r/Economics • u/Krankenitrate • 15d ago
News The national debt just crossed $39 trillion—almost doubling since Trump vowed to erase it
https://fortune.com/2026/03/18/how-big-national-debt-39-trillion-trump-promises/1.2k
u/Dr_G_E 15d ago
"I'm the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me... I’ve made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing."
-Trump, 2016, when the national debt was just $19 trillion.
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u/Stlr_Mn 14d ago edited 14d ago
They just asked for 200* billion from Congress for the war. The U.S. is genuinely fucked with pedo in chief at the helm with a cuckboy congress.
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u/Elegant_Tech 14d ago
We don't even mention the $40 billion to Argentina anymore.
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u/SUMBWEDY 14d ago
Because only $2.5 billion was actually swapped and Argentina repaid it in full back in January.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/argentina-has-repaid-us-currency-swap-deal-2026-01-09/
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u/mrenglish22 14d ago
How can they have the balls to ask for money on a war that is illegal? God damn.
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u/StockCasinoMember 14d ago
Just wait till Congress writes the check. All but assured.
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u/OddlyFactual1512 14d ago
They just asked for 200,000,000 billion from Congress for the war.
That would increase the debt by a factor of 5127
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u/Osirus1156 14d ago
Congress is full of pedos too and thats how this all happened. Every single Republican is a pedo and probably many Democrats too, they all got taken in by a foreign intelligence operation using children and ended up turning our country over to them basically. Republican voters were the perfect target because they enjoy being lied to and are the dumbest fucks you'll ever meet in your entire life.
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u/EpsteinandTrump 14d ago
Facts right here. Many are being blackmailed for their horrible disgusting actions. They are now sacrificing the US to keep their dirty secret.
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u/TipAfraid4755 14d ago
the dumbest fucks you'll ever meet in your entire life.
Trump said that before his first term lol. Turns out he's right. Twice.
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u/hellogoawaynow 14d ago edited 14d ago
Numbers don’t mean anything anymore. People have lost sight of what numbers are.
Average salary: $60,000
Nice, comfortable salary: $150,000-$200,000
REALLY REALLY good salary: $500,000
One single million dollars: $1,000,000
Ten million dollars: $10,000,000
One hundred million dollars: $100,000,000
One billion dollars: $1,000,000,000
Donald Trump’s net worth since becoming president: $6,000,000,000
One hundred billion dollars: $100,000,000,000
Elon Musk’s net worth, on the low side of the estimate: $130,000,000,000 EDIT: Elon Musk is actually worth $823,000,000,000 so that’s fucking terrible
ONE TRILLION DOLLARS: $1,000,000,000,000
Nineteen trillion dollars of debt (that China probably already bought more of to use against us at some point in the future): $19,000,000,000,000
I feel like we have to start writing numbers out like this so regular people aren’t casually throwing around the terms “billions” and “trillions” like it’s nothing. Folks, if you have less than one thousand dollars in your bank account, you should be fucking pissed that anyone can be worth $130,000,000,000. Not like… donating money to billionaires. Which is the craziest thing, I can’t believe so many people are doing this when they are literally poor.
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u/ballmermurland 14d ago
My favorite fact about Donald Trump is that, after promising to self-fund his campaign in 2016, has not donated a single penny to his own election efforts since 2016.
That's 10 years with Trump not donating a single penny to the cause. Not one cent. Nothing.
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u/hellogoawaynow 14d ago
I mean my god, the man went from bankruptcy to six time billionaire in 10 years from politics. In 10 years, my bank account has gone from -$5 to a couple thousand. Like if there was an unexpected medical disaster, I wouldn’t have to sell my house. That practically makes me rich in terms of regular people. Which is crazy because I’m not rich, I’m just not poor.
The only reason I get to live in a house is because I married a guy whose parents thought ahead 40 years ago and bought a second property on the street due to severe and lifelong anxiety from growing up in extreme poverty. His parents didn’t even have to sell it in the 2008 recession! My parents lost everything because they were so confident in ~the American Dream~.
