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$10 Trillion in Added US Debt Since 2001 Shows 'Bush and Trump Tax Cuts Broke Our Modern Tax Structure' (www.commondreams.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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"In their blind loyalty to their mega-donors, Republicans' fixation on giant tax cuts for billionaires has created a revenue problem that is driving up our national debt," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in response to new Treasury Department figures.

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[–] Candelestine 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This would be an excellent time to scale back a little bit of spending on our nuclear arsenal.

Russia is no longer the world-ending peer threat the USSR was, and has become chaotic enough that MAD no longer makes complete sense in the current context anyway. Us disarming some additional warheads would be unlikely to encourage them.

China, on the other hand, is building up an arsenal. If history is any indication, the size of the arsenal they build will be in some relation to the other existing arsenals. Thus, if we reduce our arsenal, they will need to make fewer warheads to reach some kind of parity with us. If they don't need to make extra, they won't, those things are expensive to keep around.

So, we can have an outsized effect on future nuclear arms totals if we scale the US arsenal down now. And we'd save some money every year.

[–] takeda 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are forgetting that Russia officially has bigger nuclear arsenal than US. Yes, likely it isn't, but that's just a guess. US scaling its arsenal down would not do a thing, without starting with a treaty like we had in the past and currently it isn't the greatest time to easily get it.

[–] Candelestine 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think China is particularly concerned about matching the Russian arsenal as much as ours. Russia, in addition to being a loose ally that needs them, would be a much more nearby threat, where a pretty broad array of strategic tools can be employed. It's the US that the nukes will pretty effectively guard against into the future.

[–] takeda 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Do you think China and Russia are friends? At most they are allies working together to weaken the West. They have their own disputes and also share a border.

[–] Candelestine 1 points 1 year ago

So long as Russia can ship their cheap Siberian resources to China via pipeline and rail, it's unlikely to really be in Xi's interest to actually sever that relationship any time soon. Now that the west is actually militarizing, Russia becomes more useful. Keeps attention from being focused too much on him, helps with the destabilization crap.

For Russia's side, I don't think they'd ever gain much from invading China. If they did, I do not think the PLA would need any nukes to destroy Russia. Frankly, I think Poland could probably do it at this point.

It's not about friends and enemies though. It's about benefit. And the benefit, is what it brings against the west, who are much more likely to be foes in the coming decades than Russia is. And the west's nuke stockpile is mostly the US one.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 3 points 1 year ago

It's worth adding that for the last two years of Clinton's Presidency, the US actually had a budget surplus. The talk heading into the 2000 election cycle was about what we were going to do with this surplus. Had that trend continued we could have been debt-free as a nation - but instead we got more "fiscal conservatism". Or as Dick Cheney put it: "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter".