] eput this crazy system out of our misery: was RE: Euthanasia

 

 On Oct 10, 2013, at 12:39 PM, spike wrote:

>>. I don't understand why US creditors are as calm as they are.  

 

>.Well just today there are hints that the Republicans may have found a
little sanity concerning the debt ceiling and won't set off the dynamite
suicide vest they have strapped to their chest for 6 weeks, and the stock
market went up 323 points.

 

Ja, cool about the stock market.  Now about that business of borrowing money
to pay our debts, if we do that, we haven't paid off any debts at all.  We
just rearrange debts.  If no one challenges it, the insane practice goes on
unabated.  We had this guy who told us in 2006 that this was a national
threat, unpatriotic, etc.  So we elected him president.  He not only didn't
try to fix it, he switched sides.  His former argument regarding increasing
the debt limit is far more convincing than the one he is using now.  How did
massive borrowing become not a national threat, and not unpatriotic?

 

I don't understand who is still loaning money to the US, and why.  If you
were a banker and some yahoo came in saying he needed to borrow money to pay
interest on what he has already borrowed, you would say that guy is
bankrupt.  Not will go bankrupt, but is now.  We have a president who says
raising the  borrowing limit doesn't add to the debt.  How does that work?
Do we have two different definitions of the term debt?

 

>>. This government healthcare scheme DEFINITELY does shift the burden onto
the backs of our children and grandchildren. 

 

>.To hell with them, let them fight their own wars. Productivity improves,
so a dollar today is far more valuable than a dollar will be to my
grandchildren.  John K Clark

Hmmm, perhaps.  But maybe not.  We have held assumptions of exponential
growth forever, and based all our spending on that assumption.  What happens
if future generations are not as rich as we are?  Then we have borrowed
their money and spent it on the craziest stuff:
http://www.businessinsider.com/newly-built-aircraft-set-to-go-straight-to-de
sert-boneyard-2013-10

 

If we go with the assumption that wasteful spending is a good thing, why not
waste it on something that might somehow pay in the future, like
manufacturing and warehousing billions in solar panels and inverters?  If we
are just wasting the money anyway, why not waste it on that?  You can get a
lot of solar panels for the price of one useless cargo plane.

My prediction is that the congress will eventually compromise and pass some
kind of budget, perhaps a pumped-up version of sequestration.  Life will go
on.  Eventually the economy will grow enough to accommodate the spending
level we have sustained for the past five years.

We have seen already that there is plenty of room to cut government.  The
sequestration cuts they have made so far were so nearly painless, they had
to go out of their way to make the cuts annoying.  I got a call this morning
from where we had reservations to camp next weekend, saying the fed had
closed the campground.  They didn't refund my reservation money.  I have
gone up into the Sierras every fall for the last several years and I have
never seen a federal agent anywhere.  So closing that campground didn't save
the government anything, not one dollar.  They did it just to make life
difficult.  So I say very well, close the campgrounds and monuments, keep
the pressure on congress.  Do a version of healthcare which does not require
government subsidy.  Give a temporary debt limit increase, say 100 billion
dollars, then let's go at it again, extract a few cuts and give them another
100 billion when that is gone.  Let's get on with it, but not by just
borrowing more and more and more money.  It's unpatriotic.  It's a national
security threat.

spike





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