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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I suspect near-zero interest rates for a decade also contributed to the political realignment of affluent suburbs trending Democrat. So long as the Fed would buy federal debt cheaply and there was no significant inflation, Democrats could advocate multi-trillion social programs while promising to maintain Reagan-era tax rates on even quite affluent folks.

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What multi-trillion dollar social programs? What country are you talking about— I want to live there, sounds a lot better than the pittance we have in the US. Unless you think the Defense Department is a social program.

The reference is possibly to the Green New Deal or to Build Back Better. Both probably qualify as "multi-trillion social programs", but perhaps the former fits the description better.

I wouldn’t call either of those social programs. They’re mostly subsidies for industry, with ancillary tax benefits for the rich and upper middle class. Also hardly “multi-trillion”. After reading the article in full, I assume they were alluding to the PPP and direct stimulus payments to taxpayers that suffered some fraud. Even the 25% fraud cited seems minor, but it certainly could have been administered a lot better. I agree that public investment in long term endeavors has been abysmal, but that trend started in the 70s with Carter. What all this is ultimately about is neoliberalism. Using the state via the Fed to further enrich the rich is the final end of that ideology, and it has been very successful at that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal

> social aims like job creation and reducing economic inequality

> the plan could cost between $51–$93 trillion over the next decade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_Back_Better_Plan

> the largest nationwide public investments in social

> a variety of social policy initiatives

> $1.9 trillion

> $2.3 trillion (which, when combined with the American Families Plan, amounted to $4 trillion in infrastructure spending)

> $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill

Last I checked, neither plan ever passed. Nor would they have passed in time to make a difference for the issues raised in the article.

Your comment starting this theead was about the following quote from 'rayiner:

> Democrats could advocate multi-trillion social programs

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/advocate

Also over $4 trillion between CARES Act and the "American Rescue Plan".

Do you feel Cared about and Rescued?

I wouldn’t call those true social programs, although the direct payments to taxpayers comes close. The programs you cite were designed to prop up the economy, and they mostly succeeded, albeit highly skewed towards big businesses. It accelerated trends already in place.

Yes I was just trying to come up with trillion dollar examples of programs other than the ones already provided ("Green New Deal"), because there aren't many it could be referring to afaik.

Social security + Medicaid + Medicare is in the trillions.

Those are not new and would be part of the long term public investment the article states has been lacking. You can’t have a productive economy when old people are indigent and have to be cared for entirely by their working age relatives. And Medicaid is a subsidy for industry that doesn’t compensate its workers sufficiently with adequate healthcare benefits.

Social security and Medicare are each individually trillion dollar social programs. We also just had $2.5 trillion in covid related expenditures to individuals and families and healthcare: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/11/us/how-covid-.... Also, as I said, Democrats have been advocating trillions more in social spending (universal healthcare, etc.)

I’m not knocking any of that. But American Democrats are probably the only center-left party in the developed world who advocates for expensive social programs while promising not to raise taxes on people making up to $400,000 a year. My point is that this is a unique outgrowth of the fed’s money printing machine.

Am I misremembering or.. didn't republicans with full control of congress do the tax breaks while increasing spending and later, in partnership with dems after losing congress, expanding social programs like Obamacare to be more universal (free pandemic-related care)?

Biden's eventual infrastructure bill also was smaller in scope than Trump's proposed one that wanted $2 trillion instead of $1 trillion.

I want to know what happened to the promised "Peace Dividend". Military spending was supposed to go way down, not just down, and civilians were supposed to reap the benefits... Instead Industrialists took up the Globalization mantra and forgot the little guys (the guys and gals working in factories) and happily told them it would mean lower cost of living --conveniently leaving out that they would also earn much less, if they even got to keep their jobs.

Ross Perot and Bernie Sanders warned people, but they were made fun of and now Bernie has sold out and pretends.

How did Bernie sell out?

They told him he was a Kremlin asset in 2016 and he believed it. They gave him committee chairmanship as a consolation prize and now he’s one of the biggest hawks for the Dems’ proxy war in Ukraine. Even called out the CPC letter calling for diplomacy alongside military aid.

Ukraine was invaded by Russia. Not sure how that makes it "the Dems' proxy war".

Ah yes, that’s obviously where the story starts. ;-)

independently of Ukraine, Bernie still strongly supports worker's rights.

I’m not sure it’s fair to say Perot was laughed at. He commanded a tremendous following, and got 19% of the vote in the 1992 election, without a major party endorsement, and after hamstringing himself by leaving the race and re-entering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidentia...

  > now Bernie has sold out and pretends

in what way?

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