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The Republican party is generally claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Note the term "claimed" here; I do not think the record of Republican governance proves this claim at all well, but nonetheless the default expectation seems persistent. When I was younger, this was certainly a selling-point of the party to me, and I voted for Bush II in the hope that he'd get government spending under control. Then 9/11 happened, and he wasted trillions wandering our military through the middle east.
Now the debt is very bad, and people are once more raising the banner of Fiscal Responsibility. Is it in Republicans' interest to enforce "fiscal responsibility", and if so, how? If we were to seriously cut spending and raise taxes, as people claim the fiscal situation demands, this would almost certainly cost us the next election. In the best possible case that I can see, we would be expending our political power to create stable economic conditions for our opponents to then rule. The more likely case would be us expending our political power to ameliorate spending that our opponents increase to gain power for themselves, resulting in a much shakier economy and our complete political irrelevance.
Why not offer the Fiscal Responsibility mantel to the Democrats? The economy is very complicated after all, and they are at this point clearly the party of Expert Opinion: who better to determine and implement the hard-nosed measures necessary to right our economic vessel? When I was younger, the obvious rejoinder would have been that they would do a bad job of it and disaster would result, but it seems to me that we have not done all that much better, and disaster seems likely in any case. If disaster cannot be meaningfully avoided, then why expend limited resources demanded by a serious political conflict on an unfixable resource-sink of a problem? What's the actual plan, here?
Fiscal responsibility (in its ultimate form) comes above democracy.
If the US goes bankrupt, nobody is coming in with a bailout. Nobody can, America is too big.
If the situation is 'I can't trust that the other guy won't just rob the coffers once I've refilled them' then eliminate the other guy so he can't compete for power. You can't endlessly borrow money from the rest of the world to buy goods from the rest of the world at a rapid pace. It has to correct, regardless of whether you're a democracy or an autocracy or a theocracy. It's politically impossible to cut spending or raise taxes? Well it will become possible, it will become mandatory. Either you grow your way out of debt, or you have to rebalance spending and taxes.
Look at Bolivia: https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/bolivia-political-chaos/
Currency down the toilet, overt threats of a military coup, vicious politicization of the judiciary, power struggle, lots of debt and no way to pay it. They can't just ignore the debt and economic crisis because they don't like it.
There are many things the left and right agree on in America, combatting China for one. Can't do that or anything else if you have no money! The consequences of a serious economic crisis like what's happening in Bolivia but in the US are unprecedented, it would probably be at least as bad as the Great Depression for living standards and might be sufficient to finish off democracy entirely.
I'm surprised people, sane ones are dismissing the entire issue despite the concerns. You go online and the Maga reaction is to call Musk shcizo for questioning a very real concern.
There's have only ever been a handful of fiscal hawks in Washington (people who would vote for higher taxes and less spending to reduce the deficit). Almost everyone who calls themselves a fiscal hawk is just using it as a pretext to get half of those done (higher taxes and more spending for Ds lower spending and lower taxes for Rs).
I think the voters who support fiscal responsibility are so demoralized from never getting what they want every time it's been promised, they've taken the black pill and are just expecting a default.
Spandrell proven right again. Bio leninism works because capital or class based ideologies are no longer viable, biological ones are much more intense. Neither communists nor capitalists would ever vote for someone who goes agaisnt their own holy cows on ethnic lines. Hating the host population in caseypf leftists.
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My impression is that they think the deficit/debt is both less immediately important and less tractable than dealing with immigration. The attitude is something like "Let's kick out 10+ million illegals and then see where entitlement spending is at". And without giving details, I'll just note that I see people who don't speak English interacting with expensive government benefits every single day. I would be very surprised if they weren't mostly right, in that mass deportation was de facto the largest cut in entitlement spending in history.
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The issue being dismissed for as long as I was alive might have something to do with it. Also the whole point of MAGA is that it's not basic "muh fiscal conservatism".
I only ever see some liberatarian types discuss this. Do know that MAGA is different.
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In such situation the US would indeed just print the money to save itself from bankruptcy causing immense inflation. It will cause worldwide financial crisis. It is possible that the GDP for many countries will fall by 50% or even more.
That will not be good neither for the US, nor the world peace. Possible some other countries will arise more arise more powerful, especially China, Russia or Iran. The countries who have learned to become more resilient due to constant sanctions.
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