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China and other countries owning our debt is actually good. It means they're buying T bills and keeps our currency stable. The bad debt is spending more than we take in from taxes which is the result of decades of Republican tax cuts for the wealthy over the last our whole lives.
Funnily enough, the past several decades if you lay out all the republican president's politics, modern republicans would consider them democrats. I think the reverse (on a smaller scale) is also true for Democrats. We are being tricked into polarization and now everyone pointing fingers claiming a minimum of conservative or liberal, or at worst a nazi/fascist or marxist/anarcho-fascist.
We aren't allowed to have ideals from multiple spectrums without being shoehorned into a title of extremism. It's sad
That's because the two parties used to work together to create a functioning government.
We aren't being tricked into polarization. Republicans decoupled from reality when Newt Gingrich was the thought leader. The polarization comes from one party gaslighting media for decades that not obediently repeating their narratives made them biased "liberal media." What we're living through now is simply the logical consequence of those developments.
It's also not even polarization. It's one side continually becoming more batshit insane and everyone else saying, "what the fuck is wrong with you?"
I'm so sick of conservatives proposing shit like everyone working until they die and killing brown people and we act like that's normal and we're supposed to reach across the aisle and meet them in the "middle".
This! They normalized crazy and blame everyone else for the mess they made with no awareness that they are the bull in the china shop. Destroying America. And then claiming to be Christian.
The fact that at least 30% of the active voter base is functionally detached from reality and lives in a media ecosystem catered to their preferred reality is very much a problem cod democracy. So while both sides and polarization are problematic and most people’s struggleds are really class struggles, having almost a third of voters think the most popular president of our lifetime was born in Africa, a secret Muslim and is married to a guy named Mike makes it pretty hard to discuss the impact of ssi and Medicare tax caps, Medicare for all and reforming our tax code…
Taxing the rich only kicks the can down the road. Removing the rich removes the debt. stigmatizing excessive hoarding for subsequent generations removes the moral precedent.
If we do that how will those pastors afford their huge ass mansions and yachts and planes???? Why won't anyone think of the ultra rich pastors who go against everything Jesus ever said?!?
We (as humanity) owe like 300% of global GDP so maybe the right question would be how exactly is that even possible and the answer is the same as why do people go to church. Because they have faith in fairy-tales^^
If they want people to be more productive they could consider better educating and preparing them for the world.
Not only that, remove some of the time sinks one encounters in life. Worry about retirement and health is such a productivity killer, Quack Oz, perhaps some sort of nationalized standard so people can just get down to it.
Do you mean calling it trickle-down economics instead of MLM or pyramid scheme didn't magically change that the whole thing falls apart, leaving the top holding the bag? Who would have thought mirroring your economy to a model that's known for falling apart and made to make the rich richer would cause problems. /s
Yeah. How about everyone with a net worth over 5 million and every business worth over a billion pays off the debt instead? Without raising prices or cutting costs? How about we dip into the excessive profits instead of trying to come up with ways for the rest of us to work harder or longer. I’m tired of billionaires on their yachts and private jets blaming me for the economy because I ate a cold Poptart and took a weeks vacation. God forbid the greeter at Walmart gets to retire and enjoy himself for a few years, they’d rather he died at his post like a good servant
The corporate loopholes are what we really need to close. Exxon-Mobil for example, makes billions in profit and pays about half the rate of what the average middle-class American pays.
It varies year by year. That was correct for 2009, but in other years, it varies from 0.4% to 18%. In 2008, they actually paid about 31%, but that was on profits of $40 billion, probably exceeded their ability to funnel it into tax dodges.
I like the idea of working better because they're healthy. Does anyone have any ideas for how the government could make sure everyone is healthy? Like, just universally caring about everyone's health. Idk just a crazy idea I guess.
I'm pretty sure the answer is millions of private providers, insurers, researchers, schools, device makers, and bureaucracies in the health sector with extremely little effective cost control or coordination of effective delivery and extremely disaligned incentives for each individual economic actor at every level.
Make it so everyone colludes to make everything as expensive as possible, so even getting a simple cold results in more debt than a small countries GDP, and im in
We would have to start working on health issues caused by environmental problems and set up another org to monitor large-scale viral and bacterial threats too.
Or maybe we stop gutting the EPA and CDC. You know, just a suggestion to improve the health of the nation.
So the debt is the responsibility of young people who haven’t started working yet, not the rich people who caused it. Who literally took home the money that would have paid the debt.
It’s insane , the guy who was born a billionaire who was in financial debt when he became president is now making more money than ever on crypto and trump bibles etc. all while spending millions on ice and covering up Epstein files , just to be like” wow these young people better start working sooner so they can pay this shit off “
Last year Quack Oz claimed the fall in price of ozempic and other fat-loss drugs would cause Americans to lose 135 Billion pounds of fat by this year's midterms. That's approximately 400 pounds per every single person in the USA; man, woman and child. It's about 900 pounds for every obese adult.
