They have that capacity right now, because of the same system the GP was talking about.

Break it and they will discover they stop being welcome in other countries. Probably even quicker than on their original one.

From Network (1976):

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West.

There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

I don't disagree that they're locusts, but 'American' has been leaning heavily in the same direction as locusts for a long while. That's why they currently hold US Passports, the most fertile breeding ground.

Absolutely not. The only thing saving us from these people and their senility is the knowledge that they will eventually die.

(Obama is so far the only US president born after 1946)

That’s why we need to tax billionaires into oblivion. The solution isn’t to make them immortal in the hopes that this somehow makes them benevolent, it’s to ensure nobody has that kind of power in the first place.

The winners of WWII basked in their own glory for far too long, constantly looking back at a grand victory instead of looking forward to ensure a grand future.

The march of technology papered over a lot of cracks, but the cracks keep on growing.

Yep, they were the vanguard of "fuck you I need to get mine at all costs."

> But he carried a buffet of them

You could argue that the buffet was so large that combined with confirmation bias people often didn't see or believe the statements at the other side of the buffet. Allowing the convincing of opposite groups to both offer support.

This is very different from "traditional" politics where often one group is supported and the other fought.

> It's not that they "didn't mind", but many probably were happy that he was those things.

I think many of them were determined not to vote for a Clinton, or a woman, or that particular female Clinton, and they casually brushed off the very evident problems with his character to vote for him.

There are also moderate, supposedly principled Republicans who you would think would vote for a hawkish conservative Democrat over a revolting malignant narcissist philandering racist bigot and crook, but no.

So no, I think "didn't mind" is the right phrasing for the people with selective morality who pushed him over the edge to elected. They are negligent, immoral people who don't really have a problem with any bigotry not directed at them. They didn't pay it any attention. Not their problem, don't mind it.

All the evidence is "didn't mind" won it for him again, right? He wasn't going to come for the law-obiding immigrants, just the bad ones, etc. etc.

> And then along came Donald Trump, and, "OMG look how awful he is! Vote Blue No Matter Who!"

And that would have been the correct choice. Because he's not just the worst person to be president, he was very clearly, even in 2015, among a small handful of the worst people with any kind of following to ever run for the job (maybe not as bad as David Duke, at least as bad as Lyndon LaRouche).

It's really simple: if there are two candidates with a chance of running for the job and only one of them is very evidently a malignant narcissist, you pick the other one. Regardless of their policies!

Trump was easily identifiable as erratic, self-centred and profoundly dangerous and that has been borne out.

(You'll get no argument from me that Mitt Romney got a raw deal both from timing and from the old school of political rough-and-tumble, especially seeing as he's often to the left of Gavin Newsom)

Nothing is happening because you aren't doing anything and are even spreading hopelessness! Imagine someone at work or on a team who acted that way. It's psyops for the opposition. It is the behavior of losers (sorry).

The main obstacle for the opposition is itself.

When a debt crisis occurs, there is only one good option and many bad ones. The good option is the debt holders realize they need to compromise and are willing to forgive part of the debt for proper governance. ie. forgive part of the debt as long as the US adheres to a strict budget which involves raising taxes and cutting services. And no more giving out tax breaks and tax holidays as if they were free.

All the other options are infinitely worse. The problem is that such a deal is political suicide. MAGA will run on repealing the deal like they ran on dismantling Obama care. They are the party of financial self immolation.

The window is still pretty large. Raising taxes at low to moderate levels would be sufficient to close the gap and restore confidence in debt without slowing the economy.

The problem is that every time democrats make progress republicans pass massive tax cuts. Four successive republican administrations have passed massive tax cuts. Trump alone is responsible for 30% of all debt.

The problem is that voters punish anyone who raise taxes. The first bush lost reelection because he broke his “read my lips no new taxes promise” when he was actually trying to behave responsibly.

Let's ignore the fact that congress and not the president that allocates funding, and the fact that "scientific funding" is not a recognized obligation or even right of any branch of the US government, and therefore hardly qualifies as an institution, and the fact that "scientific funding" included things like spending $14,000,000 to have monkeys play a "Price Is Right"-inspired video game[1].

