Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.
With the debt ceiling ever increasing, approaching a trillion dollars in interest per year, nearing $6k/year per working individual, I would say the correct time to put any effort, whatsoever, into reducing spending, was 20 years ago.
I think the fundamental problem is we lack adversarial systems within the government: it doesn't like to hurt itself. Trying to cut jobs/waste/find fraud is political/career suicide for anyone in government. Accountability requires a true adversary/"outsider". Should that be DOGE, or its current implementation? Probably not. Should the adversarial concept of DOGE exist? I would enjoy seeing arguments against the concept. It seems like it's severely needed.
- Safety checks are dismantled
- Decisions are made at the whim of an executive
- Executives surround themselves with sycophants
We have electric vehicles (something that would not have happened without TSLA)
On the other side, the corruption is obvious with billions spent on 8 EV chargers.
If treasury money is diverted to his private interests, that is waste and perhaps fraud. But to him it achieves the same end (personal profit) as capital efficiency of orgs under his own ownership, not just his control
When Elon runs his companies, he is beholden to shareholders to use the company's resources effectively to generate and maintain value.
Who is Elon beholden to when managing public funding and programs as an unelected non-official? Who will vote him out when he wasn't voted in? Who will revoke his confirmation when he was never confirmed?
What is happening in DC (currently) has broad public support.
After the election he’s not. Only has to appease a handful of congress critters and a few wealthy people.
Things have been moving quite quickly, so this seems like a premature judgement. Can you cite a survey that shows that levels of support for disbanding USAID, for example; or taking over the treasury system; or "deleting" DirectFile?
I am responding to a specific comment about public support. Besides surveys, what method would you suggest for accurately determining public support for particular policies? And leave your self-satisfied partisan snark out of it.
I’m ecstatic about everything that’s being done to make the country better right now. We’re again moving in the right direction. That’s what matters to me.
Then why are you responding to my objection to a post asserting the alleged popularity of current actions? Are you just interesting in spreading snark and bitterness without any thought or substance?
> I’m ecstatic about everything that’s being done to make the country better right now. We’re again moving in the right direction. That’s what matters to me.
Oh, sorry, I didn't realize that you're dumb. What's happening right now is vandalism of the government.
And his buddy the president is happily sending the currency and stock markets up and down with his every idiotic tariff announcement. I wonder if the top man at DOGE is on the list of people who Trump tips off?
Musk, Trump and half this administration are off-the-charts corrupt.
TSLA doubled in value in the month after the election, despite the financials of the company going down. The only reason for the increase in share price is because the market expects Musk to benefit from Trump's corruption, in the form of less oversight and more government subsidies.
One thing that seems worth think through more is whether the stated outcomes of those agencies is what's actually be optimized for, or whether those are suborned for personal gain by a few parties.
Of the approximately 70,000 Tesla employees in the US, fewer than 2,000 are H-1B workers. The rest are US citizens or permanent residents. Tesla's manufacturing is much more vertically integrated than other auto manufacturers, so they rely almost entirely on their US factories to produce the cars they sell in the US. Other auto makers tend to do more manufacturing overseas to save on labor/safety/environmental costs, then do final assembly in the US to avoid tariffs.
Bureaucratic agencies are optimized for more bureaucracy.
usually at the cost of the workers, environment, etc.
> Bureaucratic agencies are optimized for more bureaucracy
they are designed for continuity because people die when they suddenly stop functioning.
He now has significant influence over all of those things. Official government communications are only being released on X, incentivizing people to use it. The next NASA contract is going to be awarded by people who know their boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss owes his political career to the owner of one of the bidders. Last quarter, a quarter of Tesla’s net income was unrealized Bitcoin profits – and he’s pushing the government to subsidize Bitcoin so it can get the kind of adoption it hasn’t been able to achieve on merit!
This is why government ethics rules exist, and why high-level officials have public confirmation hearings. Even if he was incredibly scrupulous about not making decisions based on his own interests, it reeks of corruption and provides many avenues for potential abuse (e.g. what if China threatened to seize his factories unless he helped them get a better deal?). The federal employees he’s attacked have annual training reminding them that they can’t accept gifts over $20/year – and really shouldn’t even then – with consequences up to going to jail for a long time.
Yes Tesla benefits from credits caused by other companies not meeting co2 targets set by the government but that wouldn't have been enough to save them from three near bankruptcies. And yes, they are still quite a ways away from being a leader in overall quality and consistency but yhey are executing extremly well in their R&D compared to other US car companies only to be outdone by the Chinese, certainly not any US company.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNWYk4DdT_E
As someone solidly on the left, this has really frustrated me to no end with the typical lefist sources I watch. In 2025 Facts really matter but all I see are facts being omitted to push a narrative (ie. Elon wasn't the founder of Tesla, Tesla/SpaceX is just alive because of the government subsidizes, Elon does not know anything about how to make a car/rocket).
They cite his bad behavior or screwups in reforming Twitter but unless you have followed everything that Elon has accomplished/failed at you are lying by omission. This is especially dangerous now because by dismissing him as dumber than he really is, you are setting him up for surprise successes because people let their guard down.
This is what I see on /r/fednews at how shocked they are over how fast he is moving at his slash and burn.
You would have known this had you followed the whole Twitter saga very closely, the early days of Tesla where they ousted the original CEO for deliberately lying to the board, and the three near bankruptcies of the company where Elon pulled out hail mary after hail mary to save the company.
Tesla is getting cooked by Chinese carmakers and only tariffs or outright bans can help. In EU their sales are falling quickly due to his salute.
Lessons such as how he brought in his fixers to go 'line by line' in the books to figure out where all the money is going: sound familiar?
>Tesla is getting cooked by Chinese carmakers and only tariffs or outright bans can help. In EU their sales are falling quickly due to his salute.
Did you not read my message completely or were you so fixated on your conclusion that you missed how I admitted that Chinese are outdoing Tesla?
Don't listen to me, heres Elon Musk talking about how good his Chinese competitors are:
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
"If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," he said. "They're extremely good."
In regards to EU, yes they are sinking there, so are all the other EU companies. The Chinese will own that market. That entire continent is a sinking ship and in hindsight maybe it was a mistake to even open a factory there as im sure Musk is realizing now.
I am so disappointed that the left has apparently learned nothing from the Twitter saga and are instead relearning all the mistakes made there because they didn't pay attention the last several times this happened. Instead of downvoting figure out how you can exploit Musks's weaknesses to stop him.
He overpaid about 20B for twitter and tanked it's value so it's almost worthless now. For example by telling advertisers to fuck off, and when they did he started suing them for doing what he told then to do. All this to turn twitter into a far right extreme and racist echo chamber to push propaganda. All regular users and companies are fleeing it to other platforms. Now he's using his position in government go force agencies to use it for communication, padding his own pockets.
And you still think he's a good guy.
>So the company was founded, Elon Musk joined later and funded it. Are investors founders now or what? This isn't a leftist things, it's just reality.
The left position implies or outright says that he just used his money to take over the company pushing the poor founder out. This nonsense is as far from the truth as you can imagine. Two guys that came along with no financing and just a general business plan. As the founders they were given the chance to run the company and ran it into the ground losing almost all of the investor's money. The original plan was for Elon to start his own company: A company called Faraday Motors(ironic). He was convinced by his business partner to instead join forces with these other two guys. A mistake he probably still regrets.
Is the left correct in that Elon was not the founder? Yes...are they being disingenuous? Absolutely. We can't be playing this stupid game anymore after their abysmal loss this past election.
>I'm not disputing that he was instrumental in Tesla's success, saving the company several times with new financing.
You make it sound like he just wrote a check, walked away, and it magically fixed itself. Now you are being dishonest. A lot had to happen correctly between then and now for Tesla to be where it is today and not just some distant memory.
OP made the claim "Tesla and SpaceX ran on government money." This is another disingenuous statement. Tesla utilizes a program open to any car company to encourage them to transition to ZEV. Its not Tesla's fault that other car companies still cannot take advantage of the program due to the cars that they sell. They had 10+ years to turn the ship around and many still haven't done so. It is certainly not some sweetheart deal only allocated to Tesla or even created for Tesla.
The same can be said for SpaceX: they provide a service, the government pre-paid for that service...SpaceX still has to provide the service. The left makes it sound like they are just being thrown free money.
Frankly why do you even nitpick this so much? What are you even trying to prove? My overall point was that people need to know this history so they can see his tricks coming a mile away instead of being caught off guard like many are doing right now. How is that a bad thing?
>He overpaid about 20B for twitter and tanked it's value so it's almost worthless now. For example by telling advertisers to fuck off, and when they did he started suing them for doing what he told then to do. All this to turn twitter into a far right extreme and racist echo chamber to push propaganda. All regular users and companies are fleeing it to other platforms. Now he's using his position in government go force agencies to use it for communication, padding his own pockets.
Thats just like your opinion man. Here is an alternative take: That Twitter deal in hightsight is looking to be one of the best acquisitions in the history of tech. For 44 billion (of which a lot is other people's money) he literally bought the USA. In the grand scheme of things it is chump change.
>And you still think he's a good guy.
Well I really don't know what kind of a person he is. What I do know is that he will continue to surprise you if you keep your mind closed like that.
At this point, it's probably the safer bet to assume Musk isn't the primary reason those companies are capital efficient.
Maybe he runs companies like he plays video games. Someone else drives while he pretends to.
US Government Accountability Office already existed to do this, without it being career suicide for those involved (at least until Trump began attempting to end it despite being nonpartisan)
Addressing the DOD's accounting failures is a first step -- famously admitted to by Don Rumsfeld:
Rumsfeld says, “Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building. Because it's stored on dozens of different technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.”
There's zero incentive to cut waste -- in fact the opposite. At the end of the fiscal year it's SOP to spend every last penny in the budget on anything they can, just to ensure their budget isn't cut.
Afghanistan and Iraq cost the US ~$6T and we got nothing to show for it.
There's got to be a reasonable center between "God bless the US Military" and "Shut it all down".
Find me a Republican president who did not increase the national debt.
https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-federal-go...
You would have to cut entitlements if you're relying on cuts alone, and those require Congressional action to change. It's absolutely wild people actually believed Musk without spending a few minutes understanding the issue.
$250 - $500 billion are lost to fraud, every year[1]. That's near 40% of social security spending.
[1] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833#:~:text=GAO%20est...
A Russian puppet candidate could not do more damage to this country than what the Trump administration is doing right now.
Nothing being done fights the large causes of fraud/waste/abuse. Nothing being done helps the cost of housing or the cost of healthcare or college or fuel.
The so called successes of the tariff wars so far have been done at the expense of our long term credibility as a nation.
I don't think going from "we" to "they" would be appropriate although in hindsight it might have been a better choice.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investment_p...
What do you think happens if the debt goes up? Do you think the government is gonna go bankrupt? That’s literally not how it works.
Do you think inflation is gonna happen? Again, literally not how it works. In fact, too low public spending means you get deflation which is even worse than inflation.
> means you get deflation which is even worse than inflation
2. People regularly come up with this theory that prices dropping is a terrible thing. An extraordinary claim for which I've never seen an argument I accepted and the evidence is as thin as a rake. Typically the countries that experience the horrors of deflation go on to be unusually wealthy and prosperous - I'd like to see more of it. But it is easy to see why the governments would believe deflation is bad that since they are typically enormous debtors and inflation favours debtors.
Frankly I suspect that if prices go down all else equal most people will be better off and able to afford more stuff. Wild take, I know.
Especially given that "prices always up"="good" is counter-intuitive and I can't find anyone with a clear argument in favour of inflation. There is lots of gobbledegook and occasionally people who make arguments equivalent to holidays being bad because they reduce economic output. Which is an argument but not very persuasive, I'd prefer to optimise towards an end state where I get to live out a permanent comfortable holiday; even if the economic metrics go down. I like comfort.
EU - Still to see the long term consequences, but it isn't obvious the deflation was the bad thing in the story.
Hong Kong - Jewel of Asia.
Ireland - Very high HDI and GDP ppp per capita.
Japan - Economic success story.
UK - Can't argue that they're a success! But their problems after WWI wasn't the deflation.
US - Some good some bad, lots to debate, but the latest episode (Great depression in the 1930s) set them up to conquer the world and establish the Not-An-Empire they have now. If that is a bad outcome I fear the good ones.
I'm not seeing the Zimbabwe equivalent. In fact it looks a lot like deflation is associated with - if not a precursor to - long term economic success and prosperity.
'prices dropping' often includes labor as well, since currency is primarily a medium of exchange.
If you go through the arguments, inflation/deflation are both mostly neutral because people just adjust their expectations by whatever they think the rate will be. In practice though inflation policy is typically masking money printing projects or policies that destroy wealth. And by reversing that, deflation is usually positive but only because it suggests that the political leadership at the time was interested in honest market signals rather than seizing an opportunity to conduct handouts.
> 'prices dropping' often includes labor as well, since currency is primarily a medium of exchange.
Inflation or deflation, by definition, doesn't impact how much someone can buy in real terms. Because wages and goods are theoretically changing at the same rate.
If you’re arguing a fringe point of view please make that clear up front. If I knew you think deflation is good I wouldn’t have ever replied.
And by the way, you say Japan is an economic success story because of deflation, but I guess you never bothered looking up their 300% debt ratio that they have been running for decades, exactly because they didn’t want deflation to ruin their economy.
Well, this comment is off to a bad start. What about a very small economy of 1 widget that can be produced and sold for $2 per unit time, then a technological change that causes the equilibrium to move to 2x widgets for $1 apiece in over the same time? The real production of the economy has doubled, and experienced 50% price deflation. The same basic scenario can be developed at any economic size and complexity. No unemployment. No standard of living drop. Just people affording more stuff.
Deflation, in fact, is literally not the economy shrinking. It is a systemic reduction in prices.
> And by the way, you say Japan is an economic success story because of deflation, but I guess you never bothered looking up their 300% debt ratio that they have been running for decades, exactly because they didn’t want deflation to ruin their economy.
This is pretty typical of anti-deflation comments in my experience - what are you trying to say here? Countries manage to overwhelm themselves with high debts with inflationary monetary policy too; the problem - if there is one - is the borrowing of money. It is hard to end up in debt without borrowing money and investing it unproductively. That decision is independent of monetary policy.
And I didn't say Japan was an economic success because of deflation. There wasn't a "because".
From your earlier post: > Frankly I suspect that if prices go down all else equal most people will be better off and able to afford more stuff. Wild take, I know.
As you mention above, this isn't likely to actually be that different.
