A revolutionary approach to fixing our many, many Federal budgetary problems, instead of Blame-Storming?

[RX792P]

Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

Unleash the plethora. A short list in no particular order:

• Simple is as simple does
• This OP isn't about Social Security
• Ditch Social Security. Start with purging the trash from it. (finally starting, some)
• Take a deep gander at every politician's net worth growth while in office.
• Did you find not passing a budget in over 25 years sensible?
• Do you find a $37Trillion deficit sensible during that same time?
• That's $108,000 per man/woman/child or $323,000 per taxpayer
• Learn to read the room, the data and the OP.
• Here is a window into the debt world, courtesy of DOGE. Hover over values (numbers) for a brief explanation.
• Study it, then contemplate just how microscopic your SS piddle puddle really is
• EX: find the line for Largest items. Notice the Interest on the debt is practically equal to all of Social Security?
• BTW Virginia: TRUMP was not responsible for all of those number values, but he did give us transparent visibility into them
• Also, learn how to learn.

I'll leave you with a question:
Do you consent to be governed as you currently are?

First...understand the difference between deficit and debt.

[Why_Yes_I_Do]

Originally Posted by RX792P

First...understand the difference between deficit and debt.

It's OK if you do not have the ability to contribute to a conversation. We kinda knew that already. Try harder.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

For those that claim to believe that Trump is the root of all problems in raising the National Debt are completely wrong. The root of the problem is the Fed issuing a fiat currency that is backed by nothing. The AI should know that but the AI is woke.

I suspect you're right that it would make it more difficult for politicians to run up the national debt, but don't think it would work very well. The price of gold or whatever you're proposing to back the currency would go sky high. Countries with large gold resources would be in the cat bird's seat, and not all of them are friendly to the USA. The Fed's ability to conduct monetary policy would be restricted, resulting in more booms and busts. It would be hard for example to adjust interest rates downward if we were in a recession and unemployment went sky high.

It's probably not workable. I'd be very interested in TC's or LustyLad's opinion if they check in here.

[CPT Savajo]

Originally Posted by Tiny

I suspect you're right that it would make it more difficult for politicians to run up the national debt, but don't think it would work very well. The price of gold or whatever you're proposing to back the currency would go sky high. Countries with large gold resources would be in the cat bird's seat, and not all of them are friendly to the USA. The Fed's ability to conduct monetary policy would be restricted, resulting in more booms and busts. It would be hard for example to adjust interest rates downward if we were in a recession and unemployment went sky high.

It's probably not workable. I'd be very interested in TC's or LustyLad's opinion if they check in here.

Proposing any changes to the current financial system would be complicated to work out but if they resorted back to gold backing the dollar it should stabilize the currency and possibly hinder monetary inflation where inflation doesn't go up as fast. Prices for goods and services should drop significantly if gold was revalued to where it accounted for all the USD's ever printed.
It would hinder the ability to fund foreign wars as well where the focus could be internal for the nation instead of trying to fix another nations problems, or to police another nation. In the future gold may be the foundation to the next financial system even if the West does not participate.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by CPT Savajo

Proposing any changes to the current financial system would be complicated to work out but if they resorted back to gold backing the dollar it should stabilize the currency and possibly hinder monetary inflation where inflation doesn't go up as fast. Prices for goods and services should drop significantly if gold was revalued to where it accounted for all the USD's ever printed.
It would hinder the ability to fund foreign wars as well where the focus could be internal for the nation instead of trying to fix another nations problems, or to police another nation. In the future gold may be the foundation to the next financial system even if the West does not participate.

This is way above my paygrade. But take M2, which is paper money, money in bank accounts and small CD's, and money market funds. Divide it by gold reserves held by the U.S. government. Maybe that would be a decent estimate of what the price of gold would have to be, to back up the currency. I'm not sure because M2 doesn't include commercial paper and some other items.

Anyway, M2 is 22.115 trillion dollars and the U.S. holds 8,133 metric tonnes of gold, or 287 million ounces. So that would be $77,000 per ounce, up from $3500 now and $2000 in the first part of 2024.

I think you'd have everybody and his dog mining gold at that price. It would be a gold rush (pardon the pun), like bitcoin mining was a few years back only on steroids.

I agree changing the system would be complicated. I think you're right that it would hold back inflation, although I'm not sure what the initial effect would be on prices.

[Salty Again]

... I'd like to get President Trump's take on all of this.
... Seriously.