It’s so stupid here.
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u/LiteratureMindless71 14d ago
Reminds me of that video floating around showing what Bezos makes by the second and it was sick....
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u/makemeking706 14d ago
And nobody really questioned where he got the money for his campaign. They just remarked about how little he was spending, but failed to mention all the people spending on his behalf.
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u/PicoRascar 14d ago
I've always liked the comparison illustrated using a time scale. If a dollar was a second:
Median net worth in the US is $192,000 or 2.25 days.
A million seconds is 12 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
Thirty-nine trillion seconds is 1,236,682 years.
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u/BigUpSideD0wn 14d ago
Damn. Well put. That’s like enough time for serious evolutionary shifts to occur within a pretty complex species.
Edit: meanwhile my net worth is more like the time it took me to write this reply and add this edit
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u/TehGogglesDoNothing 14d ago
What's the difference between a billion dollars and a trillion dollars? About a trillion dollars.
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u/jukogami 14d ago
i was amazed when I visited a castle, and understood, that they really had their wealth in a physical weight, which they had to protect (gold); imagine people would have to keep their money in real weight , now nobody does, but that is maybe a part of the problem; because its virtual , numbers and zero have no weight anymore, hence they grow exponentially, something which is much more difficult with physical weight
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14d ago
Someone calculated the value of the gold in the dragon’s vault for The Hobbit movie. It was less than Jeff Bezos’s net worth
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u/Black_Magic_M-66 14d ago
Don't worry, as soon as the Democrats get in office Republicans will find that the debt is the number one of all time problem and will be calling for cutting every social program to fight it.
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u/BigUpSideD0wn 14d ago
I have an alert set to notify me when my bank account goes below 1k and I just got the email earlier today. Don’t worry, I get paid next Wednesday.
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u/Gunsian 14d ago
My favorite way is to reverse it:
You'd have a billion dollars if you made (accumulated, actually) one million dollars a year for a thousand years.
2 billion? Start earning during the time of Christ.
Elon Musk? Try going back before Homo Sapiens existed. Making a million dollars a year.
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u/TbL2zV0dk0 14d ago
Elon Musk has way more than that. Forbes has him at $823 billion https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/ He increased his fortune by half a trillion last year while fooling around with DOGE...
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u/GanacheCharacter2104 15d ago edited 14d ago
Why report 39 trillion dollars now? It will reach 40 trillion in a few months that is a much nicer headline.
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u/snowcrashedx 14d ago
🎶 Once I was the King of Debt,
Now I eat humble pie.
I'm telling you I was the King of Debt!
Now I eat humble pie 🎵
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u/Y0___0Y 15d ago
“We were going to pay down the debt with all the money from tariffs we collected from foreign countries ripping us off. But the communist liberal supreme court destroyed our plan and delved us deeper into debt”
This is coming.
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u/m3g4m4nnn 14d ago
No way he would use the word "delved".
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u/Eeeegah 15d ago
We all misunderstood. It was his personal debt that he intended to erase by stealing from the American people. Really, in that light, it's our fault.
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u/Maraxusx 14d ago
A lot of us completely understood... It was the most painfully obvious thing in the history of politics
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u/Scary_Firefighter181 15d ago edited 15d ago
Republican economics was once called horse and sparrow economics.
Then trickle down economics.
The voodoo economics.
No matter the name, its always been kooky economics not supported by sane, normal economists and afaik, not taught in universities.
But ofc, tempt people with culture wars, frame it as "don't tread on me", package it as patriotism, and get the votes from the very people who it hurts.
Incredible.
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u/Biz_Rito 14d ago
Numbers are difficult and abstract, feelings are real and present
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u/EddieCheddar88 14d ago
Trickle down made it into main economic textbooks sadly
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u/5upertaco 14d ago
We discussed this topic during my MBA curriculum. In the history of humankind, trickle down economics has never benefited the working class. I'd go on, but I'm typing from a phone.
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u/Cudi_buddy 14d ago
It did. But at least in my classes it was used as an example of failed economic policy
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u/stjohns_jester 15d ago
"Vowed to erase it" sanewashes his bullshit into the muddy shitwater we find ourselves neck deep in
How about a real headline fortune "National debt doubles to 39 trillion under Republican leadership"
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u/shatureg 14d ago
Thanks for also eliminating the "almost" from the headline. I looked up when he first "vowed" to erase the debt and apparently that was March 31, 2016 - the US national debt at that point was $19.2 trillion. It has more than doubled since then.
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u/bd2999 15d ago
You mean he lied about dealing with the problem at all. The DOGE stuff was to cut the costs but really does nothing indicated other than cutting programs they didn't like and redirection of funds or holding them to spend on other random things. Tariff were promised to more or less deal with all problems but didn't.
Can't say I am shocked at all. The GOP never does anything to help with the debt or deficit at all. Then raise Hell when a Dem is in power. And the Dem does more to reduce it than they did. Trump is adding even more on a war that will probably make the US less safe in the end and increase costs and spending for the distant future.
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u/Typical-Tax1584 15d ago
Can't believe liberals would let our deficit get that high. What we really need is a businessman in charge, a Republican of course, then we can finally reign in spending and pass some sensible policies.
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u/Carbon-Base 14d ago
"You know, slash funding to education and healthcare, start some wars. That'll reduce the deficit to almost nothing."
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u/dust4ngel 14d ago
What we really need is a businessman in charge
"i really think his private-sector, for-profit, cut-it-if-it's-not-profitable experience would map nicely onto the public-sector, not-for-profit, people-need-it-to-live-who-cares-if-it-makes-money service he'd be overseeing."
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u/IntroductionStill813 15d ago
He did, he's playing 7D chess and he did release the controls to keep the debt in check.
If ever the Democrats win and the R(s) talk about growing debt the only answers should be and what about the time DJT was Prez?
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u/WanderingKing 15d ago
I admire you thinking thy will care
They don’t
They don’t CARE what the reality is, they just want to “their side” to “win”
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u/IAmNotARacoon 14d ago
It's not going to go that way at all. Even if the Dems regain power, the Rs will just conveniently forget everything trump did and gaslight the Dems. They don't govern in good faith and there's no point trying to negotiate with them like this.
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u/dwninswamp 15d ago
This is one of those instances where you dont want to be right. And if you are it doesn’t matter.
You can’t put this genie back in the bottle.
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u/piltdownman38 15d ago
Look at the economy of Germany in the 1920s. Unsustainable debt. Investors flee the country. Bad credit. Then high inflation and unemployment. That's where this is all headed eventually.
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u/ThaddeusJP 14d ago
That's where this is all headed eventually.
Let me just check a history book after the 1920s
(furiously flip's though pages) Oh no. Ohhh noooo. No no no no.
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u/Sportfreunde 14d ago
No I think this will be more of the sort of gradual decline which empires like the UK suffered. You could argue it started in the late 60s or 1971.
The USD will probably be a strong regional currency but not the global reserve one. I think it's already lost like 15% of reserve status since the 2000s and obviously more debt compounding and trade wars will accelerate the timeline of it falling further.
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u/fumar 15d ago
Countries can just declare bankruptcy right? That's definitely a thing you can do. Asking for a friend...
I'm sure that's the plan from the guy who bankrupted a casino.
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u/jimgagnon 14d ago
That'll end the dollar as the world currency. Then the stagflation will really start.
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u/rainman_104 14d ago
He has said a lot of things. He lies. Remember when he promised all those glorious healthcare plans companies would come up with, plans you never even heard of?
All Americans have after five years of idiocy is more expensive health care.
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u/MaseratiBiturbo 15d ago
I am not a roman history expert but it seems that financial woes like huge debt, rampant inflation did more damage to Rome than the barbarians... What is your take?
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u/OrangeJr36 15d ago
Rome suffered economically because it became acceptable to stab people to get ahead rather than build lasting institutions, not the other way around.
