Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

[Clarkmod]

The real insurrection hasn't been seen yet. You will know it when you see it.

From The Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe describe a plausible scenario for an insurrection.

Recall that a Crisis catalyst involves scenarios distinctly imaginable
eight or ten years in advance. Based on recent Unraveling-era trends, the
following circa-2005 scenarios might seem plausible:

Beset by a fiscal crisis, a state lays claim to its residents' federal tax
monies. Declaring this an act of secession, the president obtains a
federal injunction. The governor refuses to back down. Federal
marshals enforce the court order. Similar tax rebellions spring up in
other states. Treasury bill auctions are suspended. Militia violence
breaks out. Cyberterrorists destroy IRS databases. U.S. special forces
are put on alert. Demands issue for a new Constitutional
Convention.

[Clarkmod]

Thing is, in the American sequence of crises, we have aways gone for glory rather than an apocalypse. We have gone for independence, freedom, regulation of the economy and containment. There is no historical precedence for the apocalypse option. Serious conflict during the crisis, sure, but not at the resolution. I'm generally with S&H, but occasionally they insert a little personal opinion with nothing from history to back it up.

Spending 15 years debasing the world reserve currency and kicking the can down the road during a crisis era is not the path to glory. It's the path to massive multiple converging events hitting all at once from which there is no recovery.

[Clarkmod]

Spending 15 years debasing the world reserve currency and kicking the can down the road during a crisis era is not the path to glory. It's the path to massive multiple converging events hitting all at once from which there is no recovery.

You can make all sorts of disaster possibilities, but the fact is that you can't find precedent for it in history. Yes, this time we had Covid, BLM, Jan 6, immigration, Ukraine, etc... But, the three collapses are proceeding and the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed. It's all if you decide to be a pessimist or pay attention to history.

[Clarkmod]

Spending 15 years debasing the world reserve currency and kicking the can down the road during a crisis era is not the path to glory. It's the path to massive multiple converging events hitting all at once from which there is no recovery.

You can make all sorts of disaster possibilities, but the fact is that you can't find precedent for it in history. Yes, this time we had Covid, BLM, Jan 6, immigration, Ukraine, etc... But, the three collapses are proceeding and the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed. It's all if you decide to be a pessimist or pay attention to history.

You have cited Strauss and Howe as the basis for your conclusions, but haven't quoted anything from The Fourth Turning. When I did, you then changed your tune and said Strauss and Howe inserted their own opinions within all the "facts" you have not quoted or supported.

Next, when I quoted from Strauss and Howe describing what a real insurrection would look like according to them, not me, you turned the tape recorder back on and spit out Jan 6 again.

For the last time, carry this back into your own Polyticks thread and spout about it there. You have said nothing new at all and proven yourself incapable of it.

[Higgenbotham]

Democratic spending has not kept the economy healthy. It has destroyed it. It was hugely overdone.

Apparently you have not researched crisis spending. Keeping the economy going during Covid and Ukraine going in their war is to my mind worth doing, You may not care about people and democracy, but I do.

I've been meaning to get back to this.

When you speak of me having "not researched crisis spending", are you aware of historic debt to GDP ratios for the US? Put another way, are you aware of where recent Democratic spending has put the debt to GDP ratio relative to the WWII peak?

[spottybrowncow]

He's not aware of anything except that he hates Trump and anyone who supports him.
Sadly, it's really as simple as that.

[Bob Butler]

When you speak of me having "not researched crisis spending", are you aware of historic debt to GDP ratios for the US? Put another way, are you aware of where recent Democratic spending has put the debt to GDP ratio relative to the WWII peak?

The following chart from Wikipedia seems to cover this. It shows debt as a percentage of the GDP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ ... ._2020.png

Yes. Obviously the rate is going high. There are three rapid increases in the debt recently. The first occurred during Ronald Reagan's and Bush 41's administrations, and only started coming down with Clinton. The second followed the Great Recession. That might be attributed to Bush 43 trying to fight a war with 'no new taxes'. We paid for the war later. The third great rise was at the start of the pandemic under Trump. Biden's time shows the line as flat. The projection is for it going up more, but I don't know the biases of the guy who made the chart. I take it with a grain of salt.

Admittedly there's a problem, but how was it the Democrat's?

The vague feeling I have is Republican administrations will buy short term prosperity with debt, while Democrats attempt to buy the debt down, but have failed to keep up since Reagan. I note the down portions of the curve following the world wars and during the Clinton administration have pretty much the same slope and are under periods of mostly Democratic control. Not clearly so after World War I, but back then the Republicans were truly balance the budget and lower the debt conservatives. A different time.

How would you spin it?

[Higgenbotham]

Apparently you have not researched crisis spending.

When you speak of me having "not researched crisis spending", are you aware of historic debt to GDP ratios for the US? Put another way, are you aware of where recent Democratic spending has put the debt to GDP ratio relative to the WWII peak?

How would you spin it?

I don't need to spin it. The fact is that the US debt to GDP ratio already exceeds the ratio at the end of the last crisis after funding the New Deal, World War II, etc. So due to liberals such as you who think all this spending has been OK, in reality there is no room to fund anything additional without collapsing the world reserve currency or the economy, or both. We're already tapped out.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis (FRED) has good up to date data.

PS: Recall this quote from the other thread:

The liberal welfare state is collapsing. In the big picture Trump was just another liberal. He spent copious amounts of money and ran up copious amounts of debt, just less than the far left liberals. A conservative position would have been to issue shoot to kill orders for illegals crossing the border, not fund a wall. Bullets are cheap. The individuals that emerge out of the coming anarchy, as Navigator suggests, will do that type of thing.

[Bob Butler]

Wiki’s chart goes a bit further back in history, before the Republican economic policy had changed. FRED doesn’t conjecture about things that haven’t happened yet. In between, both say much the same story, that the debt is due to Republicans buying short term prosperity with debt, that the Democrats buy it down when they have the chance. I’m mildly surprised that FRED actually shows the ratio going down under Biden, even though that verifies my point.

[Higgenbotham]

Wiki’s chart goes a bit further back in history, before the Republican economic policy had changed. FRED doesn’t conjecture about things that haven’t happened yet. In between, both say much the same story, that the debt is due to Republicans buying short term prosperity with debt, that the Democrats buy it down when they have the chance. I’m mildly surprised that FRED actually shows the ratio going down under Biden, even though that verifies my point.

You're conveniently forgetting that Obama was a Democrat and more debt was run up under him than any other President.

But the main point is the country is tapped out and we haven't even dealt with the rest of the Crisis. You're saying I haven't researched crisis spending. I have. In the past, the big spending has come during the heat of the Crisis. Running up the debt past the level at the end of WWII was not a good thing. If the equivalent of WWII spending is required to see the US through this Crisis it's likely it won't be able to be funded or paid down either one.