#### Salty

[Why_Yes_I_Do]

Originally Posted by Tiny

...The price of gold or whatever you're proposing to back the currency would go sky high...

But then I wonder what a chart of Gold prices looks like over the last 5 years.

Originally Posted by Tiny

...Countries with large gold resources would be in the cat bird's seat, and not all of them are friendly to the USA...

But then I wonder how long have they been doing that and why.

BTW: Notice how nobody made the inspection trip to Fort Knox?

[Why_Yes_I_Do]

Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

Unleash the plethora. A short list in no particular order:

• ...
• Take a deep gander at every politician's net worth growth while in office.
• ...

...

As an example: Just out today...

Ilhan Omar Said It’s ‘Categorically False’ To Call Her a Millionaire. Her Net Worth Just Reached Up to $30 Million, an Increase of at Least 3,500 Percent in One Year.

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s personal fortune exploded to upwards of $30 million in 2024, the Minnesota Democrat disclosed just months after telling the press it is “ridiculous” and “categorically false” to say she is worth millions of dollars.

Omar reported in her latest financial disclosure that she and her husband, former political consultant Tim Mynett, accumulated a net worth at the end of 2024 ranging from at least $6 million to $30 million. Their wealth is derived almost entirely from the value of Mynett’s ownership stake in his two companies that, together, were worth no more than $51,000 at the end of 2023. The exact value of Omar’s personal fortune at the end of 2024 is unclear—lawmakers disclose the value of their holdings and debts in ranges. Still, the figures in Omar’s latest disclosures show that her and her husband’s net worth skyrocketed by at least 3,500 percent in just one year.

Omar’s extraordinary accumulation of wealth in 2024 could raise uncomfortable questions for the Minnesota Democrat, who in February told Business Insider that she has been the subject of a “coordinated right-wing disinformation campaign” that falsely claims she’s worth millions of dollars.

I did not know she married up. Thought she married her brother or some such.

Two points to ponder:
"Her husband's venture capital firm was no more than $1k in 2023. Now, she says it's worth up to $25 million. It specializes in structuring "legislation."

The year Ilhan entered the Congress-critter profession:
She had a negative Net Worth.

[RX792P]

Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

It's OK if you do not have the ability to contribute to a conversation. We kinda knew that already. Try harder.

Do you find a $37Trillion deficit sensible during that same time?

It's not a deficit....

[Why_Yes_I_Do]

Originally Posted by RX792P

It's not a deficit....

That is the accumulated debt from the previous deficits, since the year 2000.

[Texas Contrarian]

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to the legacy of Dickey Flatt. (In the spirit of the late Blackie Sherrod!)

Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

...The last time the United States federal government passed a balanced budget was in 2001, under President Bill Clinton...

Indeed!

When conservative Texas Senator Phil Gramm was campaigning in the mid-1990s, he referenced a supporter named Richard "Dickey" Flatt, the owner/operator of a small printing company in Mexia, Texas. Specifically, he suggested that when anyone supported a spending measure of any kind, the question of whether money should be taken out of the pockets of hardworking middle-class taxpayers like Dickey to finance it should be asked. (Yes!!)

Recall that over the next five years, pursuant to compromises between the Clinton administration and the Gingrich congress, federal government spending as a percentage of GDP fell by close to 3.5 percentage points. (Senator Gramm was an important participant in the process.)

Though in general I've never been one to enjoy watching reruns, I wouldn't mind teeing up the "Bill and Newt Show" for a redux.

Originally Posted by Tiny

Good post WYID. And educational. Why the hell can't the bozos in Washington get their act together?

Originally Posted by Jacky S

Because we keep giving them the can back by re electing the same incumbents……year after year.

Yup!

Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

Mostly because they do not respect or fear us is my guess.

That, too!

But I would make an additional point, though. Nowadays, many incumbents enjoy being ensconced in districts that are so heavily gerrymandered that they have little concern about losing a general election; only a primary to someone who is more zealously partisan then they are. Independent thinking is prohibited; get your ass in line and vote with the party, or we'll get our rich donors to arrange for you to be "primaried!"

Advances in technology and improved voter data have enabled those conducting the gerrymandering wars of the last couple of decades to do so with greater precision. The recent Texas maneuvers have reminded us of this, but Democrats having a conniption over it should recall that their Texas state representatives fled mostly to Illinois, itself a heavily gerrymandered state! (Oh, the irony! Did anyone notice that the Illinois US House delegation tallies up at 14-3 in favor of Democrats, a wider margin in percentage terms than the Texas Republican delegation holds?)