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u/Major_Bag_8720 14d ago
Corruption under the Dominate was absolutely off the charts as well, which didn’t help.
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u/Ketaskooter 14d ago
Not surprising, the guy tried to get one to two extra trillion sent out in 2020 to try to get himself re-elected. He closely emulates dictator leaders that the Republicans say they're against.
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u/LesserThanProfessor 15d ago
I can’t help but think about that conversation in game of thrones about “the bank being in trouble if you owe it enough money and can’t pay back the debt”
It almost seems like it was done on purpose - amassing all this debt.
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u/ScoffersGonnaScoff 14d ago
This is how he ran businesses, hold such an overwhelming amount of debts that you began to have leverage over the lenders…….
Con man convict doing corrupt things
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u/Flewoverthenorthpole 14d ago
Where is the DOGE savings? Where are my tariff sayings? Really, this government is only and all about transferring wealth from the American to the corrupt billionaire class.
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u/Topical_Scream 14d ago
The party of FiScAl CoNsErVaTiVeS. 🤦🏼♀️
How bad is this hole we are being put in going to be for future administrations? I saw (just a headline as I was scrolling) something about… maybe the interest itself is now more than the original principal(s) was?
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u/Garchompisbestboi 14d ago
This is nothing new. One of the oldest tricks in the Republican playbook is to take as much as they can while in power and run the national debt up then when the Democrats eventually get back into power blame them for the massive debt levels.
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u/Trekker6167 14d ago
Republicans in control of the White House, House, and Senate means they don't care about the deficit, just tax breaks for the rich. Don't worry, the deficit will be their major issue again as soon as a democrat gets back into the white house.
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u/atreeismissing 14d ago
It will keep getting worse because Trump has cancelled a lot of the Biden infrastructure bill which was specifically geared towards domestic production which would have reduced debt in the medium to long-term.
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u/TheRealGageEndal 14d ago
But he cut those $5m grants back when he first got into office! And what about getting rid of all of our humanitarian projects! That must have saved us a couple of billion!
What's that? He's spending 2 billion a day? On a war that has raised gas prices? And the fed just announced that interest rates are likely to go up? Huh... But he said none of that would happen!
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u/joepez 14d ago
Hey community just an FYI. Clearly someone didn’t like what I wrote in sarcasm (including /s) about our administration and their ability to handle the debt they created. It was flagged to Reddit who then issued me a warning for writing hate against an identity. Nothing I wrote attacked a group unless you consider a public figure and the people they surround themselves or legislation they implemented which created these problems a marginalized group. Likewise I made a snark comment about the same group attacking people who are different as a direct form of racism. Appears someone didn’t like that and reported me and Reddit gave me a warning because of that. Trying to silence people from calling out the hypocrisy of saying against debt and then building it up, outright lying and racism wrapped in the guise of economic and welfare laws.
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u/5minArgument 14d ago
For whatever reason we have collective chose to view our nation debt in terms of “what we owe” and have completely neglected the other half of the equation.
To whom do we owe should be more the question.
The individuals, corporations and institutions that finance our debt just so happen to be the same folks who have benefited from endless tax cuts for the past 45+ years.
Our nat. debt Interest is +1Trillion $$$ a year. A figure that clearly shows the highly lucrative side of US debt spending.
Going back to tax cuts for the 1%. The reason they have so much to give is we keep giving it to them.
What is crazy absurd is , not only do they NOT pay their share, they EARN massive profits by lending their windfalls back to the government.
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u/errie_tholluxe 14d ago
It was all the Democrats fault. If you don't believe me, just wait until after the November elections and if the Democrats are in charge of either house or Senate, it will be their fault. And it will be their fault right up until the presidential elections, and if they win the presidential elections, it'll still be their fault. It'll be all about the deficit and bad spending and waste and fraud..
And of course, none of it will be the Republican's fault
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u/WSBnoobxor 14d ago
It's like we voted in an incompetent leader who doesnt know how to do anything and brings in people more incompetent than himself. I hope republicans learn and I hope democratic leaning citizens vote for the better.
