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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

> “There’s going to be a generation of voters that can’t get anything they want, because all the money has been spoken for.”

Interesting to hear an expert take from someone with decades of experience show some empathy to what likely will be GenZ or Gen Alpha. I've been saying for a long time now that govt debt is a very problematic tool because it allows today's leaders to create obligations for folks who didn't vote for them (likely couldnt vote at all). Even in perfect intentions it's not consensual to burden future generations with debts they had no voice in choosing.

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I'm still waiting to see the results of the massive infrastructure package that was passed in 2008. We've had a few more rounds of such spending, supposedly because of outdated infrastructure. You have to wonder how many more times they are going to get away with that trick.

Whenever they pass massive spending, its clear they are not talking to American people. They are talking to the corporations that are going to benefit.

This. Some of my clients are in the transportation industry and they were scratching their heads on where that money went.

This heavily decayed rusty bridge support [1] is under the Chicago Metra Union Pacific Track UP-N line that has 34,000 passengers riding across this bridge on 70 scheduled trains at 50-70 mph each weekday.

While it is admittedly just a single example, everyone else's experiences seem equally as anecdotal.

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/TIHI/comments/u4inmp/thanks_i_hate_...

> it allows today's leaders to create obligations for folks who didn't vote for them

It's not practically possible for a person of any age to have voted to prevent the massive spending and subsequent debt created by it.

Unpopular opinion: after politicians reach the level that you recognize their name, they're all the same.

I think that opinion is unpopular for the same reason that flat Eartherism is unpopular.

It's no coincidence that the US is perennially split down the middle, 50/50 red/blue, swinging back and forth between the two. The whole idea is to keep the country divided and to motivate you to vote. You need to pick a team and stay on it.

With all the "we can't let <the other team> ruin the country" rhetoric, you would think the swings back and forth would be like a wrecking ball. But no, for the most part, nothing meaningful changes. Each team gets their small window of power and starts airdropping money on their doners...ahem voters. Rinse, repeat.

What else can these politicians do? If they actually tried to reform something, they might goof it and it'll cost them their career. Gotta play it safe. After all, the status quo is that everyone already thinks they're all a bunch of corrupt boobs anyway, so nothing to lose really. Just go on CNN or Fox and talk shit about the other team; tell everyone that the other team is a bunch of corrupt boobs. That's money in the bank.

Let's say they actually pull one out of their butt and get some meaningful reform accomplished: well now there's one less thing they can scream about to rally you up to vote for the team the next time. So best to stick to the script.

They all look the same to me.

> It's no coincidence that the US is perennially split down the middle

That's true, but its not a conspiracy either. Supermajority is unstable because the faction of the supermajority party closest to the main opposition gains power to draw policy closer to its preference by joining the opposition, so the split between the main parties has a strong force driving toward rough parity.

> The whole idea is to keep the country divided and to motivate you to vote.

It’s literally not, demotivated voters on the other side (or, in extreme cases, tricking them into failing to vote) is a strategy central to, and incentivized by, the electoral system.

> With all the "we can't let <the other team> ruin the country" rhetoric, you would think the swings back and forth would be like a wrecking ball.

They usually aren’t because our system is designed with lots of veto points, and the “swings” usually don’t swing all of them.

> That's true, but its not a conspiracy either

I'm not saying it's a conspiracy. Everyone is just acting in their own self interest.

> Supermajority is unstable

It hasn't always been a 50/50 split. It's a relatively new phenomenon.

> demotivated voters on the other side (or, in extreme cases, tricking them into failing to vote) is a strategy central to, and incentivized by, the electoral system.

Both can be true. They want to get more votes. They want their opponent to get less votes. They use whatever tricks they have up their sleeve to accomplish both goals. I agree redistricting and other dirty games are big part of that process. But I don't think it's controversial to say that another big part of the game plan is to sow division. Have you ever witnessed any organization that is more publicly derogatory towards their collegues than congress? It's a complete shit show.

> They usually aren’t because our system is designed with lots of veto points

That's true, and in my opinion this makes a vote for policitian X even less important, despite all of the "the future of our country is at stake" talk we hear every single election.

Depends how far you are willing to stretch your definition of "the same".

I think the opinion that all politicians are the same is:

1. Impractical, if the underlying assumptions were true: in a democracy you got the right to vote people out who misbehave. If you are blind to the differences between those people, you are effectively letting those who are a little bit worse than the others stay. And so the spiral moves downwards and you will at some point in your life wake up and ask how it came to this.