In any event, the ensuing result is that congress is now dominated by hardened partisans on both sides of the aisle who give a rat's ass about little other than defeating the opposing party. (Reduce the deficit? To hell with that! It's much more fun to cut taxes and/or hand out lots of free stuff.)

For that reason, I think perhaps the question of why these "bozos in Washington can't get their act together" may reasonably be answered thusly:

With regards to their personal preference sets of what they hope to enjoy as they "serve" the nation, they likely feel that have their act together quite nicely!

(I'm off shortly to head to an appointment, but will circle back to address a couple of comments later in the thread, as there's a lot of interesting stuff to unpack from a number of posts!)

[Why_Yes_I_Do]

Originally Posted by Texas Contrarian

...Specifically, he suggested that when anyone supported a spending measure of any kind, the question of whether money should be taken out of the pockets of hardworking middle-class taxpayers like Dickey to finance it should be asked. (Yes!!)...

Bring Back Dickey Flatt!
...Is an item of spending worth taking a dollar from Dickey Flatt’s ink-stained hands?...

Good starting point. Can we do even better? Many appropriations may be better served to the peoples if it was a tax deductible donation from your own ink-stained hands instead of glomming on to other peoples money and passing it on to many opaque, questionable and unaccountable efforts? Would certainly gauge the interest level closer to home.

Obviously, there would need to be some caps to donations and we would still need some general safety nets, i.e. not entitlements, along with transparent accountability. The Dickey Flatts article above highlights some examples of these, i.e. means testing.

Originally Posted by Texas Contrarian

...Nowadays, many incumbents enjoy being ensconced in districts that are so heavily gerrymandered that they have little concern about losing a general election...

Bingo! I would add this tidbit as well:
Q) What is the last thing a new Congress-critter does on their first day on the job?

A) Start running for reelection.

Trump is wise to go after the Dark Moneys, aka money laundromats like USAID and now ACTBLUE, via DOGE at the moment. This is a perfect place to leverage quantum computing in real time, along with artificial intelligence - IMMHO.

Pretty sure I posted a piece on this awhile back. As they link multiple data sets, across multiple sites, from multiple agencies (State/County/Federal etc) (think in the thousands), in the half-blink of an eye - you really get an eye full. You can see all the layers of Goes-Intos and Goes-Ottas. First mind blowing demos I saw of this was sanitizing voter roles in 2020 and Dark Money tracking.

As I remember it, neural networks had their start going back to the early '90s. It was crude and had nothing near as powerful as today. The '90s version was like static, 1 dimensional, flickering B&W versus today's rotating, expandible, drill down, 3D, 8K, Billion color, updating 3,000 time a second, across a thousand data sets.

Take another look at that window into the debt world. But that is not even the neural network version I was referencing just above.

Pop Quiz!
Anyone try the go back in time feature?

Long winded version of saying:
Transparent Accountability in Real Time (TART)

Might even save us a gazillion carbon credits by eliminating all the gaslighting in the LAMBScream media.

[RX792P]

DOGE's latest work

https://doge.gov/



hint: it's a blank screen.


https://doge.gov/savings

Got a ways to go to hit that $1 Trillion

[txdot-guy]

What exactly is the point of this thread? I see a lot of nihilism in the original post. Can our system of laws and government not be redeemed?

Because I don’t see a revolution happening anytime soon. Wouldn’t our collective efforts be more effective fixing what we have now?

[Why_Yes_I_Do]

Originally Posted by txdot-guy

What exactly is the point of this thread? I see a lot of nihilism in the original post...

Lemme see if'n I heard you correctly: You say that you don't understand the point of the OP, yet were able to draw a conclusion about it and share it here.
That about right?

My Me-Maw wasn't quite as "colorful" as JD Vance's. Leastwise she didn't keep nearly as many loaded guns in the house. But her country wisdom was on par. There was something about a flapping yapper would remove all doubt.

If you do manage to read it and, dare I hope, comprehend the AI1 section, feel free to roll right into the AI2 section, because it might be interesting to know what minor tweaks would fix the items in AI2 section that have been in play for more than 20 years, seeing whereas I might be interested to know if you see any intersections with those facts and these three coincidental facts:

• Chuck Schumer being in Congress since 1981
• Nancy Pelosi being in Congress since 1987
• Jerry Nadler being in Congress since 1992