(07-09-2018, 12:48 AM)Galen Wrote:(07-08-2018, 09:30 PM)m732 Wrote: Why not cut spending?
Politicians like bribing various interest groups to vote for them. Doing the right thing could cost somebody an election and so they won't risk that until a crisis occurs that they can not paper over with Fed money printing.
It used to be that the Right bragged about cutting spending so that people would get off welfare and do miserable jobs or accept near-peonage just to survive but to create wealth for the ruling elite. The Left has its priorities and the Right has theirs. The Right has learned how to waste money on show projects, privatization schemes, wars for profit, and subsidies to dying businesses. Thus Trump and coal -- and you can trust that he does not care about coal miners.
Spending cuts will not happen until the government is no longer able to monetize debt. That will take a collapse of the system that implies that the government cannot even collect taxes to pay the interest. People will have to resort to barter or to use metallic currency -- gold, silver, or platinum. There would be a hyper-deflation because people would have to be paying in old silver dollars or gold coins instead of in 'Federal Reserve Bank Notes' when there is no longer a Federal Reserve.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.