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Slow Joe’s “Clean” Debt Ceiling

Do you find it tedious and boring to have to keep raising the debt ceiling by eighty-something times since it was put in place? Slow Joe thinks so.

Do you find it tedious and boring to have to keep raising the debt ceiling by eighty-something times since it was put in place? Slow Joe thinks so. Why not get rid of all of that deficit tedium and start with a clean piece of paper?

Scott, Steve and Bill tell you why not. That’s why not.


48 replies on “Slow Joe’s “Clean” Debt Ceiling”

Money is the basis of trade…trade on trust! Break the money and you break the trust. What is left but force and violence!!
I agree with Bill, unfortunately… We’re goin’ down.
But the real question is; Who is going to end up on top!…if it’s decided by force and violence….it ain’t gonna be pretty!!

For the gold standard to cover all the dept in the world, and it truly isn’t just the US in this boat, the value per ounce of the current amount of gold in all human possession would need to be raised to deep into six figures or possibly even seven figures. There really is nothing like the amount of gold in human hands that most people seem to think (a cube 21 meters on a side currently worth a bit over 7 trillion), whereas there is no limit in sight to the amount of printed money coming down the pipe!!!

Just did the math …. if you were to stack tightly packed one-dollar bills flat on the ground, the national debt would be a little over eight stacks …… that would reach to the Moon !

Steve at 4:30 is right; we either cut spending, or inflate the debt away, but either way the value of our money is gone or declining. Or more realistically, the money created that way never had any real value and we deluded ourselves into pretending that it did.

But Bill at 7:30: it took me a long time to learn that money is actually created out of thin air (or can be); and there does not need to be any supporting commodity or stuff backing it up if everyone agrees to treat that money responsibly. That means being reasonably able over time to create the wealth/value needed to replay that loan/debt, plus interest. Then the loan money “disappears” and the value (of the house) remains and is now fully owned by the former borrower. In turn, the value of the interest is owned by the lender. So, Bill, that is how an awful lot of money works (most of it?), and works to the betterment of our prosperity when such fiat money creation is not overdone beyond our ability to repay.

Clearly the tricky part from a macro economics perspective is trying to gage how many such loans will default, and how many will support growing the economy above and beyond already available savings. I think of this as converting the loan as “promise” money into “real money” with the addition of this market determined value.

Scott at 10:45: “an expression of hope”. I like that! Captures the element of non-reality involved in our current level of bankruptcy.

Seems that Rick Scott is the only major pol trying to address trimming the entitlements that are the major element of our budget and debt/deficit. There may be a few others who support this, but they have not been very vocal about it (except Rand Paul?).

But some new man named Steve Laffey, former mayor of Cranston, RI, has announced he is running as a Republican presidential candidate against Trump. And part of his program is addressing the SS/Medicare costs. Courageous or foolish is still TBD.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/who-is-steve-laffey-trump-s-first-2024-challenger/vi-AA17lzV1

My wife and I had our income taxes done last night, and we were shocked when we looked at our records from ’21. We’ve really been having a hard time financially for several months now, a lot of it is because of what the F’n democrats have done to our economy.
Inflation has really been hard on us, especially the price of gas and groceries.
We hadn’t realized that my wife’s income had dropped by almost $6000 from ’21 to ’22 because of the real estate market being in the shitter. She works for a title company, and their business has slowed down so much that starting this year(’23) all employees have to take 2 days off per month without getting paid now.
Her taxes taken from her paycheck went up in ’22, plus the loss of income. The democrats have screwed us over so badly that my wife and I are literally afraid of what’s going to happen to our grandkids in the future.
If we don’t do something/anything to stop this, the future generations in our families won’t have a country anything like what we had growing up.
It’s pretty pathetic.

Either way you slice it a reckoning is coming at some point. Like the famed bankruptcy’s in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, we’re going to go bankrupt in two ways: “Gradually and then suddenly.” I’m not sure how to survive the ‘suddenly’ part. I think of my kids spread across the country and my aged parents – still living in NYC – and wonder what the hell I’ll be able to do to help any of them when the balloon ultimately goes up. And more importantly what I’m not thinking of… Keeps me up at night frankly.

The biggest thing we were able to do after my dad died was to convince my mom to leave the tri-state area. Just the property taxes (even with the “break” for the elderly) were killing her.
When she moved to VA all of the sudden she had disposable income like she hadn’t before.
Keeps me awake also.

