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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?
The Republicans haven't been the party of "fiscal responsibility" any more than the Democrats have been the party of the working class in living memory.
Are you just making a somewhat sardonic argument for accelerationism ("we should just loot the treasury since that's what everyone does when they're in power?") or do you actually have a proposition for how we could right the ship in some fashion? I feel like you're really just making another pitch for accepting that America is over, and so, okay, then what?
The actual solution to the debt is what we've discussed many times: entitlements and defense spending, both of which are regarded as more or less untouchable. Every other "budget-cutting measure" (including and especially DOGE) is just theatrics. Since most people agree that neither party will have the stones to cut Social Security or Medicare or really meaningfully slash the military, the actual question seems to be, can we somehow survive this? (Here we hear arguments for AGI saving us, or asteroid mining opening up a new frontier, or Modern Monetary Theory being real, all just variations on "Wish for a miracle.") Or are we debating how much ruin is actually left in the nation and whether we or our children will outlive it?
There is always the option that we face reality and do the hard things, and I think that is still possible - sometimes people do the hard things when they actually have no other choice. But you do make a compelling case that rather than hoping for actual economic reform even if it does mean I personally will see my retirement amount to less than it should have been, I should be selfish and just try to grab what I can and hope I'm dead before the shit really hits the fan. Sucks for the kids, though.
I think OP is agreeing with you about the Republicans. Their reputation is "the fiscally conservative, small government party" despite them actively increasing the debt and expanding government for decades. See also "the party of Christian family values" despite doing little to nothing to oppose the normalization of progressive values.
you have the answer already:
Hard reforms may have been possible back when America was a nation. Here in Japan, people are just buckling down and weathering the long running currency devaluation because (they believe) the alternative is worse. There's a sense here that everyone is suffering together which makes it bearable. Unfortunately, America is not a nation anymore, it's a multiethnic, multicultural, multi-faith empire that include groups who bitterly hate each other, which means it's nearly impossible to get all the different groups game-theory-cooperate to avoid disaster (barring an existential threat, and even then...). Instead, we will have factional war to the knife as the coffers run dry and systems gradually break down.
I don't expect a collapse that will make good TV, rather it will be a slow version of South Africa where everything gets gradually shittier, punctuated by sudden slips along regional/local political and social fault lines that result in brief but bloody spasms of violence.
So yeah, I think you would be wise to start grabbing what you can now while praying for a unifying moment that will help us avoid that future. I also recommend moving to a place where you're around ideological, religious, and or ethnic allies so that you're not the odd man out when broadcasts from Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines start to reach your neighborhood.
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