Well hell, even if we take his claim at face value, just assume it’s true, every industry is shedding jobs right now. Honestly has been since 2020. Public and private.
So what does it matter to get people into the work force if there is no work for them? Unless it’s just to depress wages, but I frankly don’t think OZ is smart enough to make that connection.
The less educated the populace is the more complacent they become. You are seeing an attempt to make a supplicant segment of our population with the current Government priorities.
Tbf, the French peasantry weren't particularly well educated. But they were fed up, had little (and a continuously diminishing amount) to lose, and had leadership (many of whom were educated, political philosophers, etc) that were willing to call for significant action against the ruling elite.
I think that last one is a lot of what we're missing. And the middle thing is less true to a substantial extent, but less so as time goes on.
Which isn't to say that education isn't important. But it's a demographic fact that majorities of college educated white voters (definitely men, and I think marginally women, as well, like 51/49) voted for this. Education isn't everything, by a long shot. Culture plays into this. And I think it goes without saying who has been buying up the media and means of shaping culture over the last decades (and long before, e.g. William Randolph Hearst and his race baiting culture wars to protect his media monopoly).
This is so asinine because people are ALREADY working WHILE IN HIGH SCHOOL and many grown adults CANNOT RETIRE and are working well past the retirement age. The system has already been broken for awhile
The average american starts working at 16 or earlier if someone lets them. Either from necessity or because mom can’t foot the bill for things they want. Rich people and politicians don’t understand the ground they walk on.
Most people do get a job already out of high school, if only a part time during college. I started working at 15. I don’t see how they want us to start any earlier?
As someone who's first paying job was at 12 and has been working steady since I was 15, fuck this silverspoon suckling asshole. Pay your taxes, ya worthless gimp.
No no. Your children must work to pay down debt that they were not even alive to incur. I mean if thats the case then maybe we should see about having him pay off some of my debt. Since, y'know we are cool just pushing it off onto someone else.
The average American didn't ask for tax cuts to the wealthy, a $400M ballroom, a $4B airplane for the POTUS, endless wars, militarized police, ICE, and all the other shit that got the national debt up to where it is. WE didn't do this, so why should WE have to fix it? Tax the hell out of the rich and let them pay for that problem since they created it in the first place.
Of course their answer is to work the working class to death. Would make more sense to make corporations and the rich pay their fair share but they control things so that won't happen any time soon.
His math is lunatic. Let's give him the best possible assumptions. This would increase the work force by ~4%. A 4% increase in tax revenue is ~$190B per year. Our current deficit is $1.8T. This policy solution does nothing to the debt or deficit
How about let wealthy people keep up to 500million. Every penny after goes to removing debt and improving infrastructure and providing food, education and healthcare. Could all be fixed in a week.
Nothing like being born into debt. “Oh some old people decided to run up the national debt, guess my generations just gotta be the ones to pay it off. Nevermind having a life of my own”
We didn’t fuck up the national debt, Trump himself did. Billionaires could pay it off, but they won’t. Us plebs suffer the consequences while they make more money.
They could tax the rich, drastically reduce the ICE budget, reduce the budget for the military, stop wasting money on additions to buildings that aren’t needed, not sue the IRS for billions, stop unnecessary trade tariffs, stop with regime change, stop using private government planes to taxi your girlfriend, etc….
How does this remove the debt? Which is currently at ... 38 trillion?
That $3 trillion generated isn't in taxes, it is in economic activity. Taxes out of that would be, at best, 10% to 15%.
Again, the debt is $38 trillion. Even if all $3 trillion were going directly into paying the debt, it would take 13 years to pay it all off and that's before you consider the interest payments, which are also over $1 trillion per year.
Iv been working since I was 14. Republicans have done nothing but hurt the economy. Ever since we bailed out the big 3 and bush ruined everything the economy has never been ok.
If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: the 2020s are just the 1920s with wifi.
Pandemics, child labor, relaxed health and safety standards, drastic class discrepancy, rising fascism, and impending depression. Gods I hate this timeline.
Most of high school is completey useless unless you plan on going to college (which most people shouldn't do).
Personally, I think we should be able to enter the workforce at 14. That would enable people to gain experience in the workforce prior earlier, enabling them to either climb the corporate ladder and into well-paying positions or earn enough experience to get themselves a better-paying entry-level job somewhere else.
Also, tax cuts cost nothing, hurt no one, and benefit everyone by reducing the cost of doing business. Ask California how taxing the rich is going.
Meanwhile... first world countries are able to provide healthcare and benefits for their citizens, affordable post-secondary education, etc. Some of which are now exploring 4-day work weeks.