When my folks retired the left NJ for NC over taxes, and a number of their friends admitted that if they didn’t have neaby grandchildren they also would have bailed. I also remember my dad saying it took 20 years for what he paid in taxes in NC to catch up to what he paid the year they left Jersey. Now we get to watch the Democrats try to ruin our state they way they did to the formerly moderate state of NJ. Thank God MacAuliffe was stupid enough to be open about his disdain for school kids and their parents

We fall into the Democrat trap every time we discuss Social Security and Medicare. We should be happy to embrace reducing discretionary spending by 80%, including so-call defense spending. In fact, it’s just a good start. The greatest threat to this country lives in Washington. Anything we can do to starve any part of that beast is good.

I honestly thought we were going to hear Slo Jo stuttering and saying it wrong somewhere in the episode.

Tell you what. Cash me out of SSA and Medicare – just pay me back what was taken out of my paycheck for 45+ years. A little interest would be nice but let’s not be greedy.
Then just go away and leave me alone.

The silver lining, if there can be said to be one, is that I don’t see the “Great Reset” working out so well for those responsible. There are two kinds of currency systems. Positive value currency systems where you have something of value like gold. And negative value systems where you trade shares of some guys debt. Inflation occurs when the fact that some guy is a dead beat becomes more difficult to ignore. If you replace the Dollar without replacing the Deadbeat, and add terms and conditions in the process all you’ve done is give everyone incentive to find something else. No wonder Bill Gates has been buying up so much land, his other wealth is just electronic ghost farts.

What would you think about returning to the gold standard? I assume, maybe incorrectly, that we have enough gold at Ft. Knox and elsewhere to do this. Probably not, but it would be very painful for the entire world to do this, and would cause an internal economic crisis. Perhaps down the line might this be a solution?

I’d be in favor of going back to sea shells if there were enough of them. But I doubt if there’s enough of anything to cover all of the debt. The closest I can come to a solution is to play off all my personal debts, buy gold and most importantly: Try not to be anywhere that will tolerate “mostly peaceful” when the wheels come off.

Let’s start by stopping all the money going to countries that hate us or even mildly dislike us. Next, nationalize all foreign holdings from those same countries. After that, CLOSE THE DAMN BORDER and stop giving money to those crossing illegally. Finally close down all the government departments that do not reflect the constitution such as the EPA, the DOE, etc…Anyone who works for those departments can LEARN TO CODE!!

One point, and yes I know that I am being a bit pedantic here, but the phrase “raising taxes” is inaccurate. The phrase should be “raising tax revenue”.
The difference is that from where we are, tax revenues can actually be increased by reducing the tax rates. We have seen it many times over the years.
I am in the camp that tax revenue would increase substantially if we were to eliminate the income tax completely (by the appropriate Constitutional methods) and install the Fair Tax or something like it.
That would be a “Tax Decrease” but a Tax revenue increase.
So McCarthy needs to not cede the language that by not increasing the debt ceiling he is mandating a Tax Increase. When asked he could then go into an economic discussion about reducing tax rates to increase revenue. AOC’s head would go all ‘splody, so that’s a benefit, too.

What you’re talking about is something that has always mystified me concerning Leftist doctrines. They would get a much higher tax revenue from a prosperous economy yet they seem completely averse to prosperity … So obviously there’s more than meets the eye with their agenda.

A simple way to increase tax revenues is to spend money we don’t have. Inflation is a tax no one voted for and no one supports intentionally other than voting for the people who create the inflation.

A good way to increase inflation, and subsequently ‘tax’ the population unwittingly, is to remove the debt ceiling and print as much money as the Left thinks it needs to buy votes.

The problem historically is that they have NOT gotten higher tax revenue from prosperous economy. When taxes get too high bigger corporations move and take their tax base with them ala CA and the Newsom plan to tax after corporations/”the rich” have vacated the state. I can tell you now, all that’s going to do is cost taxpayer yet more in court costs. It just won’t work.
History has also shown, as far back as JFK that is in my lifespan, lowering tax rates increases tax revenues. Jobs are created, spreading the tax burden around. More people working, off welfare, paying ‘their fair share’ equals lower individual payments plus the benefit of higher revenues. The original “win-win-win” situation.

You misread my comment. Ron SAE was talking about tax revenue overall vs. tax rate and they’re not the same thing. I was talking about the former.

Increasing prosperity, allowing people to make and keep more money is a definition of ‘prosperity’, causes more dollars to change hands generating greater tax revenues without raising the tax rate. Small tax rates on a booming economy generate more tax revenue than large tax rates on a busted economy.

MEANING THAT — I was agreeing that lowering tax rates, which increases prosperity, generates more tax revenues than crushing tax rates which decrease prosperity.

