President Biden says, in connection with his ‘infrastructure’ plan, that “We’re going to pay for everything we spend.”
Actually, it’s you that would pay for this proposed spending. Exactly how much you would pay, and what forms your cash outflows would take, are dependent on your individual situation, but make no mistake: you would pay.
You would likely pay through higher direct taxes–yes, it is claimed that there would be no tax increases for those earning less than $400K/year (family income), but there are spending increases built into or implied in the ‘infrastructure’ bill that imply much higher spending…and taxing..over time. You would pay, in higher prices, lower wages, and reduced investment returns for those corporate tax hikes, which Biden seems to view as a source of free money. You would likely pay in terms of reduced job opportunities…possibly even outright job loss…as a consequence of a damaged US business climate.
Above and beyond the specific details, the ‘infrastructure’ plan and its supporting tax represent an attempt to redirect a greatly-increased part of the national income generated by Americans into the hands of government and of those whose relationship with that government is key to their finances. Such increases in government scope are of direct financial value to a lot of people, including high-income as well as lower-income people…see my post here for discussion of this point. Increasing the scope of government also represents a tremendous ego and status benefit for many people, most definitely including Biden himself…who actually met with history professors to get ideas on how he could build up his ‘legacy’ and who, I think, is more interested in a legacy of doing Big Things than in what the benefits of those Big Things might be.
Nancy Pelosi, in reference to the ‘infrastructure’ bill, stated that: “The dollar amount, as the president has said, is zero.” This is nonsense. The fact that money for a program will come from somewhere doesn’t mean that the cost of that program is zero. If a division of a company embarks on an expensive project and gets the money from their parent corporation, that doesn’t mean that the cost of that program is zero. Same if the division get the money by raising prices and/or selling more to their existing customers–the program still costs what it costs.
The Biden/Pelosi view seems to be that the United States exists to support the Federal government and that category of people who are most closely linked to that government. Increasingly, government and the ‘extended government’ are acting like medieval robber barons, plundering the surrounding countryside to keep themselves and their retainers wealthy and powerful.
See also this post at Ricochet: Economic Illiteracy on Parade and my post The Logic of Insatiable Centralization.
I used to worry about things like this. Now I accept the inevitable. Resident Biden* and his handlers are going to destroy the exchange rate of the Dollar; imports are going to decline catastrophically; chaos will ensue. And after years or decades of unpleasantness, something will emerge from the ashes. It will likely bear very little resemblance to the US of today — for which we should be very grateful! Our grandchildren should get the opportunity to build a much better world.
Biden* and his ilk don’t realize that money is merely a medium of exchange. Real wealth lies in the ability to produce Goods & Services which can be traded using that medium of exchange. Nothing the Swamp will do will increase the production of those Real Goods & Services. All the usual suspects are doing with their nonsense is bringing forward the day when foreigners (not just the Chinese Communist Party) decide that they no longer wish to accept Bidenbucks.
Gavin….I think you are both too pessimistic and too optimistic. I don’t think there is a likely apocalyptic situation with exchange rates wherein people refuse to accept dollars; there will simply be price increases on imports as denominated in dollar terms. Some of this is self-neutralizing, via increased domestic production and some foreign products just not being bought at all. OTOH, cost of financing the debt is likely to increase significantly due to inflation, higher real interest rates (driven in part by ‘green’ capital expenditures), and a higher debt level.
I think a collapse of the United States would not be something that our grandchildren would much enjoy…I would expect a period of hunger, disease, and chaos lasting a lot longer than that.
What do you think of SecTrans Buttigieg’s plan to have all motor vehicles be required to have GPS installed, so we can be taxed eight cents a mile?
Of course, it is very likely that a required GPS for billing purposes would also be used for surveillance purposes, regardless of how many protestations were made that no such use would be allowed.
Would the 8 cents a mile be *in addition to* the normal gas taxes for conventional vehicles?…if so, it is effectively yet another subsidy for electric vehicles.
Taxing by mile actually makes sense if you expect electric cars and with higher gas mileage today. Of course, the amount and whether it would replace or augment the gas tax is a big issue.
Way back in college, I took an Economics class and it changed my political party. I’m not sure one taken today would have the same effect since Economics seems to have withered in academia.
Today’s college kids don’t even know enough math to do any calculations.