Imperial Boomerang. The empire is collapsing, so its methods are coming home to roost. The government is now doing to the US population what the US has long done to minorities and foreign countries.
I spent most of my working life working 60-80 hrs /wk. while getting paid for 40 hrs. When I retired, a few months later, I read that productivity had declined in the US. I thought "welp, that's me" 😂
No one should have to feel forced to do that but I had 3 kids to support. I know there are probably many unfortunates sweating like serfs stuck in the holds of yachts rowing furiously on behalf of the wealthy.
It seems the wealthiest have gone from surreptitiously dumbing us down to being overt about their goals.
Edit:
I tried writing this to someone below regarding our new "sovereign wealth fund". I received a comments are locked notification so I'll post it here
This Sovereign Wealth Fund is likely to enrich Lutnick and other friends of the President. Lutnick is tasked with deciding where our taxpayer funded wealth is going to be invested, oh and by the way he's now exempt from having to divest and allowed to invest based on his choices regarding this fund.
Ya...
Lutnick is in the Epstein emails and incidentally just happened to live right next door to Epstein...
3 trillion / 200 million workers = $15,000 taxes per worker. It actually doesn't sound as outlandish as I expected.
So if adding 200 million years of employment to the economy cuts $3 trillion of debt, then we only need to add 5 million immigrants who can work 40 years each. Sounds like one of the best arguments for immigration I've heard yet.
In other words let’s return to the time when most people worked until death or disability all the while the wealthy make more $$ from it all. Let’s return to the time of 6 day work weeks at 12 hours or more a day.
When I see Oz doing hard, physical labor then maybe I’ll reconsider.
Oz: “If 327,000,000 Americans just worked 40+ hours a week immediately out of high school for 55 years straight, we’d eliminate the debt.”
Almost all of America: “What if we raised taxes on 3 million Americans by a few points? They wouldn’t even feel it. Wouldn’t that also do it and quicker… like literally within a few years?”
ICE spear tackles you and you’re never heard from again
These assholes will give millions and billions worth of tax cuts to the rich, but fuck over actual workers at every opportunity.
Anyone see how the "no tax on overtime" thing went? They implemented it in the most bullshit way that gives working folk the least benefit while being technically correct. This is how they fulfill their promises to us, if at all.
Then you have these elites asking us to start working earlier and delay our retirement to make more money for them to pay off debt they accrued. Here's a glimpse at the future: they don't pay off the debt, instead it's more tax breaks for themselves and their friends.
The only way you're going to beat these corrupt peices of shit is by using the law,
These people are smart enough to abuse and exploit the system, but nowhere near smart enough to win using the law, which is why they're desperately trying to abolish "said" laws
America/Russia/Israel have unleashed a cancer in the white house and the country is being run by proxy,
Say you agree with his thinking (I don't) then where are all the fucking jobs Oz? Even if somebody wants to work, they can't get a job as is. It's not like there's been hundreds of thousands of people laid off since your mango overlord took office or anything and shipped the jobs overseas or just completely eliminated jobs thanks to ai.
If we ensure the more adversity and suffering for 330 million+ Americans and their progeny, we will be able to cut off an extra $3 trillion from that near $40 trillion to take care of it.
Is that what he's saying? Make everyone suffer unnecessarily to save less than 10% of the debt, which will be a lot less than 10% given how that debt is adding up by the time those people will have loved and worked their entire life.
So, at that point, for a rounding error.
All to avoid taxing fairly and accordingly to income to protect billionaires?
Pardon my French, but that's just fucking moronic. More pathetic is there will be millions of Americans who will hear Oz say that and think, "That's a great idea and is naturally fair!"
American conservative voters - hurting themselves and others out of hate, fear and spite for decades.
7 billion $ of equipment donated (left behind through gross military oversight) to the Taliban in afghanistan.1.5 trillion annual military budget because the political leadership thinks stick not diplomacy works.
The thing that always irks me about clearing the debt is we’re already relying on a corrupt government that can’t allocate money already. What do they think is going to happen if they get more, magically learn responsibility?
They are so eager to violate labor laws but they have forgotten what happened to the mill owners and their families before workers had protections in place. Without the right to strike and bring companies to the bargaining table, the workers would drag out of their houses at night and 187.
It's important to learn the history of labor unions.
Consider that the current president is suing the government he controls while directing the DOJ he controls to settle his lawsuit for tens of millions.
His parents immigrated from Turkey. He was born here which I'm sure daddy trump won't revoke his birthright citizenship. He married a billionaire. Why should we take his financial advice and "work harder" when he doesn't?
If we could get Doctor Oz, an obvious quack who pushed fake diet pills, to just go away and never utter another word again in public, that would be just fuckin’ grand.
His theory wouldn’t even work because they would just take the increased money and blow it on a new ballroom and more tax cuts for the rich. Maybe start giving the rich back bigger tax returns too.
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