5 ms·

> honestly looking at the world in sober fashion I think most people are probably not scared enough. I see your comment as the perfect irony. First, you presum

by mekoka 6y ago

> honestly looking at the world in sober fashion I think most people are probably not scared enough. I see your comment as the perfect irony. First, you presume that your outlook is sober, but have you considered that the way you perceive the world is just that, the product of your biased (by all the gloom) state of mind? Do you think the world is getting worse? It's been "getting worse" forever. As for fixing problems, how many problems can you realistically fix from what you're watching? The world has real problems and you could just pick one if you want and focus on it. There's really no need to dwell on negativity days on end. Doom and gloom is just a distraction and contrary to what you may believe, not productive. My personal advice though, would be to try to retreat for a while and observe that nothing much would have changed when you resurface. It'll be like skipping two seasons of a bad soap opera and picking it up later, without missing a beat and without having wasted hours following circuitous story lines.

Retric 6y ago
Some things like the size of the US National Debt are genuinely getting noticeably worse rather quickly. It’s ~125% of GDP (26.6T) ignoring COVID and likely to get significantly worse over the next year. Interest added up to 383B in 2009 and 574B in 2019 that’s insane. https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.ht... Plenty of issues do evolve slowly. The Ogallala Aquifer is rather critical to the Midwest and has serious issues. Sure waiting two years isn’t going to make that much difference, but that just means we wasted another two years before doing anything.
- GoodJokes 6y ago
  Debt does not matter. This is a great example of nonsense doom.
- akiselev 6y ago
  > Interest added up to 383B in 2009 and 574B in 2019 that’s insane Between 2009 and 2019, US GDP grew from $14.45 trillion to $21.43 trillion - growing 48.3%. In that time, according to those figures, our annual interest payments have grown 49.8%. Those numbers are so close natural variability alone could explain the difference. Why is that insane? The US is a mature economy.
  - Retric 6y ago
    The issue is the US has no cushion for the current crisis let alone the next one. Expecting people to predict COVID is unrealistic, but they very much should expect issues eventually. Treading water in good years only to fall deeper in bad ones means collapse is unavoidable.
- msla 6y ago
  > Some things like the size of the US National Debt are genuinely getting noticeably worse rather quickly. Without context, this is meaningless. Most people lack the context to understand what National Debt even is, let alone how it works in an economy; for proof of that, look at all the people who are, to all appearances, utterly convinced that China can "repossess" massive tracts of land because it "owns" some of our debt. The utter confusion of ideas required to hold such convictions is beyond me, but such notions are out there, and quite potent in certain circles.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Digging in you could learn the actual effects when a country defaults or even makes real effort to avoid defaulting. However, failing to understand the details is not protection. So, the point is you can directly see a major problem getting worse. Further, that was simply a random example. Substitute the global obesity crisis and the point stands.

by mekoka 6y ago

Retric 6y ago

Some things like the size of the US National Debt are genuinely getting noticeably worse rather quickly. It’s ~125% of GDP (26.6T) ignoring COVID and likely to get significantly worse over the next year. Interest added up to 383B in 2009 and 574B in 2019 that’s insane. https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.ht... Plenty of issues do evolve slowly. The Ogallala Aquifer is rather critical to the Midwest and has serious issues. Sure waiting two years isn’t going to make that much difference, but that just means we wasted another two years before doing anything.

GoodJokes 6y ago
Debt does not matter. This is a great example of nonsense doom.
akiselev 6y ago
> Interest added up to 383B in 2009 and 574B in 2019 that’s insane Between 2009 and 2019, US GDP grew from $14.45 trillion to $21.43 trillion - growing 48.3%. In that time, according to those figures, our annual interest payments have grown 49.8%. Those numbers are so close natural variability alone could explain the difference. Why is that insane? The US is a mature economy.
- Retric 6y ago
  The issue is the US has no cushion for the current crisis let alone the next one. Expecting people to predict COVID is unrealistic, but they very much should expect issues eventually. Treading water in good years only to fall deeper in bad ones means collapse is unavoidable.
msla 6y ago
> Some things like the size of the US National Debt are genuinely getting noticeably worse rather quickly. Without context, this is meaningless. Most people lack the context to understand what National Debt even is, let alone how it works in an economy; for proof of that, look at all the people who are, to all appearances, utterly convinced that China can "repossess" massive tracts of land because it "owns" some of our debt. The utter confusion of ideas required to hold such convictions is beyond me, but such notions are out there, and quite potent in certain circles.
- Retric 6y ago
  Digging in you could learn the actual effects when a country defaults or even makes real effort to avoid defaulting. However, failing to understand the details is not protection. So, the point is you can directly see a major problem getting worse. Further, that was simply a random example. Substitute the global obesity crisis and the point stands.