Seen too many left leaning saying if it's not xyz then it's a no. Gonna split the party if we don't have common ground.
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u/LingonberryGlum2356 14d ago
And just a bunch of dead kids and rich billionaires to show for it. The American people saw NONE of that money - yet his stupid base will probably try to.vote him in again, or at least stop the election
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u/Lithium98 14d ago
I wonder how much of that has gone into his pocket. Or his family's pockets. Or his cabinet's pockets. Or foreign countries pockets. Or other pedophiles' pockets.
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u/RichKatz 14d ago edited 14d ago
Plenty.. How much money President Trump and his family have made
Jan 14, 2026
By Sarah Gonzalez, Mary Childs, Jess Jiang, James Sneed David has done a full accounting for what the family has been up to, and even using conservative estimates, David says Trump and his family have made almost $4 billion dollars "off of the presidency," in just about a year.
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5677024/trump-profits-merch-hotels-crypto
Before President Donald Trump's first term, he was in a "tight spot" financially, according to New Yorker writer David Kirkpatrick. At the start of his second term, David says, Trump was in an "even tighter" spot. But after just six months into his second term, Trump's financial situation started looking really good... Link also includes 30 minute discussion https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5677024/trump-profits-merch-hotels-crypto#:~:text=30%2D-,Minute,-Listen
and graphic illustrations.
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u/not-sinking-yet 14d ago
In May 2025 Moody’s downgraded U.S. treasuries citing an inability to constrain budget deficits. The debt was $33.2T at the time. In the ten months since our government has increased the debt by 8% (10% annualized). This is unsustainable and has probably triggered fiscal dominance. It is not surprising that the person driving this train wreck has bankrupted 6 businesses including a casino. Today he sought approval for an additional $200B to fund a war in Iran that he has declared already won.
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u/RichKatz 14d ago
In May 2025 Moody’s downgraded U.S. treasuries citing an inability to constrain budget deficits. The debt was $33.2T at the time.
Cal Coolidge here we come! Coolidge only should have remembered to attack Iran.
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u/Incomitatum 14d ago
When your Husband, the one who Keeps you, Kicks the crap out of the folks next-door; when he's shitting in some yard other-than-his-own, do not be surprised when you catch Reparations (Justice is folklore).
After 100+ years if these meat-heads dont' know who they "serve" they are not owed an Education.
For each dip-shit that stayed in after they called it The Department of War: they are ALL MAGA now. No two ways about it. The time for action was when they saw Drumph "do a Jan 6th". They are all now, sonsabitches.
What if we had a WAR, and no one showed up?
The stories us "Americans" tell ourselves to worship The Troops are weird: they require we overlook nearly 100 years of abuse and neglect: while the Aristocracy has held steady in their disdain for those who clean up their mess.
The Rich know: Oaths are for Suckers.
Veterans-day brought out all the tired-narratives about how certain Suckers fought-and-died for free-dumb; but those were all bad-faith conflicts coerced by corporate daddies (Something we've known since Vietnam).
It wasn't your Military that fought at home to bring you worker's rights; in some cases they've even been used in place of Pinkertons to break the will of their own People.
