While i agree with your post i'd say im not even sure ukraine and the west could take back the entrenched areas, at least not without triggering ww3. they'd need the entire us air force, an ungodly amount of satellite guided missiles to turn the area into dust like gaza, or even nukes.

most people are starting to realize this, that the war has surpassed the threshhold of any quality return on investment. a US regime change in 2024 likely means its over quickly, but i doubt even a harris whitehouse can prop up the war until midterms. if its not a front of the page issue in 2024 you bet it would be in 2026. clock is ticking.

Another point i made before. The debt is not an issue until it is one day and we wake up in 2030 and all of the sudden debt interest payments are eating a ton of US funds. So then the choice becomes you cut old people or poor peoples freebies or you look at other areas to cut. It's going to be incredibly hard for any politician to really sit up there and say we're taking your food stamps or your retirement is going to 70 while spending 1+trillion on defense every year. This is the time in history where i think the US actually starts to pull back as the global hegemon. It's not a foreign adversary that takes us down, it's decades of overspend until we end up in a Roman empire 2.0, where really, the reason they got run over by all the goths and other tribes is because their army started to fall apart as they couldn't pay for it any longer.

Right now, the US neocons need to have a come to Jesus moment and realize, whatever military might we still have, which we still do have, needs to be directed and be utilized in a more precise way and really go to who actually might dethrone us, being China. Time for these forever wars where trillions get thrown around are coming to an end. Israel might drag us into one of our last ones with Iran.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Aug 2 2024 12:57pm

They are not controlling those areas. None of the oblasts Putin wrote into the Russian federations constitution are under Russian control fully. Not one.

yup, as of 2024 debt is set to exceed GPD, thats a scary line to cross. and sadly (like most household budgets) we aren't left with many costs which are easy to trim. defense is about all we can currently unless they go budget nuclear and dip into entitlements like you said. soon they'll increase tax collections tho, they basically have to or the numbers go sideways even with defense cuts. the interest on the debts is so high we're basically like a degen with 5 maxed out credit cards. all we can do is cover the interest currently even with budget wizardry.

It's almost as if it was a mistake to expect that the near-zero interest rate world in the wake of the Great Recession would last forever and that infinite amounts of debt would therefore be no problem as long as the markets don't lose confidence and give new credit.

But truth be told, I don't think Trump is the right man to tackle this particular issue.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 2 2024 02:08pm

No one can tackle it, honestly. in true US fashion our only way out is to incrementally tackle it. the narratives of a balanced budget are poppycock. maybe 20 years from now. we need 10+ years of peace, as a start. we need to incrementally increase tax revenue without stifling economic growth. and we need boomers to go to even have a chance at getting social security in order.

The only hopes for a balanced budget is if inflation renders SS and medicaid useless. Were about 30% there now.

Have to thank Biden for that bit.

Yeah its an intractable problem with no easy solution. And the only true solution is real underlying growth with long term stability. A production based, not service based, economy. We make the problem not worse by turning off the money hose and not giving our zero interest free money to big banks, but you can't squeeze blood from a stone with taxation as a cure unless there is real economic growth to tax.

And that is where the Green Agenda clashes with economic reality because it suffocates any real growth, particularly any industrial/manufacturing growth.

The Green Agenda is de-growth by design and intention. This has been explicitly declared. It is driven by a deep hatred for Western civilization where they view its continued existence as immoral. You have to understand the people we're dealing with here.

I agree with there is no easy fix, the fix is a long-term culture of industriousness and austerity (hello Protestantism? Where have you gone?). A short-term "fix" in advance of this goal is to pass sweeping constitutional amendments that establish the formerly Protestant states (e.g. America, Canada, Prussia, etc.) as de jure Protestant states once more, followed by coordination of the education & government service systems to reflect this. Punish degenerate behaviour again, mandatory Bible and theology studies in grade level and in higher education, and reward virtue instead of punishing it. These are just a few actionable short-term steps towards fixing the problem long term.