But:
>In practice though inflation policy is typically masking money printing projects or policies that destroy wealth
Inflation rewards moving money into goods, and deflation rewards moving money out of goods. Generally, an economy where money moves around is better than one where it sits idle. Yes, it does penalize saving cash (), which offends many puritan mindsets (including mine), but it rewards risk-taking and committing your currency towards capital, both of which tend to make the economy more productive.
() - So, if your 'wealth' is in currency, then inflation does devalue your wealth. But if your wealth is in capital, that capital should fluctuate with the currency, and inflation doesn't devalue that.
That was why I said "prices go down" instead of "deflation" - because the measure in practices is a price basket which doesn't directly include wages.
> But if your wealth is in capital, that capital should fluctuate with the currency, and inflation doesn't devalue that.
In the abstract, yes. In practice, after you factor in the interactions with capital gains tax it actually means there is a wealth tax (transaction tax? Extra tax on the principle, anyway) which is relatively punishing to anyone trying to save for their old age.
EDIT [0] With benefit of 24 hours hindsight, it would have been more proper to say "consumer prices" to distinguish the CPI from inflation.
I will admit that I don't understand economics, but infinite free money hacks seem too good to be true.
The government wants the economy to operate at close to full capacity, so it creates money and spends it into the private sector.
Eventually that money makes it to individuals, who want to save some of that money. There’s also foreign agents that might want to hold on to your currency, and trade happening that means some of your money leaves your country.
If the government maintains steady spending, this money supply slowly dwindles, which leads to a shrinking economy.
So governments issue debt to offset that dwindling money supply. The catch is that spending that doesn’t create real resources is inflationary, so you have to spend money on things that eventually earn you more money.
At the end of the day, that’s the idea of macro economics. Spend enough to get your economy growing, while making sure inflation doesn’t go up too much. Which is why people that complain about debt have no idea what they’re talking about.
We're sending in the young guns to save on government spending because trump won partly on "Biden ruined the economy". The government spending leads to the increase of government debt. Or is the debt coming from a separate source?
But all of this has nothing to do with the debt.
You're the one that has no idea what hes talking about.
Debt uncontrollably going up without something to balance it means exactly that. If the debt exceeds the GDP, which is where the US is clearly going, we are looking at a collapse of the US dollar and its global influence. Theres no telling what will happen after that because its unfathomable
This is also why the techbros are staging a coup on the US, so the US doesnt come for the billions when it goes bankrupts
My understanding is that the reason the USD is unusually resistant to inflation is that there's artificially high demand due to international demand for the currency as the global reserve currency.
But yeah, if that effect weakens (and the BRICS are trying to challenge the USD as reserve currency), then I think you'll see the USD weaken/inflation spike in response to large deficits.
1. Nobody is losing confidence in the US over debt ratios. Japan’s debt ratio is over 300%, and they’ve had no issues with financing their spending or capital flight. This is a myth that has been proven false.
2. If the private market doesn’t want to purchase bonds, the central bank can do it. Either way, there is never a need to default on debt owed in your sovereign currency. This will never happen. The risk here is inflation, but that risk is always present, regardless of how spending is financed.
1. Japan is a net creditor nation, meaning it owns more foreign assets than it owes in debt. The U.S., on the other hand, is a net debtor nation, meaning it relies heavily on foreign investors to finance its deficits. Japan also has a high domestic savings rate, and a large portion of its debt is held by its own citizens and institutions. This reduces capital flight risks compared to the U.S., which depends more on foreign investors (e.g., China, Japan, and others buying U.S. Treasuries). The U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, which gives the U.S. unique advantages, but also means its debt is held globally. A loss of confidence in U.S. debt could have larger consequences compared to Japan.
2. U.S. benefits from strong global demand for the dollar, but this is not guaranteed forever. If the Federal Reserve were to absorb all bond issuance ( basically monetizing the debt), inflation expectations would rise sharply, leading to a currency crisis or higher interest rates. Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany are extreme examples of this.
U.S. essentially "exports" its debt due to its persistent trade deficits. U.S. runs large trade deficits, meaning it imports more goods than it exports. Other countries (like China and Japan) accept U.S. dollars in exchange for their goods, and then reinvest those dollars into U.S. assets, primarily Treasury bonds. This has helped finance U.S. debt at low interest rates for decades. If global confidence in U.S. debt declines, foreign demand for Treasuries could drop, leading to a weaker dollar, higher interest rates, and inflationary pressures.
All of your comments in this thread are misleading.
I already wrote about how Japan is different from the US and why that changes everything.
> debt is owed in dollars and can always be serviced. If foreign investors lose confidence in the US and sell off their treasuries, the central bank can just purchase them and nothing would change
It changes everything for US citizens. Zimbabwe's debt is also serviced, but I'm not sure US citizens would like to pay one trillion dollars for bread and get cut off from the majority of products and resources that the US imports, because the dollar would be worth as much as the paper it was printed on. It would also mean that the whole stock market would collapse because no one would recycle the dollar anymore. It would be a devastating blow to the US economy. It's so obvious to anyone that knows anything about economy that at this point you are just spreading lies.
Zimbabwe’s inflation happened because the country had debt denominated in USD and CNY, along with massive political instability, a shrinking economy, and a war happening all at the same time. Couple that with a useless central bank and you have hyperinflation.
How is that in any way comparable to the US? It’s not. This is obvious to anyone arguing in good faith.
Hmm. Let's follow your argument to its conclusion. Why stop at 300% of GDP? Why stop at 300 times GDP? It seems that even a small nation with a sovereign currency can eliminate all taxation, borrow an infinite amount of money, buy an infinite amount of stuff, make all of its citizens infinitely wealthy, service its debt with printed money forever, and prices and interest rates will both be unaffected. It's amazing, then, that no nation has yet taken advantage of this exploit!
I feel confident that is not right. I think it may be right that (marginally?) there is not a big difference whether a fixed amount of government spending is financed by taxation or debt, because printed dollars and t bills are so easily interchangeable. But it seems that you are trying to use this argument to prove that if these things are equivalent that they are (in any quantity!) harmless, and that's a non sequitur.
The constraint on public spending is the amount of real resources that can be utilized. Productive utilization of resources is not inflationary. For example, if you have 10% unemployment, a government can hire those people to build infrastructure regardless of the debt ratio. On the other hand, if you issue public debt to purchase commodities that’s obviously inflationary.
But in either case, the constraint is real resources and inflation, not the debt ratio.
You asked why countries haven’t done this already? They have, it’s called quantitative easing and they do it in financial crises to absorb the productive capacity that the private market isn’t utilizing anymore.
Oh, so the Central Banks can actually make use of "things" so that there is no waste. This is an absurd claim.
No mention of velocity or the role of human behavior in an inflationary environment.
You argue in bad faith.
I don't know what the fallacy of "something is the same along one dimension, therefore the situation along some other dimension(s) must be the same too" is called, but this is a clear example.
This statement is very misleading. The Bank of Japan holds 45% of all outstanding bonds.
>> If the private market doesn’t want to purchase bonds, the central bank can do it.
This is NOT sustainable. Arguing that it did not fail yesterday or last year is not evidence that it won't occur. History rhymes with itself.
Go high enough, interest payments consume the entire federal budget. There is no way out except revenue growth (infeasible without breakthrough productivity improvements), taxation, and printing money (equivalent to taxation). Before that point, other bad things happen such as creditors losing faith in the government, making debt more expensive and destabilizing the dollar's position as global reserve currency.
Over the last few decades, debt has continued to rise as a percentage of the federal budget, and appears that trend will continue without drastic action.
At the end of the day, the Japanese market is huge and people want access to it. Same thing goes for the US.
If the private market doesn’t want bonds, the central bank can purchase them. That’s not inflationary. What is inflationary is how the government then spends that money, but that’s true for any government spending, regardless of how it was financed. Either way, the debt ratios is literally meaningless.
So, a country is not a business but it is comparable to fish?
Are you seriously claiming that there is no precedent?
Central bank buying bonds and increasing money supply absolutely is inflationary. That is precisely how FOMOs work, with the end goal being increasing or decreasing money supply depending on inflation and labour market. So if you already have stubborn inflation and you have a fiscal crisis then unmooring inflation expectations by lowering rates is exactly what you don't want to do (risk becoming a banana republic that inflates away it's debt). I don't think this will happen in the near future but it is absolutely a risk and you'd be foolish as a central banker not to consider it.
Do YOU actually understand the underlying mechanics? Your questions suggest that you do not.
US debt as a percentage of GDP doesn't demonstrate the continued ability to pay off the debt, since the ability to pay off the debt is dependent on that debt's interest. The issue with the debt in the current environment is that it is going to start rolling over into higher interest rates. If the debt is structured to pay higher interest then that lessens the ability to pay off the debt even if the debt as a percentage of GDP stays the same.
Hell, we were borrowing before we had states.
The national debt increased because we increased the amount of the federal government does, it the income tax.
More than 100% of the net improvement is from tech and medical R&D, not the bloated military-welfare apparatus.
Bletchly Park? Military.
In 1960 the top tax rate was 91%. In 1980 it was 70%. Reagan dropped it to 35% and it's stayed below 40% since. Then add in that corporations and the wealthy have moved away from having normal income that isn't taxed (loans backed by assets) and you've lost half the tax revenue that paid for cheap housing, nearly free healthcare and public college and you have a healthy society and middle class.
But then to screw the pooch even more, Bush printed 5 trillion for his wars and two tax cuts. Trump printed money for his tax cuts too. (these expenses were never in the annual budget - they just printed the money)
Tesla, one of the richest corporations in our country just reported 0% tax in three years.
Our national debt has nothing to do with the annual budget and expenses, including USAID and helping Ukraine.
It is 100% because of tax policy.
So what actually is driving the national debt higher? The never popular answer is entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) + interest, which is exasperated by an aging population. In fact, almost all future debt growth is driven by these programs. The rest of the budget is expected to balance out. Tax revenue is expected to increase, and discretionary spending is expected to fall as a % of GDP.
The government "borrowed" from the SS fund. That's why it's endangered. The money was there and it should still be there.
The government also screwed the postal service by taking their profits (one of the few things in government that actually makes one) and then yells at them for not making enough income.
We need a flat corporate and billionaire tax that has no loopholes.
Also doesn't help if you borrow against the money put in. The US is not alone in taking money from the baby's/old peoples fund unfortunately, same happened here but worse the money was just taken. Although it was mostly spend on education and construction so there is that at least.
Replace Medicare and Medicaid with a socialised 1 payer system as it would be much cheaper. The numbers I saw was that the current system costs 48t and 1 payer system would be 32t. And negotiate down costs and all materials and drugs on top of that.
Simple - the payroll tax doesn't raise enough funds to cover the full cost of the program. Even if it did raise 100% of the needed funds, that's still money Congress cannot tax a second time. At the end of the day, the government has two buckets: income and expenses. It doesn't matter whether some of that income is called "payroll tax", and some of it is called "income tax". Every cent raised through a payroll tax, is a cent that cannot be raised through an income tax, and visa-versa.
>Replace Medicare and Medicaid with a socialised 1 payer system as it would be much cheaper.
Yet...none of the advocates of a socialized healthcare system have ever put forward a real bill that can be rated by the Congressional Budget Office. Instead, they put forward shell bills which importantly lack any funding mechanisms.
> The numbers I saw was that the current system costs 48t and 1 payer system would be 32t.
The current system is divided between public and private spending. Even if you could reduce the overall cost to 32T, that's still a net cost increase on the public side. How will the government raise that money? The advocates for social healthcare never say.
If it's removed and replaced with nothing do you just let old people die in the streets? Or did you want to keep the tax but stop paying out? I don't see how the outcome is different then.
Increase income tax on the wealthy? It's not hard, you used to do it.
It takes money from the general fund in the form of interest payments. And the CBO assumes that when the 3T in assets run out in about ten years, there will be some kind of continuous bailout whereby money from the general fund is used to plug the shortfall.
>If it's removed and replaced with nothing do you just let old people die in the streets?
You don't have to remove it entirely. You could implement means testing so that only those who truly need it receive money.
>Increase income tax on the wealthy? It's not hard, you used to do it.
It wouldn't generate enough revenue. Social Security and Medicare, and their associated interest payments are expected to run a ~100T deficit over the next 30 years. If you want to go the "just raise taxes" route to bridge that, you'll have to raise taxes on everybody. If you doubled middle class taxes and implemented a 20% VAT, it might raise enough to stabilize social security and medicare. But that would be the largest tax increase in American history, and Americans would receive no new benefits in return.
How many times does this need to be debunked?
Top 1%: 40.4%
Top 5%: 61%
Top 10%: 72%
Top 25%: 87.2%
Top 50%: 97%
Bottom 50%: 3%
That hardly looks regressive. Is there some other standard by which you are judging whether tax policy is sufficiently graduated enough?
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2021/06/08/richest-...
the 25 richest Americans (by Forbes’ tally) paid a “true tax rate” of just 3.4% on wealth growth of $401 billion between 2014 and 2018.
Never mind that “wealth” can evaporate as quickly as it’s created, the numbers don’t make sense at for “borrow until you die”.
If you think it does I challenge you to do it. Instead of selling taxable equities during retirement, just borrow against them then let your heirs get them tax free when you die.
You can insanely cheap margin loans against your holdings if you keep the ratios high. Like 1-2%. Sure it won’t add up to much but you can do it.
Then kept rolling it over for 20+ years and tell me how 1-2% interest is less than a 25% capital gains tax.
Maybe if you’re going to die within a few years (and can time your death).
Then explain why if it works so well why Musk paid $10B in taxes when he sold Tesla stock if it works so well.
Loans to Musk were a risky asset before the election. He was at risk of investigation in the event Trump lost. No one would have given him a loan big enough to supply the cash needs which this sale supplied.
That said, ordinary billionaires can of course make use of this strategy.
Now let's see control of assets.
It is not a legit source for progressive tax policy.
The Congressional Budget Office has been the most reputable source for tax policy data. The current director was appointed by Trump 2019 and was retained through Biden's presidency.
The CBO is very wonky and so far as withstood partisan meddling by presidents.
https://taxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/FedData...
(see the footnote)
I know you're making a good faith argument, but you're twisting the definition of regressive. For example, if a country has one citizen with an income of 1 trillion, and one hundred thousand citizens with an income of $10,000 each, the trillionaire would still pay over 99% of taxes even if taxes were proportional.
The point is that with severe income inequality, it is fair that the super rich pay a very, very high proportion of taxes. The 40.4% seems high for the "top 1%" of the population, but if you replace "top 1%" with their actual average income, the comparison is less misleading.