Tyler Cowen & Arnold Kling note that there has been little if any attempt to sell the *specifics* of the Biden plan, much less to debate those specifics; it’s all at the galactic level of trillions of wonderfulness.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/09/why-isnt-there-more-debate-over-the-biden-economic-plan.html
David F: “… there will simply be price increases on imports as denominated in dollar terms. Some of this is self-neutralizing, via increased domestic production and some foreign products just not being bought at all.”
That brings us back to the stumbling block for “increased domestic production” — the necessity first to reduce excessive domestic regulation and byzantine taxation complexities. However, those obstacles employ a lot of Democrat loyalists at elevated salaries and generous pensions. Yes, we will see increased domestic production eventually, but only after the collapse has turned a lot of Prius-driving bureaucrats & lawyers into manual laborers.
I am optimistic about the future of the human race, not about the future of the current debased form of the once-magnificent United States of America. Remember there was a time when little Portugal was the global big banana. Then the crown got passed in turn to Spain, to France, to England. All of those places were not turned into wastelands when their day was over — life went on, albeit differently. Now the US has had its turn. Life will continue here too — but differently.
My guess — a hundred years from now, historians will look back at today’s US Political Class running up debts they can never repay and wasting resources on “climate change” and “Covid” as analogous to the Plains Indians pursuit of Ghost Dancing in the late 1800s, believing that the honkies would vanish and life would return to the way it used to be if only they could get the dance right. Those future historians will be living very well, thanks to Russian and Chinese nuclear power plant technology. But maybe I am too much of an optimist!
Why does anyone not part of the grift write or speak about Biden doing this or that?
The poor old vicious hair-sniffing fraud is not capable of wiping his own backside.
Tyler Cowen & Arnold Kling note that there has been little if any attempt to sell the *specifics* of the Biden plan…
My God, why would they want to talk about the specifics?
They know that what they want to do is bitterly unpopular. The Obama years taught them that. Otherwise, Barry wouldn’t have lost control of congress and wouldn’t have been followed by Trump.
The only thing that saved them is that the globalist Gee Ohhh Peeee is every bit as unpopular and has schemes that are just as bad. Remember the TPP? Anyone remember the Bush plan to rewrite labor law that would have done away with overtime pay?
I do. I remember being at work listening to Fox News describe it with another Bush supporter, who was as grim-faced as I was.
That Bush-era failure led to the Obama-era failure, which led to Trump’s success, which led to Xiden’s fraud.
Which is now leading to the new even more catastrophic Biden-era failure. They’ve got two paths to disaster- they pass their 3.5 trillion-dollar scheme, or they don’t. They’re going to get to the point people either won’t comply with their demands, or can’t.
Eventually, if you want to fundamentally transform the United States, or destroy it, you’re going to get to the point that telling your media lackeys not to talk about it isn’t going to save you. One of the key things that doomed the implementation of the clever scheme of Obamacare was that a lot of people who had individual plans noticed when their health insurance went away, despite Barry’s claims about keeping your doctor, etc.
Similarly, people will notice all the clever schemes in this 3.5 trillion dollar disaster, even if its proponents don’t talk about them, for the same reason you notice a punch in the face. And if they don’t pass it, their problems punch them in the face even sooner.
Perhaps I’m crazy, but I just don’t think our present regime has a bright future, politically or otherwise.
While I’m pretty sure Biden has to be reminded which is his favorite flavor of ice cream, (How many years before another president is seen eating ice cream in public?) it’s useful shorthand.
I’m pretty sure that their recent talk about “profiteers” is just the beginning of some sort of price control strategy. After all, it worked so well for Nixon.
The last campaign saw no discussion about any real problems we are facing. It was purely about Orange Man Bad. And Trump was singularly incapable of talking about any issues, that’s not who he is or what he does. He could and should have made 2020 about the fact that China made the virus, and we have to separate ourselves from them as much as possible, and strengthening our borders as part of this. Even now, he needs to be talking about this, rather than 2020. I assume he will pivot at some point, but who knows. He is who he is.
Yes, the election was stolen, but the Dems clearly thought that they’d win by quite a bit larger margin. They didn’t campaign on doing anything except Orange Man Bad, so they have no public mandate for anything, and they don’t have the votes to do anything, so they’re hopelessly flailing. That’s why those who say there’s no point in voting are so wrong–we have to make the margin of fraud required to steal as large as possible, and it’s by no means hopeless.
No one’s talking about the substance of these bills because there is no substance. It’s all about shoveling money to Dem groups. The price tag is the substance. Unfortunately for them the economy is a complete disaster, and they can’t pretend that away, and their propaganda outfits in the media have completely lost their influence. Plus they’re paralyzed by their primary constituency group, well-off liberal white women, who want the economy to be completely locked down because they’re still consumed by terror of covid.