Can you share exactly how much less was spent on "scientific funding" by the US government in 2025, and how exactly that amounts to Trump burning down the institutions?

[1]: https://www.independent.org/article/2025/12/30/2025-festivus...

I'm not a psychopath but how are we supposed to fix the deficit without something like DOGE that can cut programs.

* delusional.

One of the few english words, i have no native equivalent in practical use. Nobody sees themself as the vilain. We all have internal narratives, painting us as the heros of the story.

I feel like there is an unsolved problem in human organizations, that corrupts them over time from within, no matter if public or private institution. Trump is just a unique flashy clown that you may get with failing checks and balanced but im afraid, no matter the damage done, the delusional cogs with bloated selfesteem behind him are infinite as a selected breed, as a product/outcome of the institutions they emerged from.

    Democrats          Change in Deficit
    ---------          -----------------
    Joe Biden              -6.1% GDP
    Barack Obama           -6.4% GDP
    Bill Clinton           -5.0% GDP
    Jimmy Carter           -0.2% GDP

    Republicans        Change in Deficit
    -----------        -----------------
    Donald Trump           +8.6% GDP
    George W. Bush        +11.0% GDP
    George H. W. Bush      +1.1% GDP
    Ronald Reagan          +0.2% GDP
    Gerald Ford            +2.3% GDP
    Richard Nixon          +0.7% GDP
    Dwight Eisenhower      -1.1% GDP

Biden also had to respond to the deflationary risk of the Covid pandemic.

No, your parent is correct.

In addition to the pragmatic point about how nobody actually paid those rates, there is an ideological mismatch as well:

Those very high marginal tax rates were not enacted to address inequality or any of the typical social goals that we think of when we advocate for higher marginal tax rates. Rather, they were imposed to combat war profiteering during the WW2 period:

"The crisis of World War II led Congress to pass four excess profits statutes between 1940 and 1943. The 1940 rates ranged from 25 to 50 percent and the 1941 ones from 35 to 60 percent. In 1942, a flat rate of 90 percent was adopted, with a postwar refund of 10 percent; in 1943 the rate was increased to 95 percent, with a 10 percent refund."[1]

Can you argue for a very high marginal tax rate as a means of wealth distribution and furthering progressive policy ? Yes, of course you can.

Have we ever had one ? Not really.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_profits_tax#United_Stat...

> Inflation was really solved when Volker raised the interest rates.

That was my point

> Strong agree. Raise taxes for everyone (except those at the bottom, please).

Again, what does this have to do with inflation? I'm not even questioning the (de)merits of the current tax rates, but pointing out that the tax rates before Regan were in no way correlated to low inflation.

That's the point- they're different issues

Infinite growth is possible as long as your economy trades things that are not physically constrained. Art can grow in value over time without hitting any constraints. And even if your economy doesn't grow in real terms, to service debt all you need is for the economy to grow in nominal terms, to have inflation. And even if your economy stagnates completely and has zero inflation you just need to bring your deficit to zero to maintain the debt level. Every year you can just pay the interest on the debt from taxes and your debt as percentage of the economy stays stable without ever paying down the debt.

Well, the US clearly has far, far more rope than Greece or Italy. Question is, is that a buffer, or a perfect noose in the making.

The Fed seems already constrained by the administration to not raise rates. Yields went up anyway. US primary deficit is huge and so debt to GDP is accelerating from different angles - interest, increased spending, increased yield demand based off uncontrolled inflation expectations etc.

In fact I suspect that the mega-pivot to AI is an attempt to solve the problem by massively inflating GDP, so that the debt doesn’t matter - ie radically grow the economy. It remains to be seen if it pays off and solves US’s problems.

At the end of the day, the US cannot escape from the forces that drowned Greece - inflation, investor confidence, debt spiral. It’s totally avoidable, but the US seems determined to race full speed ahead at it. Let’s see if Trump can play chicken with economics.

Short term government bond yields are trading within the fed interest rates (as it should be) and long term yields are a bit higher as it usually is (an inverted yield curve is rare). It's nothing unusual.

Their point is directional. Fed is lowering rates but yields are rising.

They can always reduce deficit and just play the game as it's supposed to be played.