Thursday, May 04, 2023

We could continue kicking the can down the road on the federal deficit, or cut spending and go into a recession.

About the debt ceiling, it seems like the choices are to raise it, as the Democrats want to do and continue the spending we have now. This contributes to the inflation we have now which doesn't seem like that big a problem, or at least it's just like a slow boil.

Another alternative is to significantly cut spending, as Republicans would like to do. This would likely put us into a recession.

Falling off the fiscal cliff (artificial debt ceiling default of the government) could roil markets, confidence and bring a recession as well.

We may by cycling toward recession anyway, regardless of what the politicians do, as we've been in a period of relative prosperity, coming out of the pandemic slowdown. We have been in a recent period of a booming economy with low unemployment. We've returned to high consumption and dealt with supply chain bottlenecks.

Carbon footprint and energy consumption is now up again, after falling during the pandemic.

Of course, in spite of the prosperity of these times, there are always lots of people left behind. The prosperity is never enough.

The stock market and asset values does motivate people in office; especially Republicans.

The market crash of 2007 lead to Tarp bailouts. Market loss in 2020, due to the pandemic, led to debt worry set aside and 3 Trillion appeared even under a Republican president and majority in the Senate. On the debt, we can likely just keep kicking the can down the road, versus crashing the economy.

Another possibility. Maybe Biden looses most of the newly past infrastructure bill. We kick the climate change can farther down the road. Biden looses most of his plan to forgive student loans, which the Supreme Court may take away anyway. A compromise like that goes through. The economy could go into a downtourn while more people complain about loosing funding for addressing climate change and continuing to be burdened by student debt.

More and more young people may start voting.

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