Indiscriminately firing federal workers whose salaries will collectively make up maybe one tenth of one percent of the budget is not at all about reducing debt, that's just the thin justification they are using the destroy any independence and competence within the government that might get in the way of their looting and corruption.
Anyone who thinks that Trump and Musk are serious about reducing the federal debt at this point aren't likely to be swayed by anything I say. But for anyone who genuinely believes that I hope you will look at what the national debt and deficit are right now, and then to check on them in a few years when both are dramatically worse. You will find that two of the most prominent bullshitters in the world are in fact bullshitting on this topic as well.
Also, make all black budget projects that involve underground alien bases public and move it all private, so Elon and other people can just directly invest in those instead of coming out of our taxes through the DOD.
This. Right. Here.
A socialised medical system would be much cheaper than Medicare.
The problem is EM and DOGE are equating “fraud and waste” to “I think it’s wasteful”, which is a judgement the adversarial auditor should not be allowed to make.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tax-cuts-are-primar...
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax...
https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump
https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/extend...
He campaigned (first time) to reduce the national debt and instead exploded it by giving massive tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-plan-boosts-bud...
Something something promises something kept?
Alternatively, it's possible to increase revenue.
Aren't other countries adversarial enough?
I think these are made up concerns. By and large the US is dominant in the real world, and always will be given its size, location and cultural foundations. And that translates to being able to print and spent a large amount of money, which could be used to solve real world problems, such as:
- climate change and the need to transition energy, transportation over time with some urgency
- chronic housing shortage
- education costs
Instead they're focusing on fake problems and solutions that will make the real problems worse.
Not really. There is a political strategy Republicans have engaged during this time known as "Two Santas" which can explain it:
First, the Two Santas strategy dictates, when Republicans
control the White House they must spend money like a
drunken Santa and cut taxes to run up the U.S. debt as far
and as fast as possible.
This produces three results: it stimulates the economy thus
making people think that the GOP can produce a good
economy; it raises the debt dramatically; and it makes
people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa
Clauses.”
Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans
must scream about the national debt as loudly and
frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our
children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut
spending to solve the crisis!” Shut down the government,
crash the stock market, and damage US credibility around
the world if necessary to stop Democrats from spending
money.
This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own
social safety net programs and even Social Security, thus
shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus
right in the face.[0]
The opposite of that play is:
Voted-in Conservatives: we are the party of fiscal responsibility. We shall reduce govt spending by running services into the ground.
Voted-in Libs: We were voted in to undo all this f*kery... gotta spend those $$$
Conservatives: Didn't we say you can't trust those libs with the $$$?
For the record - I think society needs both parties alternating in power to function properly. Either one in power forever is a mistake
> Voted-in Conservatives: we are the party of fiscal responsibility.
Conservatives are provably not. See[0].
> Voted-in Libs: We were voted in to undo all this f*kery... gotta spend those $$$
This is a common misperception, fostered in large part by the effectivity of the "Two Santas" political strategy.
0 - https://www.investopedia.com/us-national-debt-by-year-749929...
Both private and public dept have been rising rapidly since the 70/80's and the introduction of neoliberal policies. Real wages have stagnated, so Americans go into debt. Tax cuts for the rich, so the US has to borrow.
I’m just talking about what they say rather than reality.
I’d have edited for clarity but I missed the window.
The last year in office Trump was spending $8 trillion a year and Biden left office spending $6.7 trillion.
What I think should happen is that the vast majority of legislators (Senators/Representatives) should be furious that the Executive branch is disregarding laws that they wrote themselves. And the justices should be furious that the Executive branch is disbeying their interpretation of the law.
On the policy side they would push for port automation. They would get rid of the Jones act. They could standardize and simplify the tax code (& get rid of loopholes like stepped up basis)
Instead they are breaking random government websites, blocking & politicizing USAID (< 1% of budget), mass firing with seemingly no plan for running various orgs, trying to increase mass incarceration (?) and reinforcing captured markets (like TurboTax).
The first country to pull out has the chance to make like $100 billion by creating the next TikTok competitor that never takes down content for violating anyone's copyright. It'll be like Edison moving to Hollywood all over again! Let the gold rush begin!
No one is stopping the people at the top of the US Government from doing what they want. In fact, there is a whole apparatus in place, at this point, to protect their ability to continue to operate unchecked.
Irrespective of whether our system of checks and balances is working (it isn’t) it’s still worth pointing out exactly what rules and norms are being broken.
... right up until they pretend they're not and never were when the political winds shift again. Though, maybe the winds no longer shift in these parts ...
And of course, the executive branch has everyone from the FBI on down, you're not going to win a shooting (or shoving) war with them.
https://bsky.app/profile/newsguy.bsky.social/post/3lhcadi7oy...
> If there are no consequences, the law is immaterial.
That is exactly what I mean by "growth in executive power".
Edit: DOJ Says Administration Doesnt Have to Follow Court Order Halting Funding Freeze - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42923302
So much for checks and balances I suppose.
How long until Elon dismisses Trump? Let that sink in...
He will be cast aside and scapegoated in less than 6months.
He might end up in jail in 2-4 years.
You think the Trump administration is going to prosecute the wealthiest person on earth? Attention and wealth are the currencies of Trumpian politics, and I would be shocked to see Trump try to fight someone with such a massive ability to direct attention (via control over twitter and through having hundreds of billions of dollars).
Exactly this. And he doesn't even see it. There will be no "Elon dismisses Trump". Elon is not a natural born US citizen, Trump is. Trump wins, because if one has been paying attention, the people who put Trump in office don't like immigrants all that much.
The one thing even the richest can't avoid is time.
I'd bet on Musk as he has better connections among the Silicon Valley elite that are propping up this administration. Plus, the way that Trump is rubber-stamping everything Musk does as soon as he hears about it seems to suggest which one is actually in charge.
The MAGA mobs may only care about a few cherry picked bits from the Constitution, but the requirement of being a natural born citizen (usually meant as born on US soil with 2 US parents, but generally, either one is accepted) is definitely one of them. And he won't be getting meaningful support from anywhere along the other end of the scale anytime soon, so I left them out
Understatement of (this) century at least.
I'm in agreement. These people are softer than tissue paper. Where's the energy South Korean representatives had when their President declared martial law?
[Citation Needed]. Seriously. Heck, even a cursory read of the Wikipedia article would tell you they are controlled by the Legislative branch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol_Police
> The United States Capitol Police (USCP) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States with nationwide jurisdiction charged with protecting the United States Congress within the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its territories. It answers to the Capitol Police Board and is the only full-service federal law enforcement agency appointed by the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States.
Misinformation is infectious.
The Capitol Police Board oversees and supports the United States Capitol Police in its mission and helps to advance coordination between the Department and the Sergeant at Arms of the House of Representatives and the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper of the Senate, in their law enforcement capacities, and the Congress. Consistent with this purpose, the Capitol Police Board establishes general goals and objectives covering its major functions and operations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations.
The Capitol Police Board consists of the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate, and the Architect of the Capitol. The Chief of the United States Capitol Police serves in an ex-officio non-voting capacity. The Chairmanship alternates annually between the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms.
Even a Democrat landslide in two years wouldn't change it, because almost all Democratic politicians are unwilling to cause a fuss (or they are secretly happy with what the other branches are doing).
But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it really ethical to intervene in that?
I think that’s extremely debatable. Last I checked “unauthorized access to confidential taxpayer information” was not an election topic.
This is true on all sides of course, folks who voted for Obama didn’t vote for drone strikes against US citizens either. Winning a presidential election does not mean four years of dictatorship and silencing of criticism.
Whether most of the people doing so were smart enough to understand it is a good question, but the fact is we put a Perón-like figure into office, and only age will likely make him leave.
Power Wars by Charlie Savage covers this rhetorical zig zag.
Gee, I'm shocked, shocked, that a guy who stole large numbers of classified documents on his way out the door and stuffed them in unused bathrooms in his house(s) would fail to safeguard confidential taxpayer information.
You're right, it wasn't an election topic. Nobody who had any power cared to make it one, nobody who cared had the power... and nobody else was paying attention.
Obama didn't run on drone strikes, but everything Trump is doing has been a part of the Trumpist or Republican fringe platform for years. The Republicans have wanted to defund and destroy government ever since Grover Norquist said he wanted government to be small enough to drown in a bathtub. Purging academia of DEI and "woke," aggressive anti-immigration policies, tariffs, rule through executive order, none of it is new, all of it is established, boilerplate Trump-era Republican doctrine.
Trump ran on "draining the swamp." This is what "draining the swamp" means.
The only real exception to the norm seems to be Trump's sudden hard-on for invading Greenland and Canada.But even then you can look back at his infamous comments on not wanting immigration from "shithole countries" like Haiti versus places like Norway, or his comments on Mexico sending rapists over the border, and see how he might want to forcibly annex a few million white people to balance out the scales of white replacement or whatever racist paranoid shit goes on in his head.
I don't know. But let's please stop pretending no one who voted for Trump knew who he was or what he was about, or that what's happening now is not in effect what many Trump supporters wanted.
No electoral mandate (and the argument for a clear mandate for all of this is thin or nonexistent) makes unconstitutional/illegal action suddenly legal or constitutional.
Whether anyone with the relevant power chooses to punish these violations, is a different matter. The choice since January 2020 has been to repeatedly do nothing in the face of illegal action, but winning elections doesn't make criminal action magically non-criminal.
Playing devil's advocate - but the people asked for this, right? Isn't it time to amend the constitution then?
The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?
> Playing devil's advocate - but the people asked for this, right? Isn't it time to amend the constitution then?
> The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?
There are still laws. But you make a case for "might is right"
There's a process for amending the constitution. If they want to amend the constitution, follow the process. Even if they only follow it once to change the constitutional requirements and reduce the threshold going forward.
We are (theoretically) a nation that is governed by laws, with equal protection for all under those laws. This creates stability and predictability, which encourages commerce and development.
When you go all Calvinball with government, you destroy that stability and predictability, and investment drops.
This is the predictable outcome of the last 50 years of US politics, of the subversion of the rule of law and decency. The southern strategy, the 1994 Newt Gingrich legislative session, the failure of the supreme court to allow recounts in Bush V Gore, the teaparty, september 11th. All of it has only served to entrench and reward conservative opposition to the rule of law.
I used to think that people really just weren’t paying attention to the sort of precedents they’re setting when they do certain things. But the older I get, the more I’m convinced that it’s intentional. Take the dreaded “filibuster” that supposedly prevents congress from anything (except apparently banning Tik Tok). The filibuster in general, and its current form specifically are entirely products of congresses own rules. At any time, congress can decide by simple majority to change the rules of their proceedings and they could do anything from requiring that you actually get on the floor and speak instead of just declaring “filibuster” like some Magic: the Gathering spell. Or they could reduce the vote requirements to override a filibuster. Or they could abolish the thing completely and declare all their laws pass with a simple majority vote. So there must be some reason why they don’t do this, why it’s not the number one agenda item the moment the Democrats get any major it in congress. And the only logical conclusion is the current state of affairs benefits the congressional reps and that’s more important to them than the overall functioning of the system.
No, not by sufficient margin.
Even assuming every state would decide this direct question the same way as they did the Presidency this past election, a Constitutional amendment requires ratification by 38 states.
> The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?
Ultimately it has to be, but not always in the moment. The bar to Constitutional amendment is high for a reason.
Honest question: would the margin have been sufficient if the outcome was reversed? Would you be understanding of their position if Republicans had the same feelings and ideas of resistance if roles were reversed?
I don't really envision a Democratic administration making a similar illegal and unconstitutional flurry of bullshit, but if they did, I would absolutely call them out on it.
So this discussion is pretty confusing to me, because the Trump administration objectively does not have the level of support you seem to think they do. Are you saying the incoming administration should get a little amendment as a treat? Are you just not aware of the procedure? Where’s the disconnect here?
But they can’t, because that support doesn’t exist. You’re starting from the presupposition that this is “the people’s will”, but voter turnout was less than 2/3 and Trump only won a plurality of that. That’s not to say that he didn’t win, but you’re talking about whether we should amend the Constitution to satisfy less than a third of eligible voters.
On the grounds that I'm, y'know, human I will grant that I'd probably find myself filling in the details of where exactly the constitutional lines are drawn somewhat differently in line with my policy preferences, but the question wasn't whether this is within bounds of the Constitution, but whether we ought to (morally) consider the Constitution amended anyway because of the electoral victory. My answer to that will always be no - both because of the numbers and also because the election conflates a bunch of questions where ratification asks just the one question directly.
2. 49.8% of the popular vote is enough to elect an executive, but not enough to overturn the constitution, which places clear limits on the power of that executive. The more radical the change, the larger the consensus that it requires. In order for the executive to legally receive this power, you need a supermajority of states.
But in a world where the courts and the cops are on your side, nothing needs to be legal anymore.
Yes, but - if you want to review your arguments, it might be still useful.
> But in a world where the courts and the cops are on your side, nothing needs to be legal anymore.
Maybe not legal - but effective it could be. As a recent example, Syria changed the people at power disregarding laws - cops and courts weren't enough to prevent it.
There US state is also far more internally secure than the Syrian state ever was.
Frankly we haven't had any real rule of law for a long time, and that's finally filtered through to the general populace. The law has been selectively enforced for decades (the famous "three felonies a day"). Of course the people don't respect the law any more, why would they?
Knowing people in democratic politics, this isn’t true. The root of the problem is that they don’t understand or prioritize power.
They have overwhelming support for every major issue: abortion, gun control, corporate taxes, HNI taxes, healthcare, social security, climate, gay rights. All of them. And yet they lose. Minority on the Supreme Court, house, senate, presidency.
Think about Obama’s first presidency. Sixty senators. What happens if they:
1. Make DC a state. That’s two senators. I don’t think they could get Puerto Rico.
2. Make Election Day a federal holiday. That spikes turnout, which benefits democrats (see: advantage in every major issue.)
That’s the type of thinking that gives and maintains power. But they don’t think that way until it’s panic time and already over.
Also, think game-theoretically (or practically). If you don't dedicate at least some effort to gain and retain power, you will be displaced by those who do. The first priority of a pilot is to stay in the air, the second is flying in the right direction.
Obviously not, or they wouldn’t have lost.
From a purely power-based standpoint, Obama probably should have pushed more in 2008. But that’s the only time he could have done it - even passing ACA got the Democrats severely punished in the 2010 Congressional elections.
Climate change might not even be a major issue any more, people are cooling to it.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/09/09/issues-and-t...
