This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
It escalated to threats to cancel Musk company subsidies and contracts and threats to decommission the rocket that can supply the ISS, I think. Popcorn futures are definitely limit up! I wonder if the spicy bants come out late, or if they simmer down.
The problem with cutting spending now is you pretty much have to cut social security, medicare and defense (or stop paying interest) there isn't enough to cut everywhere else and the grey tribe doesn't have any good answers to the many people who believe they'vebearmed every penny of those social security checks and other benefits and they have a lot more votes.
Probably the best shot is when the trust fund runs out in 8 or so years if the public appetite for us debt is strong enough to absorb all of it.
It's actually worse than that- democrats really need the urban political machines soldiering on their side like true fanatics and not by half measures. There's also several dozen large municipal debt crises gonna blow up, and political/economic realities mean someone is going to have to get bailed out, at least partially(the entire US insurance system is underwritten by municipal debt). Republicans have a strong incentive to drop a big bailout to keep the urban machines from going whole-hog with the democrats again, democrats have a strong incentive to drop an even bigger bailout to get them to go whole hog for the democrats again, everyone has insurance industry lobbyists in their ears explaining how the crisis needs a bailout.
GOP has no incentive to bail these guys out, and every incentive to let them go bankrupt. The gop will never pull these cities and they know it. Slight chance they could have pre trump, 0% post trump. If (when) they go bankrupt, they have a huge chip to bargain with and will force concessions.
Agreed. Forcing cities into receivership that puts state legislatures into an oversight role can only help Republicans. Even in Illinois, the Democrats don't control the state as strongly as they control Cook county.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To me it seems that if you have to pay 10% on interest payments for the debt, you could easily reduce spending by 10% and not to pay this interest payment and be in the same situation. Obviously, that would cause short term pain but long term benefits.
I personally can easily spend 4-5 years at college and/or training and live frugally to get better job or whatever. Everybody can.
You are suggesting the US stop paying interest on treasuries? All this will do is rinse out current US treasury holders (whose nominal value will drop like a stone until the implied yield is even higher than it was before the whole fiasco) and make it impossible for the US government to raise any further money for next year's deficit. Plus the US dollar will absolutely tank.
What? You interpret what I said in the worst way. What about a different interpretation – the US reduces borrowing. The borrowing is only a small part of the budget which means that by small reduction, let's say 10%, you could even not only stop borrowing but also pay off some of the debt (the numbers are as example only), and in 5 or 10 years, the US has no debt at all or very insignificant one.
As apposed to in 20 years the US debt is 100% or 200% of the GDP and interest payments comprise 20% of the GDP.
Your numbers are off and your explanation is more confusing. The $1.8T deficit is more than 25% of federal spending. (Debt issues are far worse if you include more local government.) Interest payments are 15%. As others noted, it would take 10 years to pay off the debt, if all current tax revenue only went to that. In reality, we'd have to cut spending by 30+% and spend the rest of our natural lives paying down the debt. None of this will happen. The government will simply inflate it away as it has done before.
Inflate? It doesn't work mathematically. Sorry, you are not making any sense.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What?
See above.
More options
Context Copy link
I believe he means that if the USA just exercises some fiscal responsibility for a few years they can eliminate the debt and stop paying interest on it.
Yes. When I hear “fiscally responsible” on news I have no idea what it means. I just tried to offer a better phrasing that could resonate with people. If something wasn't clear, now I have provided interpretation above: https://www.themotte.org/post/2015/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/332917?context=8#context
More options
Context Copy link
Mandatory spending (mostly social security, medicare, pensions, and welfare), plus interest, now exceeds total federal revenues. We could eliminate every discretionary budget item, shut down everything from NASA to the Army, and we'd still see the debt continue to increase.
The debt is about to hit $37 trillion. If we cut all spending in half, everything down to Grandma's social security check, that would give us a $1 trillion surplus, and it would still take half a lifetime to pay everything back.
If we eliminated all spending, including collecting social security taxes but paying no more benefits, it would still take around 9 years to pay off the debt, not just a few.
You probably are better with numbers and can provide better estimates. Tyler Cowen has analytical blog post about this issue: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/06/claims-about-debt-and-productivity-growth.html
My understanding is that it is a time to become “fiscally responsible”, i.e., try to cut expenses. The current growth is not enough to stop interest payments to skyrocket.
The time to become fiscally responsible by just cutting expenses was 30 years ago. Today we'd need to become fiscally responsible by cutting expenses and raising taxes. We won't voluntarily do that now either, so barring a miracle we'll eventually be forced to do it later (when lenders no longer imagine getting paid back for US treasuries and stop covering our deficits), and we'll grossly inflate away the US dollar too.
Not true. There have been times when printing money was correct policy, for example, after big crises of 2008.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And that's also assuming that cutting spending so drastically wouldn't have negative second and third order effects on the overall economy that lowered tax revenues in the process.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link