If you have a trillion dollar economy and you take 10% in taxes you get more money in total than if you have a billion dollar economy and you take 50% in taxes.

In that scenario you get two hundred times as much money in total tax revenues. Better to have a large economy constantly growing than to have a lesser stagnating economy if you want to raise money. Lower rates increase revenues, you said so yourself! Because the economy grows. That’s just high school math.

OF COURSE I was not advocating for higher tax rates. I can’t imagine how you would even think such an absurd thing. This isn’t YouTube and you’d have to look long and hard to find anyone in here advocating for higher taxes. If you think that’s what someone is saying it would be prudent to read and read again before you mistakenly disagree with them.

So I have no idea what you’re on about here. To be fair where I said “A simple way to increase tax revenues …” what I meant was “A simple way to increase taxes …” not revenues. I don’t feel too bad about that accidental phrasing because it’s not clear at all what you mean by the way you wrote it.

My point was that if I know a strong economy with lower tax rates generates more tax revenue in total, and if you know that and Ron SAE knows that etc. ad nauseum then …

Why doesn’t the Democrat Left know that?

They could have MORE money in total for their vote buying programs while appeasing the other side of the aisle with lower tax rates IF they did the things that create a prosperous, strong, thriving economy. Yet they do not do that, they intentionally do things that choke down the economy.

So clearly they are not interested in doing the things they tell us they want to do. There is another agenda at work in their doctrines.

To me it appears that they’re holding out promises in order to buy votes then doing what they can to weaken the American economy so that they don’t make themselves irrelevant. The only way anyone needs to be ‘rescued’ by the Democrats is if the Democrats keep them in hardship so they can rescue them.

The day the Democrat Party runs out of people to rescue because prosperity has erased their hardships is the day the Democrat Party vanishes as a political power.

Meanwhile Democrats are tearing down our social and economic structure to create crisis after crisis that they can then ‘solve’ with ever more drastic governmental force. Government force that the Democrats reserve to themselves of course.

It’s the carrot of promises and the stick of do-as-we-say or we’ll hurt you. The more people gobble down those carrots the bigger and more menacing that stick gets.

“their fair share”

That is a lie perpetuated by those who would subjugate the population using the forced redistribution of wealth. The excellent essay by Gary North (circa 1993) sums it up nicely: https://www.garynorth.com/public/12335.cfm
Here are some excerpts that I believe are pertinent:

When a politician speaks of everyone paying his fair share of taxes, he always means the rich should pay a higher percentage of income than the poor. Meanwhile, politicians offer to the middle class–the eligible voters who actually vote–their fair share of the loot that will be stolen from others by means of the ballot box. Almost no one questions the legitimacy of using the ballot box to confiscate the wealth of others. The debate centers around those who should pay their fair share–“someone else”–and those who will collect their fair share: “us.”

One question is never raised in public: What will be everyone’s fair share of judgment when the political theft process produces economic disaster and political revolution? Everyone assumes that disaster can be deferred at least until after the next election. Everyone assumes that the bills will come due later: “Someone else will have to pay them.” But eventually, bills come due.

and

In a society in which a majority of voters accept the role of the state as a source of wealth redistribution as morally valid, there will be widespread negative consequences. Politically, voluntary cooperation will be replaced by interest-group politics and the confiscation of private wealth. The worst will begin to rise to the top. This will eventually lead to an economic crisis and a loss of confidence in the prevailing social order. It is then that principled men must say no to the politics of the fair share. They must be ready to present both a moral critique of the culture of spending and a technical critique. It is not enough to show enraged, envy-driven voters that the welfare state has failed to deliver the goods. Voters must be reminded that their own false morality has led them into a crisis, and that repentance–a change of mind–is necessary for social healing. The culture of spending must be shown to be the moral low ground, not just an inefficient solution to the problem of scarcity.

I suggest a general refusal to use Leftist terminology like “Fair Share.”

I think you’ve answered your own mystery with the “Leftist doctrines” label. Throughout history the Leftists have been tyrannical oligarchs intent upon controlling the population. History has demonstrated that fear eventually fails to control a large, disenfranchised population (i.e., Soviet, Nazi, etc.), because, the tyrants push too far. However, the modern Leftist has subtly evolved to employ many of the old tricks (eg., shunning, mob rule, police action, etc.) plus the tracking of all movement and thought via technology and strict monetary control of people’s money. Keep the masses poor and dependent, and centralized control is simplified. The modern Leftist is a combination of the Communists and Fascist tyrants of old and the modern corporate magnate — I think the best name I’ve heard to date is Technocrat. “You will accept your silicon brain implant and you will like it … or die.” (spoken with a German, Bond villian accent … hmmmm … Klaus Schwab?)

