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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   31909 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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Whether the US will cut its current deficits is up to the electorate. I'm not particularly hopeful about the prospect given that the current electorate is full of populist idiots that would punish politicians for making the correct long-term decisions vis-a-vis deficit reduction, but it's certainly theoretically achievable.

Lmao yep I agree one hundred percent. Except for the populist modifier, that's just your nail. Unless 95% of the country are populists now. Or are you suggesting that the democrats (who think populists are evil) would cut ss Medicare or welfare were they in power?

You call me excessively fatalistic, but I think you are being naive. Trump is a symptom, not the cause of our leaders' incompetence. (After all if the universities could fix the economy, why didn't they when Biden was in charge?) I am actually not completely blackpilled by that realisation however, because there is a silver lining to learning that our elite human capital are just idiot narcissists - it means you can let go of the idea that there could be a society of people who don't punish politicians for making the correct long-term decisions. Due to the confluence of unintended second order effects, perverse incentives and incompetence, our society is fucking atrocious at producing people who won't punish politicians for making the correct long term decisions, but it's even worse at producing politicians who will make the correct long term decisions.

Leftists have their own version of populism which is mostly focused on billionaire-bashing. The left hasn't been particularly interested in balancing the budget since Clinton, and he was basically forced to do that by a Republican Congress.

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