“Of course, it is very likely that a required GPS for billing purposes would also be used for surveillance purposes, regardless of how many protestations were made that no such use would be allowed.”
I think that ultimately these schemes are going to run up against the 4th and 5th Amendments. They kinda get around this with cell phones, with private companies doing the actual surveillance for billing and capacity reasons. With Buttplug’s GPS, it would be the government doing the surveillance, and thus no 3rd part buffer between them and the 4th and 5th Amdts.
Brian…”And Trump was singularly incapable of talking about any issues, that’s not who he is or what he does.”
I don’t think it’s correct that Trump doesn’t talk about issues. He was elected in the first place largely because he talked about the southern border, the rise of China, the loss of jobs to same and its relationship to social dysfunction in the US. Few others were talking about these issues.
re the election, what we know for certain is that the media swung it seriously by hiding information (such as the Hunter Biden laptop) and promoting force stories. This should have been the main talking point. Legal or not, it can’t be called a fair election. Re the legality part, the main issue is whether the people (and the ‘people’) voting were actually eligible to vote, and whether eligibility requirements were changed without proper legal authority. The actual vote-counting was in my mind a lesser issue
David:
Yes, 2016 Trump talked far more about issues than 2020 Trump did. He ran a bad campaign in 2020.
And yes the media swung the election, and yes fraud happened of all sorts that was easily enough to have determined the outcome.
All those things are true.
It’s always been obvious that Trump will run again in 2024. Which will mean another election about Donald Trump the person, rather than the massive challenges we are facing. That’s partly his fault, and partly/mostly the media’s fault, but that’s also an undeniable fact.
I’d say there’s a good chance he wins, but to be honest the most important thing that will determine it will be if the GOP can win the governorships in WI, MI, PA, GA, to lower the margin of fraud.
Plus they’re paralyzed by their primary constituency group, well-off liberal white women, who want the economy to be completely locked down because they’re still consumed by terror of covid.
I agree about this as a key factor in elections these days. They are innumerate, as so many woman are, and ruled by emotion. There is probably an evolutionary factor in this. Women evolved to fear for their children and, as Larry Summers said, may be less governed by math and calculation of risk.
I still think there’s still considerable ability for correction. Thanks mostly to LBJ’s Great Society spending spree I remember 17% mortgage rates and getting 11% on a six-month CD at my local credit union back in 1980.
But Fed Chairman Paul Volcker raised the Fed funds rate to 20% in 1980 which eventually tamed inflation. Of course, it caused the economy to tank too, but it came back.
The problem with the Volker solution for inflation is that the national debt is stratospheric. Debt service would be impossible. I remember buying Treasuries in 1980 for my pension plan that paid 16%. I hated to see them mature after 5 years. They were 10 year Treasuries. My partner built a new home that year and the homes on either side of him, also under construction, went into foreclosure because both owners, both professionals, could not qualify for the 21% interest on permanent financing.
I think hyper inflation is more likely this time.
No one’s talking about the substance of these bills because there is no substance.
I’m sorry, what? Did you read the bill? If not, how do you even know?
I haven’t read it either, but since it written by communists who hate America, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of “fundamental transformation” buried in it.
We’ll find out about that later, when the communists who comprise the endless swarms bureaucrats in the myriad executive agencies make up new decrees to rule us, based upon the deliberately vague legalese carefully written into the bill.
I’ll say it again- these people tried persuasion to get the “fundamental transformation” they desire under Obama, and it didn’t work. So now they’re just trying and force it through, without even attempting to make a case to the public, or let their victims know their plans.
If they succeed, they get a disaster when the economy implodes, taking the regime with it. If they fail, they get a political disaster when the parasites that make up the left don’t get the cornucopia of free stuff they demand and think they deserve.
Both bad outcomes for them, I think.
“Did you read the bill?”
WTF are you yelling about? There is no bill! It doesn’t exist! The Dems are fighting about how much they are willing to tax and spend, they haven’t even gotten down to fighting about what to shove into it.
Here’s a hypothesis — What happens in Congress does not matter so much any more. The important decisions in the future will be made elsewhere.
This goes against the grain for most of us. We grew up with the US as the arsenal of democracy, the workshop of the world, the leading edge of technology, the richest nation, the superpower. Slowly, slowly, many of those accolades have faded. Which brings us to the present day, when the US which 20 years ago chased the Taliban out of Afghanistan is now in turn kicked out by the same Taliban. What happens overseas will in the future probably have more impact on American citizens than anything which comes out of Congress or the Biden* Administration.