The question remains … will humanity will roll over and accept subjugation, or will it depose those who would oppress them in the name of safety, security and a cheap meal?

“Ron”, who was in charge of both houses of congress and the executive branch when the Social Security dollars were used for general funds in the 1960’s? Or am I believing a myth?

Well – 1960s POTUS:
Ike – 1 year
Kennedy
Johnson
Nixon – 1969
I don’t actually recall when the raid took place and the addicts in congress couldn’t keep there hands out of the till.
As Bill and Scott said together: How much cocaine does the addict snort – All Of IT!!

Ron, Acts, what did we just blow up at 40K feet over Alaska, 3:00 pm? It’s the size of a small car, and supposedly it’s unmanned and it’s NOT a balloon???

I heard about but have no info. NOw that we are trigger happy we are going to get duped into blowing up something that is actually dangerous.

Broken record, here. Again, if we freeze federal spending – which by law increases 7-10% per year – at today’s bloated number, it would help. If we take away useless or redundant government agencies, it could decrease another chunk of cost.
We could afford our entitlements if we didn’t spend >40% of our taxes on servicing the debt.
The question I have that no one seems to be able to answer is this; If we are the world’s default currency, a status we achieved because the rest of the world’s economies manage their monies worse than we manage our money (which is hard to believe), do we ever have to take debt seriously? The “answer” I hear is that “at some point, it has to matter.” Will people pull out of dollars and go to the currency in China, the Reminbi? The Euro? The Yen?
I had thought, maybe ten years ago, that we allow China to buy up all our debt and then nuke China. Debt cancelled.

Keith – somewhere several years ago I had done a spreadsheet that froze the federal budget and allowed the economy to grow at a reasonable rate. I will see if I can either dig it back out or if someone now did a YT video on it. But it is remarkable what happens.
It also takes a hiring freeze in all but the military so as not replacing parts of the bloated bureaucracy.

Yeah, if you don’t freeze Federal hiring that tick just drinks more blood and grows bigger and bigger.

Wherever she ended up, Ayn Rand is smiling a little and saying – Told You So.
It is pretty much impossible right now to determine how many US citizens work for the federal government.
We don’t even need to shutter whole departments right away (though several need to go) just a freeze and let retirements and other attrition take hold.
The federal employees are a large group looking for work to do rather than a large block of work in search of worker, if you get my meaning and I am pretty sure that you do.
Personally I would move all TSA employees to the southern border to act as human fencing in support of ICE. Don’t like that job, you are free to quit but we won’t be hiring replacements.
But then I have been told that I am a bit of an A-hole. So I got that going for me.

It wasn’t that long ago that merely freezing the by law increase in yearly spending would have allowed the budget to balance in a handful of years.
And to your answer above, do we really need a Department of Commerce? A federal Department of Education? Eliminating these and other superfluous departments could further help.
And the number of duplicated studies done by different federal departments is mindboggling, usually regarding Woke subjects.
But, again, I need an answer to why we should care if we are the world’s default currency. It’s viewed as a free pass, in my opinion, and the reason they think they can get away with any stupid economic decisions.

Welcome to the A-Hole Club of America … 🙂

Yeah, I get your meaning. It’s like the difference between a problem that needs a solution and a solution looking for a problem.

Just think of all the money going into government salaries that could be used for some other more worthwhile expenditure. The Democrats are missing out, they could probably buy a dozen voters for every Federal employee they got rid of.

Dear God – don’t give them any ideas!!!
I recall in the 80s when I started working for companies that made things for a living. The target sales revenue was $12,000 per month per employee. Let that sink in from 40 years ago. If you had 30 employees, you need to ship $3.6M per month in order to be profitable.
Now look at employees who don’t produce a good and make comparatively exorbitant salaries and occupy expensive real estate. The $/month/employee taken out of the economy, from citizens in the form of tax just to have that employee at that “job” when taking into account benefits, tools of the job, power etc. I bet it’s close to $20,000 per month per employee.
Meaning it takes a dozen or more taxpayers to support every federal employee. This would be a good exercise and data point that could get traction.

It takes half a dozen tax payers and borrowed money! I’m telling you that there is a “secret handshake” at some level of power in the federal government where they wink and nod about the deficit and go on continuing to borrow, knowing the consequences will be passed down the line.