That doesn't follow. It would be true if everyone voted on a correct and comprehensive understanding of the issues and where candidates actually stood on issues, but a massive proportion of the population just votes on vibes and is completely ignorant of actual policies or issues. Trump is objectively more responsible for the overturning of Roe v Wade than any other person, but ask a swing voter and it's pretty likely they won't know how Trump has anything to do with Roe v Wade and think he's pretty tolerant of abortion.
People don't vote on actual policy. They vote on vibes and other heuristics.
I'm in that camp, I'm extremely tolerant of abortion but the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was good jurisprudence. Probably not well advised, if they're going to burn political capital there are more important issues.
Wrong. The Constitution grants a right to privacy.
* The 3rd amendment secures our privacy in our homes against demand for quarter by soldiers.
* The 4th amendment grants us privacy in our persons, homes, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizure. ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...")
* The 5th amendment secures our privacy from compulsion to bear witness against ones self and secures our life, liberty, and property against deprivation without due process. ("nor shall any person ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;")
* The 14th amendment explicitly extends that protection to guard against action by States ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; ")
* And the 9th amendment makes it clear that not all rights are explicitly enumerated in the bill of rights.
It is incoherent to hold that the Constitution doesn't grant us a right of privacy and control over our bodies, and it follows that we have a right to remove things from our bodies. The aforementioned amendments limit the extent of rights when there's a compelling government interest, but our freedom to exercise the right must be balanced against that government interest and the right doesn't exist if the government can't just make it impossible for anyone to exercise the right.
Roe v Wade was an objectively good decision.
> the question is basically whether or not it counts as murder and in the US that is supposed to be resolved by state legislators.
No. Murder is the unlawful and malicious killing of a human being [0]. Not only are abortions not typically done with malice, but US code defines "person" and "human being" [1] (relevant text included below) and fetuses are explicitly not human beings. Further, the 14th amendment explicitly prohibits states from making or enforcing laws that abridge Constitutional privileges.
|§ 8. ‘‘Person’’, ‘‘human being’’, ‘‘child’’, and ‘‘individual’’ as including born-alive infant
| (a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words ‘‘person’’, ‘‘human being’’, ‘‘child’’, and ‘‘individual’’, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.
| (b) As used in this section, the term ‘‘born alive’’, with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title1/pdf/U...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
the Dem leadership has done nothing substantial about their supposedly spotlight issues for 50 years.
there is a reason for this
"51" senators (when at least two aren't even democrats and one routinely votes against the party for his literal coal lobbyist cronies) isn't Power.
The one time Democrats held some power for about FIFTY DAYS, we got the ACA. We could have gotten medicare for all but a "Democratic" senator refused. Medicare for all has been on and off the Democrat platform since before RFK got got.
That so many "liberals" and "leftists" insist the democratic party hasn't done anything despite fifty years of being explicitly voted away from the reigns of power is part of the problem.
Go look at the coalition FDR had if you want to know what it takes to push Progressive policy in the US system.
The problem is for a lot of these this only becomes apparent when pollsters remove all context and political baggage. For instance, ask people if they like Obamacare/ACA and results are mixed. But go down the line and ask about the constituent pieces of it all and you'll see positive support.
The Democrats have completely and utterly failed at packaging these things up with a message that resonates with the people. Instead they've allowed their opponents to demonize their stances. And that's how we wind up with people holding signs that say things like "Keep government out of Medicare"
Creation is harder than destruction.
The Repubs found an infinite money/PR glitch.
1) They create an issue at Fox. 2) Sell it breathlessly 3) congress person brings it up in the legislature, points to news reports as proof 4) pass a new bill, or stall another 5) Refer to these actions on Fox, showing it as proof. 6) go to the polls after creating the arena you want to fight in.
Add in the internet and the media advertising incentives, and you have escalating sensationalism and extremism.
Post watergate, the Republican strategists decided to win at all costs. There is no messaging that is “nice”, and if dems are aggressive they get penalized for it. Because many people didn’t believe this was true. It was too outlandish.
They need to come up with a solution that'll actually work. Instead they seem to keep punching themselves in the face.
Are we sure? Them keeping quiet while fascists run rampage gives me the feeling of "not saying anything means you're consenting". A gruesome analogy that doesn't fit, because it's the nation getting raped (or since it's Trump, do we want to call it sexual assault), and it seems the Dems were supposed to be another guardian of the nation...
But I hope someone smarter than I figures out a better path.
This is the other magic trick that happens in America that I can’t figure out fully.
I’ve had the chance to talk to people across stripes in America, including people with significant seniority. I’ve made this point in more refiner points for YEARS now, well before Trump.
It’s not a point that people like to acknowledge. Like here ! It’s a massive issue, one that deserves its own conversation, and it’s reduced to a “whining about it”.
Step up for gods sake.
Here! this is a simple way to move forward, this is how I started to resolve it - why does free speech matter? In layman’s terms, it matters because it’s in support of a market place of ideas. In that case is it ok if you have a market place which has a monopoly? What happens if it’s ok for say… junk food and cigarettes to be sold by the same people who certify it as healthy?
How do you address the issue of advertising incentives that drive part of the escalation in rhetoric.
What do you do to throw a spanner in the free money glitch? Here, and everywhere in the world that is learning to replicate this?
We’re originally meant to be on Hacker news. It’s become VC unicorn hopeful land. Asking these questions, and finding an interest in providing if it’s wrong, or right is part of the most basic flame wars we indulge in.
1. Most US media (especially radio) being conservative allowed Republicans to define Democrats in their terms. Consequently, the "Democrats are all trans rights and DEI" was a Republican choice.
2. The Democrats certainly didn't make it hard for (1) to happen.
I'm no Trump fan, but losing to Trump required some serious efforts :-(
But the public dissemination of these positions is very conservative media driven.
Counterfactual: if progressive media had been as dominant as conservative media is, everyone would have spent the last 4 years hearing about government infrastructure spending and Project 2025.
In reality, you instead heard a relentless drumbeat of easily attackable Democratic positions, with nary a peep about Republican extremes.
So, yes, Democrat fault for having those positions in the first place. But the de facto situation is mostly created by conservative-dominated media being able to repeatedly broadcast those to an uninformed public.
The dems spent this last election cycle distancing, downplaying, and reversing each of these issues. Is it any wonder why they are losing? Rather than play to their strengths and party positions they endlessly and relentlessly try and shift right.
Do dems actually support abortion rights? Kamala didn't really campaign on that. How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun owner.
The Kamala/Biden campaign took painstaking measures to try and quash every single one of these issues rather than centering it in the discussion. Instead, they wasted an entire campaign talking about how much Liz Cheney loves them.
Even now, Schumer is saying "let's just sit back and let people watch what's happening" rather than pressing his advantage and Jeffries is saying "It's not great, but God is in control".
Dems desperately hate their base. That's why they lose. They simply transparent in the fact that the only thing that matters is corporate campaign contributions.
On the contrary, they very much want to “control” guns out of existence. But they know during election season they have to tone down the rhetoric in the hopes that people forget everything they’ve said about guns during the last three years.
On the contrary, abortion was one of the main issues the Democrats campaigned on. I live in California, and while I didn’t get presidential campaign ads for obvious reasons, down ballot Democrats campaigned hard on a pro-choice message, despite the fact that California is about the last place where pro-choice is under threat. (Gun control a little less, but I still saw it sometimes.)
The issue is that Democrats successfully passed a lot of pro-choice ballot measures in 2022 after Dobbs. In 2024 they couldn’t use this issue much, since the states with heavy abortion restrictions after 2022 are much less sympathetic to the pro-choice cause, particularly because Democrat party messaging has moved a long way from “safe, legal, and rare”. Also, Trump distanced himself from the pro-life cause during the 2024 election, even removing the strongest pro-life language from the Republican party platform.
Without the pro-choice vote that delivered the midterms, and combined with the general incompetence of the Kamala campaign, Democrats really had little to offer, especially since they’re associated with unpopular policies like DEI, open borders, trans advocacy, inflation, etc.
Unfortunately, they then moved on when there is a lot that the federal government (the FDA, for example) can still do to effectively limit access.
And state constitutions can’t override a federal ban that’s supported by a Supreme Court that upholds it.
This may not occur to you, you assume other people are like yourself. That they work in an office and perform a similar job as your own. Given that scenario, if the turnout of Democrats is lower than you expect, the only reasonable conclusion is that some bosses are less reasonable than your own, and ducking out for 40 minutes to go vote at 2pm just isn't allowed! And therefor if it was a federal holiday, their office jobs would just call it off for that whole day, they'd vote, and the Republicans would never win an election ever again.
However, the people who would vote for Democrats don't have such jobs. The jobs they have are menial, they are working all hours of the day and night, someone has to cover that shift on election day, and if somehow one or another of them does have an office job, there's no guarantee that it will be a paid holiday at that employer. My own employer ignores several federal holidays and instead gives us off days for Easter (Good Friday) and some other Christian holidays.
Your political opponents would hoof it through a warzone to cast their ballot. Having to vote early (or late, or apply for a mail-in) isn't why your numbers are down.
Did people vote for this? I thought people were voting on the price of eggs. Trump dishonestly disavowed the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 ghostbuster containment system of horrible policies when people started becoming aware of the horrors that were in there. Sure, Trump is releasing those demons on us now, but a lot of voters claimed to believe Trump's dishonest disavowals.
Trump wouldn't have won if he had been honest about what he would do. Voters didn't choose *this*.
E.g. 'Trump was coopted by the deep state, and that's why I couldn't get it done.'
Also convenient once Trump is (a) term limited and more importantly (b) too old to be politically useful anymore.
Nobody ever votes for the President's cabinet or anyone else they bring in.
They have no power. They can't set the agenda; they can't get legislation to the floor; they can't call investigations. They certainly can't arrest lawbreakers. All they can do is make a case against the ruling party. And if they do it quietly and politely, no one will hear it. So really, it is political malfeasance for them not to be theatrical.
All they can do is make Republicans pay some price for the destruction they are bringing to the country and the world. And this requires theatrics. They have no other levers they can pull.
Not only that, but the impeachment first needs to make it past the House Judiciary Committee, which is controlled by Republicans and chaired by Jim Jordan. Democrats have no tools to impeach. Their best bet is to focus on the midterms.
Elections have consequences.
Democrats can’t force an impeachment, but they can try to find a handful of Republicans who still care about the rule of law. They can continue to make the case all day, every day.
Assuming that a policy can only be achieved if you can ram it down opponents throats is a sad commentary on just how authoritarian the US has become.
From afar, it's grotesque seeing what's happening over there. Perhaps you're too close to see it.
Making a noise today about impeachment would be similar. It would play into a strategy for winning the midterms. It’d generate more headlines about the blatant illegality occurring under our noses, it’d be a stick to beat rivals with come election season. No, there would be no hope of it actually resulting in an impeachment, but that would be beside the point.
Democrats were warning that he was lying about his intentions, and that he would in fact implement Project 2025, but that is not equivalent to him campaigning on Project 2025. I think this is an important distinction.
there simply are none
They have been doing that. The issue is that people just look at it all and think "its all political theater"
The only way anything will change is if the ~200m americans who didn't vote actually start to realize that voting matters. Texas could turn blue if all the people in the liberal areas actually voted, which would basically win the election for Democrats.
I grew up in a "democracy" with rigged elections and decades of one president. From TV we thought "Oh, America is such a better place, the politicians are clean, the cops are honest and can't be bought...". Hah, fucking Hollywood fairytales.
Martin Bormann's son: "What is National Socialism?"
Bormann: National Socialism is whatever the Fuhrer says it is.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archi...
Hell, the guy is able to re-run and win the elected office again after being impeached a few times during his previous administration. Congress needs to affirm his impeachment to force him out of office and that requires a supermajority, which will never happen. Trump could kill someone on national TV and he would maybe get impeached, but he'd have enough friends in congress defending his actions that he would still be president. I mean he's already a convicted criminal.
That's why he just doesn't care anymore and is going crazy as if no laws exist. Laws mean nothing to him. At worst they are an annoyance or noise to him, but he already proved that nothing can stop him.
Now are there any cracks in this system? Probably. But we dont have a president with unlimited power than can only be checked by congress at this point.
US Doomers are expecting something similar to the Civil War movie in the next few years, the reality will be more similar to "The Lives Of Others".
"The rest of the world" will not carry on unscathed if the worse end of the range of possible outcomes for the US happen.
(I'm deeply curious about how fiveeyes intelligence operations with Canada are going right now.)
Yes the reality of the situation is bleak. But to give up on impeachment would cede even more power to the executive branch.
That's not true, most just relied on him being a former president at the time of impeachment.
McConnell:
> “Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty…There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day… There is no limiting principle in the constitutional text that would empower the Senate to convict and disqualify former officers that would not also let them convict and disqualify any private citizen. ...The Senate’s decision today does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day.”
More quotes with sources:
https://www.justsecurity.org/74725/in-their-own-words-the-43...
All they would really need to do is take the existing Trump "speeches" and present them as the.word salad they are too prove him incapable of serving. That story would viewership so the media would be all over it 24-7. That's one reason Trump is rubber-stamping everything Elon says or does - he knows they have him by the balls.
As the economy crashes, proletariat sentiments will change. If trump is unable to get a war going, or it doesn't develop how he expects, the economy will be the obvious narrative. And if they get trump out before midterms, his endorsement isn't the same thing.
You're assuming that the founders were actually correct about a power rivalry between the branches producing a system of checks and balances between them.
As it turns out, when the whole team is rowing in the same direction, congress doesn't actually care that they've abdicated power or all responsibility to check the executive. Their personal comfort is not threatened by it, and this particular congress doesn't care about governing well.
Sure, the republic will be destroyed, but in the meantime, they'll extract a lot of value for their paymasters.
Congressmen that had a spine, and refused to do that all got primaried out.
Impeachment and removing him from office means the dems will need to control congress. Which can’t happen until 2027. Then, those dems will need convince at least a double digit count of GOP senators to vote to remove him and not care about facing the wrath of the MAGA base…just to get him out a couple of years before term limits do?
I kinda imagine the next 4 years will work hard towards the singular goal of eliminating those. Or he might just ignore them with a whole lot more preparation than the badly organized insurrection of last time.
He’s out in January 2029 without a doubt.
Of course, that'll be a moot point if he continues to just ignore the constitution as he has been so far this entire term, and the other two branches continue to just let him.
We are still working on approving the equal rights amendment. That’s one that started 102 years ago, and we have been trying to get the 3/4 state’s agreement for it for only 53 years.