For example, Bloomberg reports that the Chinese Communist Party has now instructed their power companies to do whatever has to be done to keep the lights on. Probably bad news for Europe, as Chinese companies buy deliveries of Russian coal and gas — driving up prices in the US too. Maybe China goes back to Prison Island Australia and cuts a deal — Australia cancels the submarine deal with the US & UK in exchange for China resuming coal purchases. And then China goes to the Global Warmfest in Glasgow and blows up Biden*’s Green New Deal by insisting that keeping people warm this winter has to take priority over the temperature of the planet a hundred years from now — to cries of support from populations around the world, if not from their governing classes.
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, we need to pay more attention to what is happening in the world, outside of that inward-focused, increasingly irrelevant DC Swamp.
The Brits apparently have plumped down for 12 small nuclear plants…
Personally, what I think is going to happen is that the rational actors out there are just going to start routing around the idiots. There’s really no other choice, TBH… The Fed may think it’s managing the dollar, but there are alternatives out there, to include crypto. Hell, some of the old-school deals where the banks issue their own currency may be coming back…
What I think the elites should fear, more than anything else, is that their essential incompetence might morph over into total irrelevance. Followed shortly after by the same thing that happened to the aristocracy in post-feudal Europe. I think we’re at the same sort of cusp, a crux point between ages. Someone out there really ought to be writing the Don Quixote for this era…
Kirk…”The Brits apparently have plumped down for 12 small nuclear plants”
The GE-Hitachi joint venture has just introduced this system:
https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/bwrx-300
…claims a much lower capital cost per kw than existing designs, also safer failure modes.
Looks like some of the earliest customers will be in Poland, and others in Canada.
Also some commentary on the small reactor market:
https://menafn.com/1102885911/Small-Modular-Reactor-Market-Size-to-Reach-113-billion-by-2026-Emerging-Trends-and-Opportunities-Analysis
China is also supposedly ready to start a thorium reactor, as well…
Bruce Hayden
“I think that ultimately these schemes are going to run up against the 4th and 5th Amendments.”
Looking at what has happened since the current regime took power, what are the odds that any part of the government, including the courts, gives an obese rodent’s gluts about whether any action of the State violates the rights of any one of their subjects under the now moot [as far as they are concerned] Constitution?
The eviction moratorium was twice ruled against* by the Supreme Court, and after the second time it was deliberately immediately reinstated by Executive Order through the CDC, and still is in force with no action by the Supreme Court.
*They ruled that Congress could pass a law on such a moratorium, but it could not be done by Executive Order or especially the CDC.
Subotai Bahadur
David — There has been lots of talk about nuclear power for decades, lots of plans. Here is a good source on where the action is:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-figures/world-nuclear-power-reactors-and-uranium-requireme.aspx
There are currently 444 operating nuclear power reactors in about 40 countries. (Quick! Name 40 countries!). We tend to underestimate how widely spread the technology already is. 56 more power reactors are under construction — China, India, & Russia account for half of those. Another 101 reactors are in the pre-construction planning/approval stages, with 3/4 of those in China, India, & Russia.
Already, Chinese technology is sufficiently advanced that China won the contract to supply a nuclear power plant in the UK. When are we in the West going to wake up and get our act together?
Gavin…interesting data. So the US has 95 GW of nuclear operational, 2.8 GW under construction, 2.5 GW planned, and 8 GW proposed. Whereas for China, the numbers are 49 GW operational, 18 under construction, 41 planned, and 196 GW proposed.
Energy freed us – open markets, all that were fueled by it. Now energy is seen, in almost every sensible form, as bad. But Biden’s economy won’t have energy, optimism, rewards for productivity – and so how many medicines won’t be discovered, big and small breakthroughs that free us won’t be invented, meaningful art won’t be created because we’ve become bitter all-too-aware our nation’s and its extraordinary history and wonderfully respectful values are degraded and blighted.
There is no bill! It doesn’t exist! The Dems are fighting about how much they are willing to tax and spend, they haven’t even gotten down to fighting about what to shove into it.
Here’s one thing they’ve shoved into it, from Ace of Spades HQ
Democrats Sneak Provision Into $3.5 “Infrastructure” Bill to Fine Companies Up to $700,000 For Not Enforcing Biden’s Vaccination Mandate — For Each Violation
Per the story at that site, that provision is on page 168 of 2465. Per another story I can’t find at the moment, they’ve also put in the bill a pile of pro-union garbage that it will make it vastly harder to keep unions out of companies, with the certain result that many will close or leave the country.