It would get traction if we actually had a way of knowing how many people in total the Federal Government employs. That’s not an easy figure to get. Not all checks cut for Federal employees come from the U.S. Treasury. A lot come from Federally funded projects.

I’m always looking for practical, applicable solutions. I’ve spent a lifetime being told what should be done and almost never is that carried to the logical conclusion of how a thing should be done. So …

How about a question on the U.S. Census that askes …

Is your employment directly or indirectly funded by the U.S. Federal Government?
A. Yes
B. No
C. Not sure

I think it would be fairly conservative to include 90% of “Not sure” as “Yes” when tallying the numbers.

I’ve known and still know some very good, essential U.S. Government employees. Conscientious people who take their job seriously. One of those is my arguably best friend and he was here last night discussing this very thing.

I probably have about as much or more experience with the Federal Government and it’s employees as anyone on this site. That’s not bragging, that’s just the way my life worked out. So I know personally and beyond any shadow of a doubt there are some gawd-awful useless slugs getting paychecks from the taxpayers too. We could cut expenditures immensely by squashing the jobs those ticks feed off.

Private spending like you’re talking about with for-profit companies generates wealth. They actually create wealth simply by their method of existence.

The government, any part of the government from local to county to state to national, is a black hole for wealth. We get things from our investment of private wealth in taxes and some of those things are legitimate and needful. But those things do not create wealth as a rule.

Yet those employees of the Federal Government cost as much or more to maintain as any civilian job. If we’re not getting something legitimate and needful from their employment then that is also a ‘hidden’ entitlement program, hiding in plain sight.

Which also happens to be something we could do something about to rein in Federal spending.

I know it’s too much to hope for but a means of handling this sort of thing would be to create a cabinet post for The Department of Federal Recovery.

A cabinet post that answers solely to the POTUS. The function of which is to find programs, departments, bureaus, agencies and any other Federally paid for institution, determine the value returned to the Tax Payers from those organizations, and eliminate those that don’t make the cut.

While providing training and help for the employees of those entities.

If you don’t provide a cushion and help in transitioning those employees to the private sector you just create a Democrat voter out of every single one of them.

True, the vast majority vote Democrat as things sit now and they do that to hold onto their tick jobs. We need to pull those ticks and convert them to productive tax payers wherever possible. Or at least give them enough help transitioning that if they fail, they fail because they’re innate failures themselves. Which BTW describes a LOT of Federal Employees.

This would have the effect of trimming the fat from the Federal hog while increasing tax revenues from now productive tax payers.

Many of whom will vote Conservative for the same job-preserving reasons they now vote Democrat.

THEN the trick would be to keep Democrats from spending that double windfall and I have no idea how to accomplish that.

But I’m thinking about it, too.

Some of what you are stating falls into the simple question: What is the purpose for this department?
For example: The Dept of Energy was created to eliminate our dependence on “Foreign Oil”
Now it is working towards a “Green Energy Future”. That is not its role. If the DOE was still working on its actual mandate, fracking would be seen as the boon it is and our switch BACK to energy exporter under PDT would have been hailed as the monumental achievement that it was.
Any part of the DOE that doesn’t support reducing our dependence on energy imports should be shut down.
You are correct that the people need to be retrained and moved to another group, but most of any government agency can easily move to another. Only the top few levels actually work on policy. The rest should easily be interchangeable with any other agency.
That is just one example.
The DoEd could easily be about 20 people who foster communication among the states. Not a national policy setting board as another example.

Had to pause while this thought at the front: 2:00 Scott says “85% cut to all other federal spending”
RSAE thought bubble: Yes, please. We could eliminate entire swaths of Federal bureaucracy and the vast majority of people wouldn’t notice.

Meh. I say this every time, but we had a referendum on the debt back in the 2012 presidential election, and the adults lost. Since half of the Republicans and every single Democrat is incapable of talking about the debt like a gown up, nothing will happen until a “solution” is forced on us, whether it be a default or hyperinflation. The dems want to drive us off a cliff at 120 MPH, while Republicans want a bipartisan solution that drives us off at 55 MPH. EIther way, a Thelma & Louise ending is inevitable.

Unfortunately, I believe you are absolutely correct. The voting public continues to elect idiots who are willing to give the voters a little graft in return for political power and personal wealth. George Orwell’s pigs have been ruling from the comfort of The Farmhouse for decades. The rest of the Barnyard animals have been successfully bamboozled into thinking the pigs have their best interest in mind.

Waiting for a forced solution is called “Crisis Management” in that you wait for the obvious crisis that you can see coming and hope you can manage it.

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