So there was this little program that I read about on Reddit the year before or the first year of COVID (in the USA) called the "Affordable Connectivity Program".
If you were poor enough or already qualified/signed up for some other government assistance programs, the program would reduce your internet bill by about 20~30 dollars a month. Last year, it seems like Congress decided not to extend funding to this program.
But 95 Billion bucks for Ukraine and Israel instantly passes, just to set the money on fire.
That shit slapped, my family had free internet, and my own was finally a manageable price. But now it's back up to over $70 a month
But 95 Billion bucks for Ukraine and Israel instantly passes
Instantly? The Ukraine part took over 6 months and forced at least one, and perhaps two, changes in leadership in the House of Representatives. It was about as contentious as it could possibly be and still get done.
The funding for Israel was a whole different story.
Oh no, the United States may one day have to repay a debt measured in United States dollars, whatever shall we do
I'm generally on the "money isn't real and debt is just one of a myriad of excuses that dems use to not do something," but even in marxist economics, "national debt" isn't able to increase forever without collapsing the monetary system. I don't know the full effects of that occurring, but I'm sure that the people benefiting from it right now, will be the least affected by the monetary system collapsing.
Oh, don't you worry about that. The Fed can print infinite amounts of cash.
They can, but the issue is that increasingly larger portion of the budget is allocated to debt payments reducing overall operating budget.
Only because they sell bonds to make up the deficit. They don't have to do that.
This is a bit tangential, but a part of me is pleased that leftists and Marxists are adopting some of these basic chartalist monetary principles. When I dove into the MMT world for a brief period a few years ago, my basic takeaway was that their analysis of the state and money isn't far off the mark, but they have a severely underdeveloped class consciousness. The end call to action - at least from the liberal voices within that ideological space - was always "well if we educate people about all this, then they can go harder, and we can finally have funding for healthcare and education"
the US can only keep themselves 'rich' because they own the global currency
And now we're seeing countries increasingly moving away from the dollar which directly shrinks the size of the financial system US controls.
The national debt has always been an imaginary bugbear. When compared against rates of inflation and the increasing gross tax revenue--it's been a while since I've run these numbers--the national debt amounts to something similar to a car loan. It would take about five years to pay off and that chunk of it does get paid off. In those intervening five years, the nation acquires another "car-loan" of debt proportional to the rate of inflation and the rate of increasing tax revenue.
This analysis isn't considering the trustworthiness of the United States' credit. That's another conversation.