So while I’m sure you’re correct to say that there’s going to be a lot more fighting about what exactly will be shoved into the final version, there’s at least enough written down on paper now for a proposed bill to be read and examined.
Here’s a hypothesis ”” What happens in Congress does not matter so much any more.
I don’t agree. Until the federal government loses the power to tax, arrest, draft, and force companies to fire Americans it will continue to matter very much.
The important decisions in the future will be made elsewhere.
I do agree.
But the dictates of Imperial Japan still mattered a great deal to the inhabitants of Hiroshima, even as a very important decision about their future was made elsewhere.
The problem with nuclear power in the US, or any power, or any development at all, is that legions of lavishly funded greens will immediately descend upon any advocate for development and claim that the blessed environment will be irrevocably harmed if X happens. Some minion of the regime will generally agree- and the proposed development will then be seriously and expensively delayed or blocked completely.
This is in no way how any sort of free country would operate, but I’m talking about the United States, so never mind. Anyway, a few anecdotes:
A bunch of years ago I happened to look up a certain company that owned industrial facilities- details are irrelevant. But I happened to run across a website put up by an idiot who thought the reason why a certain power plant didn’t run at certain times was because the power company was conspiring to drive up the price of power. The point of the website was to block the construction of another proposed power plant to be owned by that company. The idiot had been roped into this idiocy by association with some environmentalist group. This successfully prevented the construction of that plant, if I recall.
Years after that, a guy knocked my door who was running for some office in the local electrical co-op. I talked to him for a bit, and he me told about how the advocates for green energy were attempting to change the bylaws for the co-op to allow open meetings. At the time, if you wanted to complain about something the co-op was doing, you had to get an appointment. I told him that the reason why they wanted open meetings was because they wanted to bring a swarm of environmentalist nutters to them and physically intimidate the co-op board into doing what they wanted- even though the majority of customers would have no idea this happened and I’d guess wouldn’t want the drastically higher electricity costs.
Just recently, inspired by something here at this very site, I happened to take note of a reddit post that claimed Space-X wasn’t good for the environment. It was accompanied by a photo of what I took to be grass, with what I took to be a Space-X launch facility in the background. Presumably, when Space-X launches a rocket, it harms the local plant life, just not any of it in the photograph used to attack Space-X.
So I’m going to guess that the West isn’t going to wake up and get our act together until the dirt-worshipping pagans of the green movement have their power to stop essentially all development in the Western World- or at least the United States- ripped away from them, one way or another.
“So while I’m sure you’re correct to say that there’s going to be a lot more fighting about what exactly will be shoved into the final version”
So my understanding, and I don’t care enough to delve too deeply into this, is that the Senate earlier “passed” something that is basically a set of vague instructions for how reconciliation can/will proceed. That wasn’t filibusterable. Now the House is trying to put together a bill that they can pass, that will I guess be close enough to whatever the Senate can eventually pass in order for reconciliation to work. I believe the differences have to only be directly related to revenue, etc. So they have to get something that the 50 Senate Dems can all vote on that differs from whatever the House can get 218 votes for that only differs in spending/taxes, then they can use reconciliation to formally pass the Senate.
Not that any of this matters. We’re broke already, and there’s no money to pass something truly economy wrecking–the economy’s already wrecked! Every day that they spend on this nonsense is a day that they’re not spending preparing people for how disastrous things are still going to get, as supply chains continue to malfunction and they keep disrupting the labor market with these asinine vaccine mandates, *and* as they eventually have to deal with the fact that the vaccines don’t “work” in anything like the way they claimed they would back in the spring.
We’re broke already, and there’s no money to pass something truly economy wrecking–the economy’s already wrecked!
No disagreements with this comment- and apologies for my earlier, which read a lot crankier than I intended- but I’d like to use this quote to assist another brief comment from myself.
1) I drive the same stretch of freeway to work and have for years. Lately I’ve noticed that not only are there a rather large number of billboards with ads from dope shops and strip clubs- but some of them don’t have any ads at all. That’s the wrecked economy in uhm, action.
2) Just because there isn’t any money doesn’t mean the idiots who write law-words for bureaucrats will understand that. They’ve never run up against any fiscal constraints before and all the journalists they read haven’t mentioned any.
What could possibly go wrong?
