> Gladiator wrote:

> niether

McCain and his war hunger
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJUCU1UH2w

You did hear the thing from Obama during the debate about launching air strikes into Pakistan to take down Al Qaeda with or without Pakistan's approval, right? 

125

And no, I'm not in the under 18 category! 

Is named after a creature that turns into a vampire bat six months out of the year... yet nobody notices.

Smiof, back to my... like... second post in this thread.  And just about every post since then.

This "eventually" just doesn't exist!

Doesn't like the guys who like scientology!

@Noir

1: Refinancing is what's done every day with US debt.  We pay our old securities by buying new securities.  We don't just borrow money from one nation and say "pay ya back whenever I damn well please!  Cya!"
2: If you're a US bank and you see that the US economy is about to hit the shitter, you're going to do everything in your power to keep it afloat, since your assets are dependent on the value of the dollar, and overall economic growth.  This is empirically proven in the Great Depression, when banks attempted to stop the stock market crash by massively buying stock to keep prices afloat.  They failed only because the tactic was piss poor, but it does prove that banks are willing to step in and keep the economy going since it's in their individual interests to do so.
3: "At the end of the day."  That again.  Noir, I've given two posts so far that say the same thing.  This day isn't ending!  The sun isn't setting!  The work day isn't over!  7-11 is still open!  The clock stopped at 4:20 PM!
The only way we'll have to pay off the debt without the ability to take on new debt is if an external catastrophe, separate altogether from the national debt, forced the repayment.  At that point, the economy would be in the shithole anyway, so the debt wouldn't matter!

@Smiof

Alright.  I'm calling a challenge:

Give me a theoretical situation in which the following would occur:
1: Investors would stop purchasing US treasuries.
2: The US would be unable to reduce spending or increase taxes (Actually, nevermind.  I'll spot you this one, because it's pretty easy to obtain)
3: Banks won't bail out the US.
4: There is no other major economic crises plaguing the nation at the time that would overshadow the debt in terms of impact on society.

Allow me to translate that from Justinian to "Person with a soul."    (Just playin, you know I love ya!)

Since nations have limitations, be it geographic, demographic, or economic, that prevent them from taking in every person in the world, they have to limit the amount of immigration.  In addition, obvious security concerns mean governments would wish to prevent completely open borders.  So a nation must choose between people, rather than accept everyone.

So the question becomes one of how to choose who enters the country.

Since any individual becomes a shared burden (social services, use of public goods) and contribution (taxes, work) to a society, it's in the nation's best interests to prefer taking in individuals who give the greatest contribution to the society, to mitigate their burden.  From there, it becomes simple mathematics: If one person has a potential to accrue $100,000 per year or fill a highly demanded niche (i.e., a scientist, teacher, doctor), such a person should be preferred over an unskilled person since the former has a greater probability to cover their costs.  By accepting individuals who are less likely to cover their social costs, the nation doesn't reap the benefits of the immigration.

Even accepting unskilled, yet highly sought-after, immigrants probably isn't enough.  Every new entrant into a labor market increases the supply of labor in a field, reducing the value of that labor, along with all other workers in the field.  Unskilled work uniquely has the quality of being simple for people to enter in case a shortage does occur.  For example, if every plumber except for one guy disappeared suddenly, new plumbers could, and would, enter the field easily, because the work isn't that complicated.

This is untrue of fields such as medicine, making immigrants in such fields highly sought after.  Therefore, we should court them above unskilled labor, because it's simply efficient to do so.

Nope!

Now fudgie?

Isn't controlled by some puppetmaster

> Gladiator wrote:

> well i didn't see your post, so i can't judge it but i was merely continuing the economic debate, i wasn't the one who started it, so i don't know why you pointed the finger at me
look above my post, other people had started the debate

Mine was a response to yours, so it was as on-topic as yours.

If yours was a response to someone else's, then it only proves I was falsely accused of being off topic in the first place.

Sorry to point the finger, but since you were the direct reference of my post, the finger had to go your way.

@Noir

For US treasury bonds to not be seen as a good investment, a radical alteration from the status quo would have to happen, in which case the US would probably be doomed anyway.  The US would have to be seen as a bad investment overall, in which case the debt, at most, is an aggravator to a situation that would be screwed up anyway.

As for interest... it's not like the money is destroyed once the government pays it.  The money goes back into circulation.  It's not all that tragic.

Wrong!

Mike?