Trump's Goals

Foghorn Leghorn John Kennedy needs a spot as well.

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Yes, people would notice. The far bigger tragedy is that they may tolerate tax cuts on the wealthy if there are also tax cuts on tips, overtime and Social Security.

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Maybe. But given the data we’ve seen on how Republican sentiment moves, I think they’d still say tHe eConOmY is better, and the libs are butthurt, and call it a win.

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Here’s my plan:
I began on election night. I started S1E1 of Doctor Who. Imma watch it all the way thru the series. No news on any screen (sole exception, Sports), until I have completed this assignment. Then, well, then I’ll have to pick a new series or start over at the beginning.

I am definitely open to suggested series. So help a brother out here, AO.

Gaetz should definitely get a recess appointment, as nobody else is nearly as familiar with recess.

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Are you talking 1963 Doctor Who? A lot of those earlier episodes from the 1960s only have excerpts/audio tracks available.

No 1960s episodes exist on their original videotapes (all surviving prints being film transfers), though some were transferred to film for editing before transmission and exist in their broadcast form.[104]

Some episodes have been returned to the BBC from the archives of other countries that bought prints for broadcast or by private individuals who acquired them by various means. Early colour videotape recordings made off-air by fans have also been retrieved, as well as excerpts filmed from the television screen onto 8 mm cine film and clips that were shown on other programmes. Audio versions of all lost episodes exist from home viewers who made tape recordings of the show. Short clips from every story with the exception of Marco Polo (1964), ā€œMission to the Unknownā€ (1965) and The Massacre (1966) also exist.

In addition to these, there are off-screen photographs made by photographer John Cura, who was hired by various production personnel to document many of their programmes during the 1950s and 1960s, including Doctor Who.[citation needed] These have been used in fan reconstructions of the serials. The BBC has tolerated these amateur reconstructions, provided they are not sold for profit and are distributed as low-quality copies.[105]

One of the most sought-after lost episodes is part four of the last William Hartnell serial, The Tenth Planet (1966), which ends with the First Doctor transforming into the Second.[106] The only portion of this in existence, barring a few poor-quality silent 8 mm clips, is the few seconds of the regeneration scene, as it was shown on the children’s magazine show Blue Peter. With the approval of the BBC, efforts are now underway to restore as many of the episodes as possible from the extant material.

I’m a junkie, not a conesieur.

I started watching from the late-60s Troughton episodes onwards, although it was in the early 70s as a 4 year old (Australia was a few years behind). I may have even seen earlier episodes but I can’t remember. I was young enough that I hid behind the sofa when it got really scary. I kept watching until the Davison episodes.

Years later, I tried to rewatching some of the Pertwee episodes that I loved as a kid and it was hard-going as an adult. The Tom Baker episodes were better for adults as I believe they tried to go for an older audience - maybe their most loyal viewers were getting older.

Time flies - recently I have seen Sam Troughton, Patrick Troughton’s grandson, play a middle-aged man in two tv shows - Chernobyl and The Lazarus Project.

They can’t really cut taxes more given the size of the US debt and the average spread. Debt Service costs are already eating a fairly serious % of the tax revenue.

Without spending cuts, I don’t see how they can do it. The market will respond forcefully to materialy more debt being issued.

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I take it you are six years old or born yesterday or somewhere in between. The people in charge NEVER want to cut the deficit. And there’s no law against raising the deficit in order to get re-elected. I.e., it is never an economics thing. It is a political thing.

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There’s something like $15 trillion in debt that needs to be issued over the next 3 years just for refinancing. Throw on however much the deficit increases on top of its current level, and $25 trillion isn’t out of the question. Even for the bond market, that’s a lot of money. At some point someone’s going to call on the increased risk and demand more than 4% on the 10-year and 4.5% on the 30-year. When that happens, the Fed is going to have to decide whether to intervene to control interest rates to control interest expense.

This is where I expect the Fed to involuntarily do QE. Now add on a Trump-appointed Treasury secretary and a Trump-appointed Federal Reserve chair to this scenario.

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I am a bit taken aback that the IRS and FBI are some of the agencies that want to be cut. Musk thinks the spending can be cut by close to a third.

Musk told a Trump rally in October that he believed the US government’s budget could be cut by ā€œat leastā€ $2tn from about $6.5tn. He has also frequently suggested the number of government employees could be significantly reduced.

Ramaswamy, meanwhile, has put forward plans to scrap a number of federal departments including the Department of Education, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI.

want to be cut???

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Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Cool, so now I can build my own personal nuclear power plant in the backyard near where I park so I can hook up an EV charger by it down the road. (And maybe the radiation will induce genetic changes in the local population that start making them normal.)

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I’m not an economist so it is hard for me to see the end result on people in some of these discussions regarding you can’t keep cutting taxes. Given this scenario for the USA:

  • Additional tax cut at the top and no significant cuts in government spending which results in a ballooning of the already bloated debt.
  • The debt gets so big that bad things start to happen and alternatives to the kick the can down the road have to happen such as QE.
  • Assume the government does not fear being voted out.

How does this effect: [brackets indicate how much assets they own]

  • [$0] The poor and the paycheck to paycheck average worker
  • [<$5 million] The middle class/upper middle class with a 401k and a plan for retirement
  • [<$100 million] Business and Asset owners.
  • [>$100 million] The wealthy.
  • [>$1 billion] Billionaires.

My guess is whatever your answer the path the GTP (Grand Trump Party) and the rest of the government will settle on will benefit the wealthy and the billionaires. Even if the whole pie gets smaller if they end up with bigger pieces that will be the path forward.

I really am curious who gets hurt the most with regard to these monetary policy discussions.

The US economy is operating at near full capacity (very small output gap)

Cutting taxes but not spending would boost demand to such an extent that you would over-heat the US economy (you would have more money chasing goods and services)

Inflation would rise then.

So the winners would be those people that got a big tax cut in $$ terms (so more income) but also had assets and capital that allowed them to hedge the increase in inflation. Their wealth would materially increase then.

Anybody without assets, who relies on income would be impacted due to inflation. Then it would depend on how much your real disposable income was affected (people got a tax cut in nominal terms but they lost purchasing power due to inflation)

And if they do QE because debt service costs balloon, this entire process gets much worse. QE would feed even more money into the US economy, bumping up inflation further.

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My impression is he’s suggesting the market is going to force their hand. I don’t think anyone thinks they’ll do it voluntarily.

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Perhaps if Congress would give the IRS the money to up date their computer systems and processes. My impression is a lot of U.S. government agencies are inefficient because no one is willing to pay the billions that are needed to make them.

Seeing Canada’s experience with implementing the Phoenix pay system and some airlines experience with modernizing their computer systems, I can see why managers want to avoid modernizing. It can be very costly/disruptive to do so, particularly if the transition doesn’t go smoothly.

and it NEVER goes perfectly smoothly

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Looks like they’re starting quickly on enriching themselves…
https://x.com/MeidasTouch/status/1857121118164771209?t=WUlxsLM6TYvDzPHCRQHo3A&s=19

Also kind of looks like the Gaetz nomination may have been in part to block showing Trump’s involvement in Gaetz’s ethics investigation.
https://x.com/SethAbramson/status/1857127393380483363?t=uiXe0-aJsq3_Uz2m_SQ-qA&s=19

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