Here’s who “Biden” wants to be Comptroller of the Currency, essentially the chief bank regulator:
https://nypost.com/2021/09/30/bidens-pick-for-treasury-post-sought-end-to-banking-as-we-know-it/
They say she is “one of the country’s leading academic experts on issues related to regulation of systemic risk and structural trends in financial markets.” Apparently, the Soviet Union didn’t have any systemic risk and poor structural trends since she is full throated in her admiration of her homeland.
Has anyone seen a Craig’s list ad something along the lines of:
Wanted: Persons to fill various senior government positions. Must be willing to defend the random mutterings of a demented moron before Congress and the press. Women with sniffable hair can write their own ticket. Apply 1600 Pennsylvania Blvd.
I imagine it’s getting harder and harder as time goes on to find anyone willing to be associated with this train wreak.
Saule Omarova’s competence and ideology probably don’t matter much, if Americans were worried about systemic risk anywhere, would we have elected a demented moron as President and a Vice President with well known non-verbal oral skills.
we didn’t, thats why they stole the election, in six cities, the most rotten boroughs in each state,
synema seems to have gone back home, so they’ll need another possum maybe romney or murkowski to cross over,
Has CBO scored the bill? I bet not. (because they have to stop writing it before CBO can score it for one thing…)
Unless there’s a “non-partisan” score on the cost vs. revenue implications, anyone commenting on how much it’ll cost is gas lighting.
I doubt it makes much difference, the CBO “score” isn’t much more than an extended, iterated guess. And why do we assume they’re more immune to political expediency, partisan ideology and intimidation than any other part of the government. It’s not like anyone should have the faintest confidence that whoever actually wrote any of these monstrosities had either good intentions or any idea of the consequences. It’s like liars poker where the CBO are rank amateurs playing against a pro.
It’d be amusing to audit CBO projections after the fact. I doubt they’re “correct” to within a factor of 2. Probably much worse.
This:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/10/venezuela-downsizes-the-bolivar-dont-tell-bernie.php
reminds me that Venezuela has devalued their currency by 14 orders of magnitude since 2018. In other words, the “new” Bolivar is wort 10 trillion of the pre-2018 version.
In Venezuela, it’s a matter of little interest since it’s been impossible to pay for anything except with dollars for a long time. If Bolivars weigh the same a U.S. currency, 10 trillion would weigh 97.6 million tons, metric ones at that. That would take some wheel barrow. No wonder they were having trouble paying for getting their money printed a few years ago. I think they’ve given up and are going purely imaginary now, it’s much cheaper and easier on the planet.
When “Biden” claims however many trillions we are talking about today will actually cost nothing, he may be closer to being right than you’d think. How long before you’ll be able to exchange the whole thing for a latte at Starbuck’s and still have to dig out a tip?
Not sure if this is a real story or just some “reporter” with too much time on his hands:
https://www.axios.com/trillion-dollar-platinum-coin-mint-janet-yellen-223e7722-d7ba-47c9-b5f6-49a841d181de.html
Supposedly we can solve the debt ceiling problem by minting a trillion dollar coin, in this case out of platinum. Why stop at one, why not do a couple of hundred while they’ve got the machine set up? National debt paid, Social Security solvent and trillions left over for stimulus. Talk about win, win.
I looked up the price of platinum and determined that a trillion dollar platinum coin should weigh a little more than 323,486 tonnes (metric tons, they use the metric system in China). I lost interest before I calculated just how big it would have to be.
Why doesn’t Yellen just write out an I.O.U.? It would save everyone a lot of trouble, the mint has pennies to make.
I know this is an old idea and just as stupid as ever.
The platinum coin thing I believe was dreamed up by some online lefty genius a few years ago during one of the previous stupid debt ceiling standoffs. If they did something so dumb all it would do would be to radicalize conservatives even more.
As I recall there is supposed to be some “legal” reason that they can mint a coin rather than just issue a trillion dollar bill. I could probably track it down but that would imply that I cared.
Apparently Shumer couldn’t wait a hole day before crowing about putting one over on the stupid GOP, he even offended Manchin. Shumer isn’t wrong, they are a bunch of fools. Cornyn thinks we’ll all forget just how gutless he is before he comes up for reelection. That we’ll have to see about. At this point. I’d back a blind horse against him in the primary.
https://nypost.com/2021/10/08/sen-joe-manchin-shows-frustration-during-chuck-schumers-gop-floor-speech/
Make that a blind, spavined, lame horse or even just the back half.