So no, I seriously doubt with a 50/50 divided electorate in this country that we will repeal the 22nd amendment in the less than 4 years that the US would have to do it before Trump could run again.
Why wouldn't Pelosi want the National Guard there?
Kent State. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
Putting a bunch of moderately trained military in a chaotic situation with angry civilians is a recipe for disaster.
And if they'd opened fire on the crowd? Do you really think Trump and the Republicans would have backed that use for force?
After how they treated the United States Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt for climbing through a broken window into the Speaker's lobby, after ignoring multiple orders to stop?
Pray for us in this hour of our stupidity. In truth, there have been many other hours of stupidity, but the suffering begins now.
Real. This bunch is going to tear the US apart, Vagabundo
Think something should be illegal? It's probably in there somewhere. Want to do it anyway? It's probably allowed somewhere else. Want to know if you can or can't do something? Well, good luck figuring that out. With enough time spent in lines talking to civil service workers you can get an answer that may be correct. Or maybe not. Probably best to hire a lawyer at hundreds of dollars an hour to tell you whether you can or not. (The lawyer will say "no", because if he says "yes" and is wrong, now he's in trouble, and nobody wants that.)
The system has grown and changed and mutated, and now it's a behemoth that nobody really understands. It's such a mess that people are genuinely hopeful that an AI will ride in and help us all untangle all that we humans did.
And the people that we've put in charge of doing all of this are collectively the most unaccountable folks ever. They routinely skirt, side-step, or ignore the rule of law as they see fit, and they still enjoy a 90%+ re-election rate and an incredibly high barrier to entry for reformers.
“And if I did, you deserved it.”
In the narcissist's prayer in your approved overthrow of our government.
Also, it was their job to keep Congress safe, and there are a lot of people that take their job and their honor seriously. Maybe they don't make the podcasts, but they are out there keeping our society safe.
Interestingly after 50 years and 2.5 coups, the kind of people they pushed out are the ones running the country for the past 20 years and they're stronger than ever. I take it as a signal that the problem wasn't specific individuals and parties, but they were merely symptoms of deeper problems with the Turkish people.
Maybe it's the same for US as well.
That'd be a major change in the US.
Not that it couldn't happen, but military peers would feel some kind of way about their superiors who did that.
Edit: not only that, but they didn't close USAID entirely: they just closed the USAID headquarters, and installed Marco Rubio as the new head of USAID. While this may or may not be desirable, I don't see how this is actually illegal. The specific organization of USAID was established by executive order; this is one of the many consequences of the Republicans winning control of the executive branch of government.
Edit: Daww, no sense of humor?
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1:
> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States
I’m suspicious, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised we’ve hit the “one simple trick” era of governing.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Aeronautics_and_Space...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?hl=false&edition=prelim&...
Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. [1]
And here's the text of section 6601, which explains how to abolish USAID:
(a) Submission of plan and report Not later than 60 days after October 21, 1998, the President shall transmit to the appropriate congressional committees a reorganization plan and report regarding-
(1) the abolition of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the United States Information Agency, and the United States International Development Cooperation Agency in accordance with this chapter;
(2) with respect to the Agency for International Development, the consolidation and streamlining of the Agency and the transfer of certain functions of the Agency to the Department in accordance with section 6581 of this title;
(3) the termination of functions of each covered agency as may be necessary to effectuate the reorganization under this chapter, and the termination of the affairs of each agency abolished under this chapter;
(4) the transfer to the Department of the functions and personnel of each covered agency consistent with the provisions of this chapter; and
(5) the consolidation, reorganization, and streamlining of the Department in connection with the transfer of such functions and personnel in order to carry out such functions.
The President can abolish USAID, or can streamline it, or terminate functions within it, according to your own provided links, and only has to submit a report about it.
1: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?hl=false&edition=prelim&...
2: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:22%20section:...
That provision expired 26 years ago.
“Not later than 60 days after October 21, 1998”
Regardless, the agency is a party to contracts which it is currently breaking. The actions of DOGE are causing the US to break contracts, which is illegal.
That was true in 1961, but not in the 63 years since then. The Foreign Assistance Act has been amended many times with specific requirements since written for the by then already existing United States Agency for International Development[1]
[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1071/pdf/COMPS-107...
This framing seems disingenuous given the already far reaching effects of the frozen funding, the layoffs, the shut down of communications, the shuttered offices, and, apparently, giving non government employees unfettered access to its computer systems.
But yes, shutting down the USAID or trying to muddy the waters by saying it'll totally still exist, they'll just somehow run it out of the state department and not fund anything should indeed not be possible without an act of congress.
1: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:22%20section:...
> Not later than 60 days after October 21, 1998
I’m pretty sure it’s now 2025, which is more than 60 days after Oct 21, 1998. Therefore, the president does not have power to abolish USAID. Please try again.
>> Memorandum of President of the United States, Mar. 31, 1999, 64 F.R. 17079, provided...
(It was actually delegating power to revise the USAID reorganization plan—which was not a abolition—and to set the effective date of then part of the reorg that was not transfer of mandatory functions to the Secretary of State.)
We haven't declared war since WWII, but we've waged a number of them.
The Congressional budget process is fundamentally broken and increasingly nondemocratic - the leadership of both parties get "continuing resolutions" passed while they draft a mountainous "omnibus" bill that includes all their pork and graft, then they whip the members of the majority party to pass it without reading it.
The Congressional oversight committees are usually captured by the industries and/or agencies they oversee.
Congressional hearings are not used to inform Congress or the people; they're nakedly partisan acting gigs for committee members.
Congress has unconstitutionally delegated much of its authority to a bureaucracy run by the executive branch, intending to have it operate independently of the president. Now we have a president who is choosing to exercise his authority over the executive branch.
Of course, it is illegal and unconstitutional for the president to eliminate programs that are established by law. But remember the executive branch bureaucracy ONLY exists to allow the president to implement the laws passed by Congress. If the laws aren't explicit or delegate to an executive branch agency HOW they law/program will be implemented, then the president has enormous authority over how to implement it, and there is nothing Constitutionally wrong with that. So if the president says "we don't need 10000 people to implement CFR 1.2.3 section 4, we only need 10", and he can implement the law/program as passed by Congress with 10 people, then he's allowed to do that.
The big problem is that Congress MUST depend on the executive branch to, er, execute. Whatever is required to implement the law, that isn't specified in the law, is up to the executive branch, and the President is the head of that branch.
And all this BS about "classification" again only exists to enable the president to do his job. If the president says someone can have access to something, that is non-negotiable, as two USAID folks found out over the weekend. The bureaucracy has for decades used classification to make a currency out of secrets and to try to avoid oversight. Looks like that ride has ended.
Unfortunately, the speedrun to an autocracy won't be, the market's fine with that one.
You can't, though. It's ossified too much. The constitution was always meant to be a living document, but now it's a sacred text for which new amendments are practically inconceivable.
What generation was raised to respect those institutions? Because the boomers were against them and their policies, and Gen X was cynical about them...
As we Millenials have gotten older, we too have seen through the veil and realized the system isn't perfect. More importantly, perhaps, we've seen the wide range of ways people react to this imperfect system. Some have chosen to undermine its very foundations to get their way, leaving many to wonder what we're left with if -- to loosely quote Whose Line Is It Anyway -- the rules are made up and the points don't matter.
Much as we like to kvetch about Clinton (and I've certainly done my share of it, and certainly much of the criticism has merit), if there was a "golden age" of America in recent memory, the Clinton era was it.
Where did you go? I am in a position to leave, but not sure where to go.
If you move anywhere else, you risk making it worse for yourself.
One option is Taiwan which gives gold cards to people with impressive GitHubs.
Ummm... yeah, I think that could easily end up in the category of "making it worse for yourself" given the geopolitical risk.
As far as the article, Musk is a mixed bag. On the one hand, I think it is a good idea to have an entity concern itself with improving the efficiency and reducing the bloat of the bureaucracy of the federal government and Musk is not a dummy, he is the richest person in the world and runs some quite high-profile companies. On the other hand, it is hard to deny Musk is a little bit of a buffoon: fighting with Asmongold on X over his clear lies about video games is sort of unbelievable, telling Americans to "F [themselves] in the FACE" if they don't want all high-skilled jobs in this country to go to H-1Bs, and various other sort of juvenile things. Having these kids that Musk has hired to run-around the federal government is probably not the best thing but I think this doomsday stuff is completely silly.
He also just pardoned a bunch of criminals who physically assaulted police, desecrated Congress, because… they were on his side? That’s simply unprecedented. I don’t need a “party leader” to tell me that’s wrong.
Their goal seems to be to dismantle the federal government and buy up assets and land. Then form micro countries like above with themselves as king/CEO.
So good luck relying on rule of law.
Which Congress authorized and funded.
Congress, historically, has made formal declarations of war only at the request of the President. No President has asked for one in decades nor are they required to make war.
Furthemore, the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 specifically enumerates declaring war as a power of Congress:
>> [The Congress shall have Power] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...
The precedent is well understood. The President may ask for authorization for any extended war and for a formal declaration, if desired. Then, and only then, will Congress act. Congress will not issue a declaration absent being asked by Commander of the military, for obvious reasons.
This idea that Congress is somehow not doing its job because it's not issuing a formal declaration that were not requested nor required, is simply nonsense.
Frankly, if requesting authorization was the same thing as requesting a declaration, then one could just as easily argue Congressional approval of funding for a war is a declaration.
And the president doesn't have the authority to declare war on his or her own accord, full stop, because the constitution explicitly gives that right to Congress (and no other branch).
Any convoluted timelines around requests are immaterial to those facts.
If the president uses the military to attack an enemy of the state, without Congressional approval, that's outside of his or her authority.
We desperately need term limits. Age limits might make sense too but term limits would mostly take care of that.
Impeach. Subpoena. Then arrest if subpoena ignored. Pass laws (supermajority to bypass veto). Cut funding to executive office. Then go nuclear with things like amendment putting the armed forces under legislative control. Lots options. All require a united front.
Which requires Republicans to honor their oath to uphold the Constitution. So it's a non-starter.
So in other words "no options" because we will never have a unified front in the legislative branch.
What did Parliament do during the English Civil War?
"So Sue them"
It will take a long time to go through the courts, the courts may not care, and even if they do, you can usually appeal and drag your feet long enough that it doesn't matter. Oh, and bonus here, if you become president again you get another reset. It's illegal, but there's no recourse for action.
It's a DDoS on the legal system and he's got all three branches by the balls. The courts can intervene in some of the cases some of the time, but it won't intervene in all of the cases all of the time.
The only way forward here is if everybody in the federal government either does the same thing, or that they become so ineffective and unreliable at _their_ jobs that everything is slowed down enough for the courts to intervene.
Capturing the courts is the first step in a fascist takeover. The Republican controlled legislature isn't going to send the sergeant at arms and arrest him.
There is nothing in the way now. "It could happen here."
"Gödel told Morgenstern about the flaw in the constitution, which, he said, would allow the United States to legally become a fascist state." [1] Unfortunately Morgenstern never completely specified what this flaw was. As pointed out in the wikipedia article speculation is that "The loophole is that Article V's procedures can be applied to Article V itself. It can therefore be altered in a "downward" direction, making it easier to alter the article again in the future." But given how difficult it is to amend the constitution it doesn't seem like the problem lies there.
For all the fetishization of the constitution popular media has led me to believe Americans engage in, when push comes to shove it doesn’t seem to be worth the paper it’s written on.
If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there is a problem, but not until September 30th
I remember you pushing this idea (that the independence of independent executive agencies are unconstitutional, or unaccountable, or similar) heavily in a thread a couple days ago. Where is it coming from? AFAIK virtually everyone on both sides has agreed that the independence of these agencies was a Really Good Thing for the last hundred years.
Given that, they've operated on a consensus model for so long, it's hard to say that the current admin is doing something illegal by changing (as long as the money is spent by end of fiscal year, due to impoundment laws). This may be a "constitutional crisis" in the parliamentary sense, but hardly in the American sense.
>virtually everyone on both sides has agreed
This is something I've talked about elsewhere, but the electorate that put Trump in office did it specifically in rejection of the Dem & GOP cooperation of the last several decades which led to the same things happening regardless of who was in charge.
From that perspective (and without saying anything about legality or wisdom, etc) Trump is doing exactly what the people who put him in office asked him to do.
So it's not like there isn't precedent for this, it's just that the consensus was as you said, the independent (some would say unelected) bureaucracy running things. But that was only ever a convention.
I don't think anyone's claiming that they're "unsavory" - just that they are creatures of the executive that were created by the executive and may be abolished by the executive as well.
And I don't think it's a new position either? The Ron Paul types have been complaining about them for literally decades.
I challenge you to find 1 in 30 Trump voters who could say what USAID stands for or its intended purpose or any of its effects on global politics.
So I dont know about "exactly"...
Besides all of that, there is the danger that if Democrats try to play the 14th card against him, Trump will declare the immigrants enemy combatants. At which point they are no longer under the jurisdiction of the United States at all, and he can do more than simply deport them. The left has been out-maneuvered at every step here, it's unlikely that this is the point at which they start winning.
But that's not true. Only their offspring gains US citizenship, not them.
But I suspect that isn't the limit anti-14th-amendment people's ambitions.
The text of the 14th amendment follows:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
For better or for worse, the amendment does not make any exceptions for denying citizenship to persons born of late term pregnant women who just arrived on the shores.
Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me, and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news right now?
"and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" could easily be read to exclude those who are born to people present unlawfully and/or in violation of their visa. I think it's pretty plausible that the Supreme Court might overturn Wong Kim Ark.
> Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me, and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news right now?
Welcome to how it's always been for anyone who didn't have citizenship. The "enemy combatant" concept is some tinpot dictator bullshit, but at this point it's been well established in the US and supported by both sides of the aisle, the Dems wouldn't have a leg to stand on in campaigning against it. Talking about applying it to "lawful citizens" is purely circular logic - Trump will take the position that they aren't and were never lawful citizens.
Indeed, one of the Senators (Cowan) against the amendment feared millions of invaders who settle as trespassers leading to a loss of control over immigration due to the amendment.
It is simply impossible to read the debate and argue that Congress' understanding of the amendment didn't include exactly the group people today are trying to exclude.
https://www.justfacts.com/document/1866_birthright_citizensh...
A criminal is very much "subject to the jurisdiction of" the US, far more so than an illegal immigrant who if caught will likely not be imprisoned or even tried, but simply deported.
> It is simply impossible to read the debate and argue that Congress' understanding of the amendment didn't include exactly the group people today are trying to exclude.