2. Purely Self-protective: taking part in politics and being involved and observant comes at an (emotional) cost. Pretending there is no difference is an easy way of not having to get involved while still having a thinly vailed excuse to continue complaining.

3. Untrue: Each body of government will always have a few crazy corrupt politicians and some that are extremely principled (and a mixture of those things in between). Our task is to punish those who are crazy corrupt by not voting for them, where we can, while we are still allowed to vote.

4. Popularistic: Many unpolitical people share that opinion, it is not an "unpopular" opinion, it is the opinion of that drunkard you meet at the pub. If you ask them to name you politicians that are currently in positions they can't name any. If you tell tell them the name of politician A who got fined for corruption and politician B who has a Life-Long track record of doing a thing they stood for in their twenties they can't tell you the difference

5. Self-Defeating: You don't have to inform yourself, because everything is "the same" anyways. This has the downside that all it needs to get your vote is to look or feel not the same, because whether they act different is something you obviously cannot tell. It is a bit like if you ask a person who thinks "all computers are the same" to buy one for you and they select one because it had "a nice color", except that this actually has a huge impact on people's lives and maybe even the survival of the human race.

> if the underlying assumptions were true: in a democracy you got the right to vote people out who misbehave. If you are blind to the differences between those people, you are effectively letting those who are a little bit worse than the others stay. And so the spiral moves downwards and you will at some point in your life wake up and ask how it came to this.

Bingo. In my opinion, this is where we're at right now. Your choice as a voter is between bad and bad in part because the voting population has been stirred up to believe that the difference between the candidates is much bigger than it actually is.

I think your other points are reasonable, but you seem to be trying to shame anyone that refuses to pick a team instead of considering that maybe both teams stink.

> I think your other points are reasonable, but you seem to be trying to shame anyone that refuses to pick a team instead of considering that maybe both teams stink.

I am not from the US or UK and in my country any given election features more than two viable options, so I am not sure what you're talking about here. But I admit I don't envy US-americans with their choice between center-right and far-right politics on the national stage.

What I said is more about individual political actors than about the parties they organize in. Of course it is also important to hold collective misbehaviour accountable, but in my eyes individual actions (both good and bad ones) deserve more attention.

> Even in perfect intentions it's not consensual to burden future generations with debts they had no voice in choosing.

Lysander Spooner's classic "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority" is the application of that criticism to the whole state.

That's honestly not too far from the definition of odious debt.

The minimum voting age is as ridiculous as a maximum voting age. The system exists to deliver what older voters want.

At the risk of offending a neo-Marxist, children have underdeveloped brains and lack life experience or wisdom. They are not equivalent to adults and the minimum voting age is not arbitrary.

Unfortunately, young adults, not unlike children, don't seem to have much awareness about the issue of this unsustainable ballooning debt, and as a group, are happier to demand more entitlements (such as UBI) than to call for austerity to get it under control. It's the opposite of what you want, unless your plan is to milk the country dry and leave it to die. Older voters are actually more likely to favor lowering spending, though of course they wouldn't vote against their own interests (e.g. cutting social security benefits).

I’m not offended that we act as if someone aged 17 and 11 months is definitely unfit in a way that could never be the case after age 18. If that were true then only a minimum voting age is required.

In reality I can drag my great grandfather to the polls and vote for him so you should be able to vote for your kids.

Who is more impacted by government than parents or people caring for ailing parents?

Perhaps it's more to the point that your problem wouldn't be solved by lowering the voting age, as that would still not give you a perspective tens, hundreds ... thousands of years into the future.

You'd have to get people to vote 1000s of years before they're even born.

If you do austerity you get Europe.

All the people glorifying capitalism don't see that Europe is a bonafide example of diligently following neoclassical economics maxims. The end result? The interest rate drops below zero in the debt brake country (Germany).

Banks are scared of passing the costs onto depositors because they fear their customers withdrawing their money as cash.

Now what? Are you going to eliminate cash? Are you going to introduce an exchange rate vs cash?

What mechanism do you propose for creditors to spend off their savings so that it is mathematically possible for the rest of the economic sectors including the public sector to pay off their debts and shrink the money supply?

What are you going to do about the constantly declining money velocity that, apparently, requires a constant expansion of the money supply?

The problem is that most of these things are defined by mathematical identities and cost benefit structures. Unless you assume some omnipotent market participants with infinite capacity to track everything akin in power to a hypothetical central planner, these problems will stick around and your feelings or sense of justice about what is right or wrong won't matter.

The empirical evidence is that interest rates have been declining for 800 years and that we have basically reached the end of positive real returns.

Go ahead and do more austerity and lower the interest rate even further.

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