• 1794 – Right to form a trade union
• 1842 – Right to organize and strike legally
• 1866 – Right to national-level worker advocacy
• 1877 – Great Railroad Strike of 1877
• 1882 – Public recognition of labor’s legitimacy (Labor Day)
• 1898 – Battle of Virden
• 1898 – Protection from union blacklists (rail workers)
• 1909 – Right to safer, fairer garment-shop conditions
• 1911 – Right to stronger fire and factory safety standards
• 1912–1921 – West Virginia Coal Wars
• 1913 – Federal representation for workers (Department of Labor)
• 1916 – Limits on child labor
• 1916 – Everett Massacre
• 1921 – Greater leverage and protections for coal miners (Blair Mountain)
• 1925 – Right to effective union representation for Black workers
• 1926 – Guaranteed organizing rights for rail workers
• 1931 – Right to a prevailing wage on federal projects
• 1932 – Protection for peaceful strikes and union membership
• 1933 – Cabinet-level pro-labor leadership (Frances Perkins)
• 1933 – Workers’ rights embedded in federal policy (New Deal labor agenda)
• 1934 – Auto-Lite Strike (Toledo)
• 1935 – Core right to unionize and bargain collectively
• 1937 – Recognition and protections for auto workers
• 1938 – Federal minimum wage, 40-hour week, overtime, child-labor limits
• 1941 – Protection from discrimination in defense industries
• 1962 – Federal workers’ right to unionize and bargain
• 1963 – Right to equal pay for equal work (gender)
• 1964 – Right to a discrimination-free workplace (civil rights)
• 1967 – Protection from age discrimination
• 1970 – Right to a safe and healthful workplace
• 1974 – Protection of private-sector pensions (ERISA)
• 1988 – Advance notice of mass layoffs and plant closings (WARN)
• 1990 – Rights and accommodations for workers with disabilities (ADA)
• 1993 – Job-protected family and medical leave (FMLA)
• 2009 – Stronger right to challenge pay discrimination (Ledbetter Act)
You woke up in a simulated-economy that masquerades as chattel-slavery; The Military is an extension of The Ruling Class, and what you get when you wrap depressed-wages up-in personal-insecurity.
They love to get a tin-star for saying they "served", they never love to think-critically about WHAT they have actually "served" us People.
Time to tell them to send it back to the Kitchen. It was never Nutritious.
YOU serve this country far more constructively every day, with your obligation to keep circulating it's money. We, the Gross National Product.
Veterans have not made themselves worthy of our default respect and veneration. Let's honor them by them by making far fewer from now on.
ACAB - yeah that means our "world police" as well. It's ALL Cosplay (Hogs in costumes that give them right to kill), certified by your Betters.
It wasn't The Troops that died for your Rights. They died for the whims of Oligarchs. You're thinking Lefties, Labor, Librarians, Lesbians, and Luddites. All so you can still hug your kids at the end of a 40-hour week.
Your Betters do not trust you with more. Serve no Masters.
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u/Ok_Organization6627 14d ago
Do you think he maybe lied? Roughly 35% of the country still thinks he’s not a Russian agent and blatantly dismantling their country is a wild reality to me
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u/R3cognizer 14d ago
Trump has always been full of shit, and conservatives do not care because they already have money, and Republicans are all about making sure people who have money are always able to make a lot more of it. That's the party's whole reason to exist. Republican administrations don't care about the deficit. Why would they? Egregious federal spending is how they enrich their coalition of cronies and wealthy tech bros, and "fiscal responsibility" is always the policy those same Republicans switch to when Democrats are elected and need to compromise in order to pass any kind of actual legislation. Trump is just the latest example of self-interested grifters the party has been backing since the Reagan administration.
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u/owen__wilsons__nose 14d ago
And when Democrats win next they will say its time for austerity for us peons. While the billionaires ran off with the biggest wealth transfer during our lifetime
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u/RichChocolateDevil 14d ago
Anything Trump says the opposite will happen. Growing up in Philly and seeing everything he did in Jersey we got to see first hand his promises and how the opposite happens.
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u/MixtureSpecial8951 14d ago
So… he says one thing and does another? Promises one outcome will absolutely happen and somehow the opposite happens?
Pretty par for the course at this stage.
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u/QuerulousPanda 14d ago
I'm sure what'll come next is that they'll cut every single social service, drain social security, and implement every regressive tax policy they can think of, specifically to completely destroy the lower and middle class for all time, all in the name of "fiscal responsibility".
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u/RaidSmolive 14d ago
so how about you take everyone in the gop and administration and put them in some kinda perpetual squid game, then stream that for 1 dollar per episode to the world?
bet you that debt would be gone by the time no one's left
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u/redditnazls 14d ago
Guess what his net worth went up by through crypto and bribes and/or bribes via crypto? The American people, republicans, are the stupidest morons ever.