What Congress believed at the time is not binding on today's courts if they don't want it to be, as the history of interpretation of many other parts of the constitution shows.
Deported using......jurisdiction?
You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?
This argument doesn't work.
No, just deported. When the Navy shoots at Somali pirates they don't worry about jurisdiction. The left has been at pains to point out that illegal entry is not a crime and border patrol is not law enforcement, but that cuts both ways.
> You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?
If they do a medium-sized crime the US ignores it and just deports them, that much happens all the time already, no-one wants more people in prison.
If they do a big enough crime then I'm sure the US would find some way to charge them, but that's no different from what they do for full-on foreigners who never come anywhere near the US. E.g. if they kill a US citizen on US soil then the US would claim jurisdiction on that basis, even if the perpetrator stayed on the other side of the border the whole time.
If you were being reasonable, you might realize that short of those crimes deserving the death penalty, our country is better off just deporting. I don't want to spend $50,000/year (and up) on sequestering someone from our population, when deportation accomplishes that same result. Just make sure the deportation is successful. Send them with a crate of evidence for local prosecutors (who, in theory, should want to prosecute them... unless they really were sending them here to destablize our country with sabotage and rape).
This would remain true for me, even if it had no impact on citizenship of their children.
And I could imagine situations where it makes sense to prosecute and then deport with a suspended sentence, which keeps costs relatively low but also gives them a much bigger incentive to never come back.
Indeed, Senator Cowan feared "Gypsies" who "settle as trespassers wherever they go" and whose "cunning is of such a transcendent character that no skill can serve to correct it or punish it." He argued the amendment to make those born here citizens would prevent their removal, as a class.
He went beyond that of course. His diatribe includes floods of "Mongol race", Chinese, Australians and even cannibals.
Really, the arguments against jus soli today almost sound like they're channeling the man.
It means that even if your citizenship never gets worked out, your descendants will be handled.
Having it so extreme as to be "anyone born on the soil (except diplomat kids)" is a novelty. Not necessarily a bad one, but also not obviously what the 14th was attempting.
It is extremely common in the Americas though. I think only Colombia and a few island countries don't have birthright citizenship here. I think it is a good concept for us, the US has historically been a nation of immigrants and our country has a culture that is shaped (and IMO strengthened) by people from all over the world.
> Mr. Cowan: I am really desirous to have a legal definition of “citizenship of the United States.” What does it mean? ... Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen? Is the child of a Gypsy born in Pennsylvania a citizen? ... If the mere fact of being born in the country confers that right, then they will have it; and I think it will be mischievous. ...
> Mr. Conness: If my friend from Pennsylvania, who professes to know all about Gypsies and little about Chinese, knew as much of the Chinese and their habits as he professes to do of the Gypsies ... he would not be alarmed in our behalf because of the operation of the [proposed amendment] ... so far as it involves the Chinese and us. The proposition before us ... relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens.
It is very hard to look at the debates and argue it was just done for ex-slaves and has no other effect given they very clearly debate the effect.
However, disagreeing about the interpretation of the constitution when it is not actually that "plainly" clear, it has been supported by precedent is not the same as ignoring the constitution. In fact, it sets up a challenge for the Court to decide and it will almost certainly find in favor of this kind of citizenship.
Many presidents, including Obama, have put forth orders and supported legislation that was ultimately found to be unconstitutional; it does not mean they were running a monarchy or whatever the left is implying.
> It'd be interesting to find out why people think moving the USAID organization under the Secretary of State is unconstitutional.
If there are no existing laws to prevent this, then it probably is legal. Given the voluminous laws in existence, I would not be surprised if there was one out there which is relevant.
> If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there is a problem, but not until September 30th
While this might be a "strict letter of the law" kind of thing (again IANAL), violating the spirit of a law is still illegal. Disbursement schedules are a real thing, with real-world impact when they are not adhered to, and can cause very real problems.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1071/uslm/COMPS-10...
That means that the President can’t wipe it out as an independent agency unilaterally. He could go to the members of his party in the legislature and ask them to create a bill rechartering the agency but then it would get public debate and they’d have to own what they’re doing, so he took the path of daring anyone to enforce the law. It’s like hot-wiring your buddy’s car because you don’t want to ask if you can borrow it, except that it’s disrupting millions of lives.
I didn't see where the chartering is in that, all the refs I saw assumed the group's existence, and only a few referred to it as an "agency"--but maybe I missed it?
Most of what I saw was that USA was supposed to follow the guidance of the Secretary of State, or work with other departments. That was Rubio's claim, that not only did it not work with the State Department, but it subverted that department's work and that there was no cooperation with Congressional oversight committees.
In some constitutional democracies there is a court that sits above the apex court, and they rule on constitutional matters only. I feel this is is an effective check/balance, as it makes the interpretation of the constitution completely unambiguous.
Some more recent constitutions have established a separate court that only rules on constitutional issues, but the US doesn't have that.
This is a problem for the left and for neo-cons; they flouted the constitution for so long, that now that someone else (Trump) is doing it to them, the left/neocons don't really have a base that responds well to cries of "Unconstitutional!".
The first amendment says congress can't abridge freedom of speech OR freedom of the press. So obviously you don't need one to exercise the other.
The second amendment has much worse wording.
“A thriving community of professional musicians, being essential to the existence of great art, the right of the people to keep and play musical instruments shall not be infringed.”
I really don’t think anyone would be arguing that it restricts the right to keep and play musical instruments only to people who are already professional musicians.
> able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States
So I'm not sure "a rule the you have to engage with the militia" is going to get any better of a reading on the 2nd amendment from an "individual" vs "some group of people defined by the government that aren't 'the People' of every other part of the constitution" perspective.
And wouldn't "well-regulated" mean organized?
> "a rule the you have to engage with the militia"
To be clear, I was not implying that wording. You changed the musician version too much to swap out single words like that.
As far as I know that’s been the definition at least since the 50s though I’m pretty sure at least the “able-bodied males 18-45” part has been around even longer
You can't look to the US Code for definitions of terms in the Constitution; the US Code definition applies to the portion of the US Code that that definition is applicable to, but (except where the Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to define something) cannot define terms in the Constitution, otherwise, Congress could simply rewrite the Constitution by redefining the language used in it, and would never need to use the more difficult process of Constitutional Amendments.
It seems reasonable to conclude then that the right must be conferred to all the people because if they meant for it to be limited to the Militia they would have said “the right of the Militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”
What does it even mean to say that the state department is by definition political? There are political appointees, but the overwhelming majority of the state department is career foreign service or career civil service, which are apolitical. The same is true for USAID.
None of what you're saying makes any sense or has any relation to reality.
Marco Rubio (head of the state department) stated that they refused to audited. So did other congressmen. https://x.com/cspan/status/1886473339201360210
Do you disagree with what he says in the above video? They denied to be audited. The US in USAID stands for United States. Can we not ask what they spend the money on?
USAID was not created by congress. It was created by executive order 10973 by JFK. It can be undone by executive order. It's function can be rolled into the state department.
Also, Congress codified it as an independent agency in 1998. So.. that last part isn't true either. This stuff isn't hard to look up.
This stuff isn't hard to look up, but feel free to send an explicit link explaining why they can spend money and never have to answer any questions about what they are spending it on. Some of the alleged things that they spent the money on are ridiculous (not going to repeat them here).
This same court invented prisidential immunity out of thin air. They invented "history and tradition" doctrine out of thin air (and then selectively applied it). They invented "major questsions" doctrine to allow them to act as all three branches whenever they want to.
There is absolutely no opposition to any of this. There are only the perpetrators and the controlled opposition who are 100% complicit with what's going on.
Nobody is coming to save you and certainly not the courts.
This source apparently talks about it, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14359253/joni-ernst...
https://www.crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-wants-to-get-operation...
And can incite people against anything he chooses on X, like:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1885964969335808217
and he can certainly act quicker than any checks and ballances. We'll see how the system works to get rid of the chaos monkey on the inside.
At this point, who cares? The democrats in power have proven themselves wholly incapable of doing anything for many years now.
Occams razor would instead suggest that either a recession or some other form of social instability is not an externality but an objective.
It makes me scared for what the ultimate aim is, but I think at this point it's beyond giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Sleep deprivation, stress and overwork, controlling the lives of participants, targeting at risk populations, etc. are cult programming techniques.
It's looking like this was at least larping as a 40+ billion dollar slush fund. There may have been some legitimate (useful) spending, and they will find out after auditing the system, but it also looks like there was lots of waste and once-removed (one degree of separation) self-dealing.
it isn’t good when a group of people tries to destroy the entity that’s making those investments. These shitheads are basically corporate raiders coming in to tear things apart for personal gain.
Ironically, it is the “fiscally responsible”, “WhY nOt RuN gOvErNmEnT lIkE a BuSiNeSs” gang who want to destroy any fiscally responsible investment.
If they want to reduce spending meaningfully, they need to cut defense, social security, and Medicare. They won’t, because it’s political suicide.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/pete-buttigieg-did-not-sp...
The most charitable interpretation is 243 Chargers.
According to the AP[0] it's 214
[0] https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-electric-vehicle-charg...
It’s a decade long project, with phases and 50 different state governments doing the actual contracting. The Fed side is mostly funding and establishing the Tesla charger as the national standard - which required quite a bit of diplomacy to get all the car manufacturers onboard.
Jan 1942: Roosevelt authorizes the atomic bomb
Jul 1945 (55 months later): Trinity
Aug 1945 (56 months later): Little Boy
By comparison:
Nov 2021: IRA becomes law
Feb 2025 (40 months later): <250 charging points
But this would take 120 months to complete. What an interesting comparison.
Zero bombs in early 1945. What a waste of money!
They invented a novel weapon in half the time your heroes dreamed of building a charging station.
It's a plan to build tens of thousands of charging stations, by 2030.
In all 50 states, with the states and local administrations being responsible for contracting, permiting, buying land, utility work, etc. Most of the work is not on the Feds here.
It should not be at all surprising that 10k+ little building projects take some time to get going. Even from the folks who credulously believed the President could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
Oh hang on, I can do better. I have a plan to build 3 billion teleportation machines by 2045. This makes for a great mad libs set.
I have a plan to build thousands of Super Star Destroyers on Exegol by a long time ago.
I think your other comment about it being harder because it's an overly complicated plan doesn't convince me. The complexity and feasibility of a plan are also characteristics of its quality.
But this comment I buy. Color me convinced.
> There are currently 214 operational chargers in 12 states that have been funded through the law, with 24,800 projects underway across the country, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
I can see why you omitted the context.
Any "fact" it claims which is bad for it's case, you can believe with > 90% probability
Any "fact" it uses to support it's case should be taken with a tablespoon of sodium.
For example in this case: 24,800 projects underway. I assume if many were mostly built then they would say "10,000 chargers expected to be operational by March".
If they were under construction at all, they would probably say "under construction" This is a statement from the Federal Highway Administration! it's PR! (as it should be, nothing wrong with tooting your own horn) and the most they claim is "underway".
Of course we won't get an investigative story about this, but I'd wager the vast majority is in the earliest possible stage (before even permits to build)
So, the criticism of Buttigieg is well founded, and the "misinformation" is more directionally correct then the "fact check"
Just look at Panama this very week. They were threatened to be invaded if they didn't give up economic deals with China and go back to being a servant colony of the US.
The odds of citizens cashing in and demanding all their money at once is pretty slim. The odds of countries that hold US debt doing it are better. But there's a strong deterrent for countries doing that. And it's the reality that the US has no issue with invading, and they've done it countless times this past century to the applause of the voters.
People like to bring up places like Argentina and Venezuela, but their debts weren't denominated in their own currencies, so they had to collect dollars in order to repay debts in dollars. As a currency issuer, since we create dollars, we can never run out of them. Nor do we have to round up dollars and take them back from currency holders before we can repay a debt. Doing so just takes those dollars away from the non-government so that the issuer can zero out a ledger somewhere. The interest is interest we choose to pay, for some reason. The only way we could default on our debt is if we decide to. The only way to "pay off" the "debt" is to take all the dollars away from the non-government, which is _us_.
> The interest is interest we choose to pay, for some reason.
Perhaps this is the best point to talk about, because the precise way in which it's untrue is very concrete. The US government doesn't choose how much interest it feels like paying; it sells securities which promise a specific payout schedule according to an auction-set interest rate. If investors want to buy at a high interest rate, there's no mechanism for the government to demand they accept a lower one.
I think the popular misunderstanding is more harmful than some of the misunderstandings you point out (which some people may indeed have) because it leads to people pushing austerity because of their monetarist dogma.
Nobody ever asks who's going to pay for stuff when it's so-called "defense" spending. But if we want health care or education then it's all apoplectic "debt, hyperinflation, enslavement of future generations, where's the money going to come from!?"
Hint: it's not China, the UK or any other foreign government.
It's us silly. We owe ourselves. :)
The only potential problem here is that "we owe ourselves" simplifies things given that some individuals are owed much more than others, i.e. there's inequality. Other than that? The whole debt charade is just political groups weaponizing (and perpetuating) the lack of fairly basic macro-economic understanding in the population.
15 of those days are national defense.
9 of those days are what Elon hopes to cut in half.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
The deficit is a huge problem. I don't know how to fix it. But, what DOGE has done so far is exactly the opposite of what makes sense.
My point is that a lot of people seem to be in an "ends justify the means" mindset here where it's OK to rubber-stamp over laws, security, any sort of requirements for competence, or even basic understanding of what's being destroyed because in the end, this is chaos is going to have such a tremendous impact.
But, it's not. It mathematically can't. Even if it all turns out amazing it will be a small dent in the problem it's claiming to solve.
So, in the end, all of this is actually just chaos for sake of chaos. In the process, a whole lot of real people will be hurt in real ways. It's not bad at the same scale that "Turn off Medicare until we understand how it works" would be. But, it's nonsensically destructive in exactly the same way.
Exactly my point. This is (one of the reasons) why Trump is cutting these small programs. People would really flip out if he cut social programs for Americans
Turning off the entire flow of money is unnecessary, even counter-productive, to understanding how the money is flowing. Even if half of the money is waste, turning off the other half is causing tremendous real harm for no reason.
It is completely unnecessary and horrific to rubber stamp around national security protocol for something as incomprehensibly impactful as the federal payments system.
And, in the end, what are we going to get out of all of it? What I'm seeing out of Elon is propaganda about programs like "studying shrimp on treadmills" which was an microscopic piece of a very sensible study on marine safety and security. That's exactly the kind of work the government is supposed to be doing. But, if you frame it badly enough, you can destroy it for everyone and claim it as a victory.