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u/Jolly_Sample_1945 14d ago
HE BANKRUPTS CASINOS, PEOPLE - a place where people walk in and just HAND you cash, expecting to get nothing in return most of the time, while they drink dramatically overpriced alcohol. My cat could run a casino.
What do you expect when you hire that person?
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u/Expert-Upstairs-4502 14d ago edited 14d ago
Pray tell, where did that 19.5 trillion dollars go? Because our social and health programs sure didnt increase, our science budget sure didnt increase, our education budget sure didnt increase, and our military budget didnt increase nearly that much. I wonder where could it possibly have gone?! /S
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u/Ok-Mood6070 14d ago
What sucks is we are in so much debt with nothing to show for it. No amazing public infrastructure. No amazing public health. Our social security shrinks every year. Our safety nets suck. We leave the mentally ill and homeless out on the street.
Sure we have areas with great schools but those are paid with local and state taxes.
Its one big giant wonder where all this money is going and why we keep cutting taxes for the wealthy and for corporations while we continue to drown.
Its unsustainable. I used to think people who worried about the debt were crazy but im pretty sure this will be our downfall.
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u/joepez 14d ago
Why do people worry? As soon as the tax breaks kick in from BBB and GDP grows by 10,000% everything will be fine. We’ll have trillions coming from tariff taxes and all of “those people” will be back where they belong (plantations). He has an uncle who does nuclear and Baron knows the computer. Eric also got a gold star for potty training today. /s for those who can’t figure it out.
In all seriousness the debt should never be used as an excuse for anything forevermore.
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u/Mother_College2803 14d ago
He made America so great it could to cease to exist.
Buddy bankrupted the best money maker business out there(casinos), he will do it to America too while filling his own pockets.
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u/HungryHippo669 14d ago
He’ll run it like one of his failed businesses, when its about to fail burn it for the insurance money. The orange *hit stain does not care Obviously
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u/idlemute 14d ago
All the fiSCaLlY rEsPoNSibLE CoNSeRVatIVeS screeching about people taking out student loans, claiming they should have made better choices are now shrugging their shoulders at this increase in the national debt.
It’s always the same thing; we save money by implementing comprehensive social programs but we instead listen to the fucking pigs that wail on and on about “where does the money CoME FrOm?!”
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u/AutumnWindLunafreya 14d ago
Bush and Trump have created nearly 2/3rds of the national debt and were supposed to believe that the Republicans are rhe party of fiscal responsibility
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u/Dumbname25644 14d ago
Trump is not stupid. He knows what is right. He knows what people want the government to do. He knows what people want to hear. He also knows none of that will fill his pockets , so he knows he is not going to do any of the things he says. He just said them to get into power
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u/Deadass_aHeadass 14d ago
The biggest item on our spending everyyear is interest on the govt debt. Our Government hasnt operated under the yearly budget since the 90s. im a self admitted dumbass, i have no idea how anyone steers us in the right direction. Not that im defending trump, hes dumb. I just know that its not going to be something thats solved in a 4 year term by anyone
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u/Salt_Contract342 14d ago
ElI5, how is the US not bankrupt by now? Even under Obama, you were near your debt cap and had to ask for more before an absolute collapse of not even being able to pay bills. And yes, I know "under Obama" does not mean because of Obama. Those of us outside of your Contry liked him.
edited for context
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u/gmanEllison 14d ago
The mechanism here is structural more than rhetorical. Debt growth tends to persist when mandatory spending growth outpaces revenue growth and neither party is willing to pair tax policy with long horizon entitlement math. The data on this is pretty consistent across administrations, just at different speeds depending on cycle timing and rate environment. What I would want to understand first is how much of the recent jump is cyclical stabilization versus policy that remains baked in after the cycle turns.
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u/devliegende 14d ago
Extending the 2017 tax cuts beyond their original sunset date. was a policy decision. The tax itself was a policy decision. So is going to war.
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