I mostly agree with you, except I would add that the waste is causing real harm as well, as it could be better spent.
But, the demographic crisis means that moving forward our growth in entitlement spending for the growing population of seniors is far outpacing our growth in GDP from our slowing population of workers.
We can't tax or cut out way out of this. Elon's cuts are going to be performative at best. Real cuts would put tens of millions of seniors, vets and disabled people into destitution. Taxing the billionaires more would be nice. But, taxing them to zero would only paper over a few years of the problem.
The only way out I see is through massive investment to increase per-capita GDP long term. As a super duper liberal, I'm gung ho on "Bring manufacturing back!" in the form of
1. Re-prioritize trade schools and trade skills so we can actually perform high-skill work in factories if/when we build them. 2. Do everything we can to catch up with China making locally-built green energy tech dirt-cheap and highly effective. 3. Figure out how to incentivize the market to local build the interconnected web of advanced manufacturing capabilities needed to produce high tech goods fast and cheap.
I see the work of https://www.hadrian.co/ as an example of what I'm talking about. I'm starting to see some senators act like they need to stop talking about it and actually do something about it. But, the "best" I've heard from Trump is "Drill, baby. Drill!" and "Tariffs are magic."
If Trump laid out a plan for how to target tariffs surgically and use those proceeds to build up manufacturing, I'd be on board. But, he hasn't. Instead, he has made it clear his only plan is to create chaos, achieve performative concessions, and declare personal triumph while netting great harm for everyone in the end.
The US maintains monopoly on this free money cheat through goodwill driven manufactured consent, diplomacy, financial bullying and military might. Each subsequent tool being more heavy handed & less preferred than the last. Heavy handed tools while effective, break more than they fix. This prudence sustains Pax Americana.
In 2025 America, good will is at an all-time-low. Mechanisms for classical diplomacy are being actively dismantled by Elon-Trump. Financial bullying is now the cudgel of choice. Pax Americana is under threat.
Post-WW2 peace is among mankind's most remarkable civilizational achievements. It isn't self-evident and it definitely isn't the historic norm. How long until nations start questioning the deal ? How many decades of work is being dismantled within days ?
May be hyperbole, but the locks on Chesterton-Pandora's box are being opened. It might work out, but Elon's aggressiveness seems so unnecessary at a time when the American economy is doing exceedingly well.
I don't know how anyone isn't.
For years it was a given that the UK and Europe needed to buddy up to the US. That's not the sentiment any more, because the next four years feel like that's the wrong direction, and Ukraine is about to fall and that's the priority.
If the dollar falls further from being the global reserve currency (something which both administrations did their best to ensure it will happen) that will be an even worse blow.
That there are people in bubbles believing it's all fine, or they never been better, is also a contributing factor to all this.
In which parallel reality do you live? Some metrics:
- U.S. share of global GDP (nominal). 40% in 1960 to around 24% nowadays.
- Share of global exports from the peak of 17% in 1963, to around 8.5% today (China is 14%).
- Global R&D expending from the 1960 peak of 69% to 30% today with China closing the gap currently at 23%.
- Reserve currency status of the Dollar dropped from 71% to 59%.
- Share of outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) 47% in 1960 vs 22% in 2022.
Even the strongest selling point of the american economy of being the largest consumer economy is strongly dependent on high levels of consumer debt as well as the ability to sustain gigantic trade deficits based on the global appetite for the dollar and US bonds.
And then we have some other points of concern: In 1950, manufacturing represented 28% of GDP, while FIRE was 10%. Today, manufacturing is 10%, and FIRE is 20%. FIRE’s dominance reflects financialization — prioritizing short-term profit through financial engineering over productive, long-term investment. It encourages Rent-Seeking vs Productive Activity, for example, in Finance, much of the sector’s growth comes from fees, interest, and speculative trading (e.g., derivatives, high-frequency trading) rather than financing innovation or infrastructure. In Real Estate Rising prices often reflect speculation rather than new construction or improved living standards. This leads to inequality amplification, FIRE disproportionately benefits high-income earners (e.g., Wall Street, landlords). The top 1% owns 53% of stocks and 40% of real estate wealth (Fed data), which exacerbates wealth gaps without broadly improving household economic security. Real Estate alone now accounts for ~60% of corporate profits, something that create obvious systemic risks.
The US is still the richest and most powerful country in the world, but it is far from being as economically dominant as it was in the past, exactly the contrary of what you said.
I understand that after the gains we all had in the stock market in recent times, we might be tempted to consider this as a measure of the health of American Economy and considering market capitalizations, its global dominance. But that is a mistake. Stock Prices reflect investor sentiment, not fundamentals, they are driven by factors like speculation, liquidity and future expectations, not direct economic performance. Also, a handful of mega-cap companies dominate indexes, which introduces a lag that could mask broader economic issues. For example, the "Magnificent Seven" drove around 75% of the S&P 2023 gains, while small-cap stocks lagged. Also, tech and finance dominate markets, but they are not labor intensive, and thus they can't contribute as much to employment. Also, as the top 10% of the households own almost 90% of stocks, rising markets enrich the wealthy but don't reflect wage growth or living standards.
Also, a lot of the stock market exhuberance has been driven by things like stock buybacks, inflating share prices at the expense of investment and wages.
Rather than make any specific point, I'd recommend acoup's detailed post about the US's overwhelming dominance across a huge swath of areas:
https://acoup.blog/2022/07/08/collections-is-the-united-stat...
I think he makes a good case there, even if you are right and by some measurements the US did better in the past.
The US watched the rest of the world burn itself down during WW1 (partially) and during WW2 (almost completely).
There were basically 0 industrialized countries doing better in 1945 than they were in 1928.
The US reached those insane peaks because of a total aberration. It was never going to last.
China and India, for example, have been between 1/3 and 1/2 of the world economy for multiple millennia.
After the Age of Discovery Europe as a whole took over at least 1/3 itself.
The US would do well to adjust to this new reality, but I guess the temptation to make America great again is too strong.
That may be true if you look at the US in isolation, they're much richer now compared to 1950, but they've never had a strong a contender as China is right now. The Soviets were matching them militarily back in the Cold War years but they were never close to surpass them economically, like China is now in the process of doing.
Inflation was because of pandemic and wars. Rest is absolute nonsense.
Instead, The biggest oil pipeline in the US was shutdown on day one and increased regulations led to our current situation with inflation.
The democrats are also war mongers and want to have perpetual wars to line their pockets.
It's telling when there isn't one negative story about Biden/the democrats (especially when we found out they were colluding with big tech to suppress the speech of average citizens) in 4 years, and we immedialy get slop hit piece articles about Trump and Musk.
Whether that fear is justified is a totally different topic
And there's nothing the US can do. Cutting government spending and starting trade wars with neighbours is not going to stop it. Building up a totalitarian state with deep government influence into businesses is not going to work and will be actively resisted, since Big Government is so against the principles of the current regime's voters - and China has been working on this for decades now. Free market won't work either, as it's already very free in the US itself - but the aggression of US companies in their sales practices, tax dodging, and privacy violations have caused their foreign customers like Europe to raise the defenses.
TL;DR, while I can see how totalitarianism can in theory create a strong economy, it isn't going to fly / work in the US.
USA has also rescued hundreds of millions of people (including China!) from bloody conquerers, as in WW II.
(it's not like the US is innocent; we have made a huge number of terrible mistakes attempting to maintain the Pax Americana. I fully acknowledge while being fairly sure that China could and would do far, far worse than the US)
Why not compare the Allies with the Axis next? The US was segregated, right, so... hey, same difference! /s
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
A surprising number of people don't seem to know the first thing about China. Hey, it might not help that China doesn't allow a fifth of the world to learn the history of China.
But let's talk again in four years. The way things are going in America, I may agree with you guys by then :(
Also, China did try it only a few decades ago. Murder, starvation, horrific torture, reeducation camps, brainwashed children denouncing their parents... impressively evil. Not that Tiananmen Square or Uyghur ethnic cleansing or kidnappings of expat dissidents are so much better.
For sure this country has its own flawed history with slavery and treatment of Native Americans, but China is absolutely on its own level with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...
The President can hire him and Congress could direct him to do what he’s doing, but that step has been skipped.
That’s why this is massively illegal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic...
It's not a legal Department.
Trump's team is claiming that anything computerized falls under USDS purview, hence the parasitic hijacking of the US Digital Service.
Trump's delegated Musk as a Special Government Operative and signed executive orders granting him and all his recommended employees security clearances w/o the requisite background checks that normally would be required.
So they are acting within the government, they are employees, and they've been granted special waivers by Trump to do all this craziness.
I think its going to come down more to the courts looking at whether these 'newly appointed employees' are breaking all kinds of laws passed by congress.
Critics at the time warned this Act would give the president too much power.
The only way we prevent the worst case scenario is to stand up to authoritarian power.
Keep shining the light on these bad actors. Let's send them home.
Trump is not king. Musk has no authority. DOGE is a hacker crew without a legal mandate.
1. USAID Employees Have Legal Employment Protections
USAID employees—both civil servants and Foreign Service officers—are protected by federal employment laws. A presidential aide cannot simply tell them to stop working without a legal order, such as an official reorganization approved by Congress or a government shutdown following a funding lapse.
Under Title 5 of the U.S. Code, federal employees cannot be arbitrarily removed or prevented from performing their duties. The Anti-Deficiency Act (31 U.S.C. § 1341) prohibits government officials from unilaterally stopping agency operations without congressional authorization.
2. Locking USAID Buildings Would Violate Security & Property Laws
Physically locking the doors to prevent USAID employees from entering their offices would likely violate:
18 U.S.C. § 371 (Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government) if it were done to obstruct lawful government operations. 18 U.S.C. § 1361 (Willful injury of government property) if it involved unlawful restriction of access to a federal facility. Federal Continuity Directives require that government agencies maintain essential functions even in emergencies.
3. Presidential Authority Has Limits
The President does not have unilateral authority to suspend an entire federal agency’s operations without following proper legal processes.
Only Congress can permanently dissolve an agency like USAID by repealing its statutory mandate.
Even if a president wanted to reorganize or defund USAID, they would need to work through legal channels—such as submitting a restructuring plan to Congress.
What Could Happen If Someone Tried This?
If an aide illegally ordered staffers to stop working and locked the doors, several things could happen:
Congressional & Legal Challenges – USAID officials or Congress could sue, arguing the action was unlawful. Federal Court Intervention – A court could issue an injunction blocking the order.
Potential Criminal Charges – Any official involved in obstructing a federal agency’s work could face legal consequences.
Historical Precedents
Trump’s 2018-2019 Government Shutdown: While federal agencies, including USAID, were partially shut down due to funding lapses, career employees were still required to follow proper procedures.
Nixon’s Attempt to Defund Agencies: President Nixon tried to defund programs by impounding funds, but Congress passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, limiting executive control over funding.
Bottom Line
Simply ordering USAID employees to stop working and locking the doors would be blatantly illegal and would likely lead to immediate legal challenges, congressional intervention, and possible criminal liability for those involved.
Are you suggesting the rule of law doesn't apply anymore? If so, why are you bothering to read Hacker News? Run!
It's only matter of time until one of these clowns starts "accidentally" touching data like the 2020 census individual response data.
To me, that's the red line: If they can touch that and suffer no consequence, then there is no law or process can exist to ensure accountability of the government.
https://www.census.gov/about/history/bureau-history/agency-h...
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-...
So congress, for example, cannot delegate making laws to some other entity. The courts, for example, cannot give their judicial power to others.
Similarly, the president can't delegate significant executive authority to others.
Where are the limits of this?
It's usually about delegating significant amounts of power or functions that the constitution explicit calls out as being owned.
But the limits are not tested often, so not tons of cases.
In the case of agencies, the executive branch also has no power in the first place to either set up, or disband, agencies. This is a power that congress owns. They can't, per above, delegate it, even if they wanted to.
But this is standard practice, no? The US system is rather unusual compared to Parliamentary systems in that Congress delegates precisely this power to the executive all the time.
A great example of that are with various toxins and pollutants, there's no system in which we can go through the whole process of making a new law every time we discover that some miracle chemical is giving people giga-cancer. Instead Congress tasks an agency full of experts to decide what safe levels of the giga-cancer causing chemical is and makes sure we only ingest slightly below the LD50 of that so we can statistically live.
And then there's also plenty of cases where the constitution is just ignored without consequence. The CDC unilaterally announced payments to landlords were suspended during COVID, something it had no power to do. It didn't cause much of a fuss.
The CDC case seems to make the opposite point: they took a broad interpretation of the public health act, and it was rejected in the courts as exceeding what Congress had intended:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/us/politics/eviction-mora...
The CDC has pretty vast powers in a public health emergency and IMO the ability to forcibly quarantine people is a power far beyond the ability to pause evictions and is maybe even a necessary part of the former. (Can't really quarantine someone if their landlord can just throw them out right?)
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/resources/bu...
Realtor associations and rental property managers in Alabama and Georgia again sued to enjoin the CDC’s new (“second”) moratorium. The District Court entered judgment for the landlords, and the Supreme Court affirmed.
The Supreme Court found that Congress could speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise the powers of vast economic and political significance that the CDC exercised in its order, but Congress had not done so. In addition, the CDC order “intruded” in an area that is the particular domain of state law: the landlord-tenant relationship. Absent clear Congressional authority, which was lacking, the CDC order was too broad and was properly struck down.
Not saying I agree with what Trump's CDC tried to do, but it's not clear to me that the law bars them from taking extreme measures during a pandemic. It just has to be continually justified by facts on the ground.
I asked ChatGPT and it said many other agencies were established by EOs (e.g. FEMA, NSA, NASA, EPA). Quote from ChatGPT: "Many agencies later received congressional authorization, but their initial formation or restructuring was often directed by executive orders." So it seems like the last paragraph is incorrect.
If you mean "any organized entity that contains federal employees", by that definition, sure lots of "agencies" exist that are created by the different branches.
If you mean "something that can create binding regulations that interpret or implement law" - no, those have to be authorized by congress in some fashion. Even if they are run by the executive later, which is also somewhat muddy.
etc
Traditionally, they agencies are the things that have officers who are nominated by the president and approved by the senate, and have useful power as a result :)
I'll also point out - even the ones that are entirely created by other branches (executive, judicial) have to be funded by congress one way or the other.
This includes all the ones you listed.
They cannot legally spend money otherwise - ""no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law".
Sometimes they are created with a small, more general emergency appropriation or something, but again, if they want to spend money, that also requires them to be authorized and appropriated by congress.
Some of the more interesting questions that we have thankfully never had to answer for real (outside of blustering) is around various branches using their power to deliberately interfere with the basic functioning of other branches (except as authorized by the constitution, which, for example, says congress can set the jurisdiction of courts except for the supreme court. Where we've come close to it has mostly been around appropriations designed to force another branch to do or not do a certain thing. We may come a lot closer the next few years depending on what happens.
The constitutional limit is easy (none of them is more powerful than the other, and may not interfere with the basic sovereignty of each other), but the lines are not.
So the thing about appropriations is - they actually have to spend them unless it says something else.
It's not like a budget. It's an order to spend money a certain way. That's why generally congress is said to have the power of the purse - they give the directions on how money is spent.
So appropriations come with directions, time frames, etc.
The executive branch must spend them as directed, and they must be applied to the specific purpose as directed.
This is also why you will sometimes find federal agencies or the military spending infinite money towards the end of the fiscal year, because they are just making sure they spent all the money they were supposed to. Again, sometimes the appropriation says "spend up to", etc. But whatever it says, they have to do it.
So if they say "you have to spend 1 billion on USAID", they must in fact, spend 1 billion on USAID.
Let's take the agencies that are specifically authorized or created by congress out of the picture - they literally can't disband these (and i don't believe they've tried yet). These are usually the things created or later authorized by bills that say something like "their shall be an office of the xyz" or something similar.
So for example, CPFB is here: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:12%20section:...
(I just picked a random one, the establishment language is fairly standard, the rest i have no opinion on :P)
Given it is created and provided for by law, it must be disbanded in the same manner - legislation that removes it.
So if we are sticking to the other ones - it basically comes down to whether an appropriations bill allows it in some fashion.
Does it say "1 billion must be spent on USAID" or does it say "1 billion must be spent on giving aid to ukraine" or does it say ....
That is what in practice, enables or prevents an EO from disbanding an agency that is not specifically provided for by congress.
At least, as far as money/etc goes. There may be other reasons they can or can't disband an agency.
For example, Congress has a congressional research service that provides it with information. It is basic to the functioning of congress (or just slightly above basic). Whether established by law or not, it's unlikely to be constitutional for the executive to disband an agency that another branch depends on, since they are supposed to be coequal branches. This has rarely, if ever, been tested in practice though.
Even when different branches have hated each other with a passion in the past, the degree to which they would test the limits of constitutional power while pissing on each other was fairly restrained.
There are a few exceptions, but they are definitely the exception and not the rule.
Also keep in mind - while the president has some special powers, the general purpose of the executive branch is simple - to faithfully execute the laws. The only discretion in even doing that comes from the laws themselves and the constitution's description of the executive's discretion.
EO's (no matter who makes them) were not intended to be a path for the executive to do whatever it wants, and use power not granted to the executive
I say this not offering a view on the legality or not or wisdom or not, just trying to make sure i answer your question completely.
USAID was "created" by EO originally, but was recreated in 1998 by congressional act (The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, 22 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.):
"(a) In general Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. "
(there is being the key words here. Not there can be)
The last relevant appropriations bill (section 7063 of the FY24 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act) says:
" Sec. 7063. (a) Prior Consultation and Notification.--Funds appropriated by this Act, prior Acts making appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs, or any other Act may not be used to implement a reorganization, redesign, or other plan described in subsection (b) by the Department of State, the United States Agency for International Development, or any other Federal department, agency, or organization
[[Page 138 STAT. 844]]
funded by this Act without prior consultation by the head of such department, agency, or organization with the appropriate congressional committees: Provided, <<NOTE: Requirement.>> That such funds shall be subject to the regular notification procedures of the Committees on Appropriations: Provided further, That any such notification submitted to such Committees shall include a detailed justification for any proposed action: Provided further, That congressional notifications submitted in prior fiscal years pursuant to similar provisions of law in prior Acts making appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs may be deemed to meet the notification requirements of this section.
(b) Description of Activities.--Pursuant to subsection (a), a So the executive branch cannot eliminate, reorg, or downsize USAID without, at a minimum, consulting with congress.
Given current events, we'll see what happens.
If you have an informed reference that helped you achieve such clarity, I'm very interested. Unfortunately, my armchair has a broken leg, so I'm unable to use it at the moment. And, search engines are completely failing me.
most lawyers aren't constitutional scholars either. do you really think an expertise in personal injury law in Rhode Island makes one more qualified to recognize that an unelected billionaire shutting down organizations without any Congressional approval or appointment is illegal?
Judging from his last term, at some point Trump is likely to get tired of Musk, kick him out of the administration, declare he always thought Musk was a bad guy, and pretend like he never listened to him. If Musk tries to stay in after that, it could be a coup.
It's been less clear to me whether federal agencies are obligated to spend money that congress has authorized.
Democracy becomes non democracy by illegal acta, typically.
Until Congress grows a spine and starts legislating again, the executive will continue to run rampant.
Republican's STATED OBJECTIVE for decades has been obstructionism, entirely so they can go on the news and say "Look how ineffective the government is". Go look at how debates happened on the floor of congress 40 years ago. Go look at the AMOUNT of work done by a functioning congress. Compare it to how little republicans have done in congress since.
Then go ask republican voters and they will tell you that they explicitly prefer a congress that does nothing.
They want a king.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup
For a recent example see the events in South Korea with President Yoon.
It’s certainly debatable, but shutting down agencies created and authorized by Congress and refusing to distribute funding legislated by Congress seems to be an overstep of executive power, and therefore an undermining of Congress’s power.
My main point was that ousting an incumbent or defying an election is not a requirement for something to be a coup, as the previous comment was suggesting. A legitimately elected official seizing more power than they are legally entitled to is a form of coup.
He can't just delegate power to an unelected civilian like this.
To invoke Godwin's law, Hitler was democratically elected, Austria democratically voted to join the Reich, the people of the UK voted in favor of leaving Europe. Just because it doesn't technically meet your definition of a coup, doesn't mean it's a hostile takeover of the country's government and systems. But if you'd rather argue semantics that's fine too. If this keeps up, the US government will shut down by March and people will die - or, more will, as there's a link between the plane crashes and the Trump admin's cutting down on already understaffed air control staff.
Where do you base that on? China’s GDP is huge. It overtook the whole EU’s GDP.
USAID played a huge role in the Vietnam War by supporting things like “civil defense forces” arming villages against Viet Cong, land reform and “open arms” program to get defectors from the North.
https://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/assistance/...
It had little to do with no strings attached foreign aid. It’s mostly been an arm of US covert activities in other countries (providing cover) and a massive, massive slush fund for the CIA (hence the billions going to “undisclosed recipients”).
But of course, that’s exactly what would be oligarchs want.
So you're saying they hired a bunch of undistinguished Berkeley drop-outs just because they're libertarians? A sort of affirmative action for libertarians?
It's always projection with these guys.
Elon is the definition of Dunning-Kruger. He seems smart (maybe) when he's talking about something you know nothing about but as soon as he talks about something you do know about, the illusion quickly shatters. Many here learned this after the Twitter takeover when he started talking about software and technical infrastructure.
The only thing going on here is some performative cuts to mollify the base and make some headlines. The real goal here is looting the public purse for the (further) benefit of the ultra-wealthy.
Welcome to the kleptocracy.
In not too long, China's GDP will eclipse ours and their cooperative foreign policy as opposed to our full spectrum dominance policy will yield major benefits. Dedollarization is proceeding apace, and it accelerates with each sanction and aggressive and arbitrary move by the US. Other countries used to have no choice, but now choices are opening up. The end of dollar dominance ends the most powerful tool of U.S. hegemony and turns us into a mere great power, not the lord of the world.
https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/global-research/currencies...
Trump's policy is about corruption yes, but also likely about wringing more efficiency out of American industry by reducing worker protections and reducing middle management positions. They are trying different methods to juice growth. I don't think it will work for very long.
- https://freebeacon.com/national-security/panama-wont-renew-b...
- https://ground.news/article/panama-pledges-to-exit-chinas-be...
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPSH@WEO/EU/CHN/USA
The US tried tariffs during Japan's rise as an automobile powerhouse. Look where that's left the American auto industry.
Sanctions have their place as a carrot and stick mechanism. But Trump offers no carrots. Only stick.
You can bet your ass he still voted for Trump. "I don't even like the guy" he insists.
The farmers that voted for Trump in droves in 2016 got FUCKED by his tariffs and retaliation from China. Trump had to sign off billions of dollars to offset their losses. They still voted for him in droves. Vibes don't care about the very clear data on the spreadsheet.
A huge portion of my state's lobster industry goes to China, because there literally is not a big enough market here in the states. Selling to China took the industry from barely staying afloat and selling lobster for cheaper than beef half the time, to being a healthy industry that didn't have to worry about oversupply. They will be fucked if China notices. They still voted for Trump.
All these people have FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE with how much Trump hurts our economy. They don't care. "immigrants" or some bullshit. Funny, the guys up north growing potatoes sure love the immigrants come harvest time, especially when they were paid under the table. Of course, these dumbasses in NORTHERN MAINE insist on flying confederate flags to honor their "heritage". They are from NORTHERN MAINE, their heritage is: Being harassed and assaulted by the KKK for daring to be catholic, freezing to death in ice storms, being mistaken for Canadians, and murdering the hell out of confederate slavers for the glory of the Union
They're outright racists is what I'm saying. My brother has bitched and moaned about "affirmative action" for decades. The horror that a black person might be somewhere they don't "deserve" is their only concern. It's funny to blame anything on affirmative action when you come from a town with single digit black people, and without affirmative action in the past, you would be just like the rest of the white trash.
These politicians who do not provide results and are just confidently talking nonsense still get voted. By the people.
People are indeed just tribal unga bunga monkes which learned to walk, talk and do stupid shit. Some more than others.
Yes, the US is the biggest economy. This doesn’t mean its ability to pay liabilities is infinite. Every amount of income has a particular amount of debt and interest that it is able to pay.
Take the largest company. It would not be able to service infinite debt. Apple could not service $5 trillion in debt, just like the US could not service 300 trillion.
I get why some people are concerned about the US’s liabilities and its global police status.
Also stopping giving many other countries billions of dollars a year after might be drastic. But I see why some people may not like this. Individuals can give to charities instead if this is really such a problem for them.
Now cutting research and other things is really dumb. Glad they reversed that quickly. Also needlessly licking fights with our neighbors is also really dumb.
Now only if we can reduce our military spending as well.
now look at the deficits.
It’d be a problem if we had to pay it all off tomorrow, but we don’t.
have a look at this: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest-payments...
it is like borrowing at higher rate than the rate at which are are growing our income.
To understand the scale at which we have printed money, analyze the fed balance sheet https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...
You can argue whether the chosen approach is right, but no matter what, a drastically different course is needed as 'business as usual' is a sure way to disaster.
I for one hope the US get their act together at home rather than dragging the world into WWIII.
Now, the problem is - what to do about how badly informed you and millions of Americans are. That you cheer for the destruction of valuable and painfully built state capacity for completely spurious reasons. It’s almost funny, except for all the innocent people who get hurt along the way.
As I see it that debt counter is compounding fast, and with BRICS gaining steam your abilities to keep shoving it onto the rest of the planet are diminishing.
I can’t even begin to tell you how far the US is from hyperinflation or any major debt issues - the only real risk the US faces is internal stupidity (I don’t only mean the current situation, idiocies like the ongoing debt ceiling nonsense apply too).
Look, prudence is not a bad thing, and it’s worthwhile to have sensible management. But talk of hyperinflation is either severe mis-calibration of risks, deep misunderstanding of how economies work, or intentional propaganda.
What do you think is more likely, that you’re an economic genius and you can see an impending crisis that 50 years worth of economists couldn’t, and that somehow that crisis is going to happen in the next few years? Or maybe you don’t actually understand how macro economics works and have been manipulated into thinking this way by your inherent dislike of government spending?
If the US has a problem, it'll look like some fairly substantial hit (eg, external forces closing their current account deficit) and a longish period of being economically weakened due to a lack of investment in productive capital. Maybe some riots since the pain will probably not be spread evenly.
It is a catastrophe, but mainly a catastrophe of opportunity costs. We've had a counterfactual running in China over the last 20 years of what could have been happening in the US economy if they hadn't mucked up their overall strategy (particularly energy policy and banking regulation) so badly. Plus there is an impression forming that they are actually a lot weaker militarily than had been assumed to date, I wouldn't put money on Taiwan's long term independence right now. The US doesn't have the funds to handle all the military problems if overseas nations stop picking up the tab.
They did already and are planning to again add trillions to our deficit. Go look at it, it's laid out very clearly.
There is no good faith here, these actions are a plundering of the state.
Why is USAID needed most in times when the US is very "economically dominant"?
Look at how that turned out for Bismark's Germany after he was gone. His successors were high on their own supply, and in pursuit of short-term wins, destroyed the careful network of relationships and alliances that he curated.
Beijing is, no doubt, finding this entire folly amusing.
there where two major wars during that time which mattered for the formation of germany, (the franco prussian war and the austro-prussian war, which was an extent of the politicals about who should form the german state).
Is that why you made that statement in the context of everything that was built on that hard power being demolished?
The world should read "less carrot, more stick" from the Trump admin.
USAID also has a fairly sketchy record in funding regime change efforts, so countries cooperate with it on a purely transactional basis, "trust" is zero.
I was asking specifically about how US economic dominance is a factor. Why is USAID more important when US economic dominance is high.
In general, it's also better to have friends in the world rather than going around being loud-mouthed jerks that no one likes.
It's also a tiny amount of the budget.
I was specifically wondering about that particular part of the comment by the original poster, it just seems quite interesting to me what the connection there is.
Non crazy conspiratorial source for these huge allegations?
I might be able to find you a Fox News link if that would be more to your liking.
If these programs are so small, why aren’t they going after the real grift? It’s too hard? Why the small, more relevant to citizens programs get cut first?
Because its easy to avoid the military spending and the black box that represents.
First, these are symbolic, it is very hard to concretely argue that these programs are good for Americans, since even proponents of these programs say it's about "soft power". Corollary to this is that cutting something like social security is seen as cutting benefits to Americans (ditto with Defense)
Second, these programs are seen as funding "professional democrats" in a way that social security or defense are not. So this is also about cutting out their opponents support structures.
If these programs are so small, why do you care so much?
Because they help starving children?
> First, these are symbolic
Are we talking about how USAID worked against apartheid in South Africa now?
The people who put Trump in office want the US Gov to focus on American children
That's not remotely universally true, but that's also not what you asked about
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=trump+t...