8 ms·

US expected to send thousands more soldiers to Middle East, sources say

134 points by cdrnsf 7mo ago

exabrial 7mo ago
[flagged]
- jleyank 7mo ago
  the US has run deficits for years, so it's not reckless taxation in the form I think you mean. "Pay for its bills" would be a novel concept, involving undoing various "give money to rich people" tax cuts. In the current environment, very unlikely.
- commandlinefan 7mo ago
  IIRC, the US debt is at 39 trillion right now, with no plan to pay it back. Which is logical, because it's unpayable. There's no way in the world that will ever be paid back. I still haven't seen anybody properly analyze how high the debt can go before it actually can't go any higher, but we're going to find out.
  - pfannkuchen 7mo ago
    Monetize it or default are the only options I think. Monetizing affects everyone while default only (directly) affects bond holders. Monetizing is much easier to obfuscate though so that is probably what will happen.
    - nradov 7mo ago
      Perhaps, but the monetization would have to be pretty extreme. And that would send interest rates to the moon, making further borrowing difficult. While these things are impossible to predict, my guess is that in a couple decades the government will do some sort of technical default. Force Treasury bond holders to exchange their current holdings at par for new bonds with longer maturities and artificially low interest rates. Politicians will be able to claim that no one has lost money since the nominal bond values will remain the same even though the market values will be much lower. The other thing I expect to happen is that the government will force retirement accounts (both defined benefit pension plans and defined contribution 401k plans) to purchase Treasury bonds. Because of course they're so much "safer" for retirees than risky stocks.
  - Ancalagon 7mo ago
    Without any funny business (meaning no re-valuation of the debt, which I guess there are strategies for) and assuming an interest rate on the debt of between 3-5%, I figured between 10-20 years before the interest payments eat up most essential services.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - triceratops 7mo ago
    Private US wealth is in the range of 200-400 trillion. A blanket 1% annual wealth tax would wipe out the debt in 10-20 years. 75% of US debt is held domestically. So most of that money will go back into the country. It's highly unlikely a lucrative revenue stream like this would ever go to paying off the debt. But theoretically the money exists.
    - carefree-bob 7mo ago
      The problem is that the constitution doesn't allow for a wealth tax. If you remember, we had to pass an amendment to be able to levy a tax on income, and that amendment is clear in that it only applies to income. Interestingly, it was also promised to be only 1% or so on the richest households, and it has become, er, different. But more important to the point, as the government already taxes about 20% of income, that is equivalent to holding about 20% of the wealth, as the wealth is just an income generating device and the value of the wealth is the flow of income it generates, of which 20% is already taxed. What I'd like to know is why people are obsessed about stocks and flows in completely different ways. For example, not caring about the deficit but worrying about the debt, or vice versa, or focusing on taxing wealth but not really caring about taxing income. I think the idea of taxing income makes a lot of sense, and don't want the government to try to value assets, particularly illiquid assets. And if it was up to me, I would dramatically simplify the tax code to eliminate all deductions and tax all income at the same rate, regardless of source. No reason to have one tax rate for carried interest, another tax rate for dividend payments, a third tax rate for wage income. Treat all income the same, and apply a progressive rate to the total income. Your tax form should not be more than a page long.
      - triceratops 7mo ago
        > What I'd like to know is why people are obsessed about stocks and flows in completely different ways...focusing on taxing wealth but not really caring about taxing income. Because wealth grows faster than income. r > g It's easy, especially for rich people with lots of wealth, to have low taxable income. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century#Contents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce... > not caring about the deficit but worrying about the debt Are there people like that? The debt is the sum of all deficits.
  - no-name-here 7mo ago
    > it's unpayable The deficit/debt exist because US tax rates (even including fed+state+local) are so low compared to every other major advanced economy in the world, even before last year's "One Big Beautiful (Ugly?) Bill". In fact, the US could have raised rates by more than 15% and still been the lowest. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/april/weo-report?c=156,132,134,136,158,112,111,&s=GGR_NGDP,&sy=2025&ey=2025&ssd=1 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/ap... If US tax rates were even just the average among other G7 countries, it would be trillions more than the deficit per year. (The US also has the lowest spending (fed+state+local) among them as well, but even though our spending is the lowest among them, the tax rates are so very low they're still not enough to cover even the lower spending compared to them. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/April/weo-report?c=156,132,134,136,158,112,111,&s=GGX_NGDP,&sy=2025&ey=2025&ssd=1 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/Ap... )
- cosmicgadget 7mo ago
  Printing money is monetary policy. Running a huge debt is fiscal policy. You're advocating for more taxation to cover the debt, yes?
  - Hasslequest 7mo ago
    I think their point is that by giving the gov control of monetary policy, you give the executive branch access to an unrestricted lever of taxation. They support "normal" taxation because they are easier to control than inflation
lwansbrough 7mo ago
It’s just embarrassing at this point. How long will the Americans put up with this humiliation ritual?
- cdrnsf 7mo ago
  As long as a significant portion of the population continues voting for it.
  - lwansbrough 7mo ago
    Well let’s hope, as Bush once said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… can’t get fooled again.”
    - cdrnsf 7mo ago
      Hopefully. They've bene fooled into voting for him 3 times already.
      - throw310822 7mo ago
        The US have been fooled by Israel for the past... thirty, forty years at least? Look who Trump is sending around the world to negotiate on behalf of the US: two committed Zionists, personal friends of Netanyahu and past financers of the Israeli army. The other negotiators regard them as Israeli assets, plain and simple. While they pretend to "negotiate", Israel launches surprise attacks that have not been agreed with the US and that forces them to intervene.
        libertine 7mo ago
        Either Russian propaganda is leaking into US, or people are being so easy to manipulate it's becoming scary. What's the deal the US not having agency? Lol Russia was manipulated by NATO and they were fooled over and over again, according to the state propaganda - if that was true, why are they still stuck with the fool who keeps being fooled? Isn't that the sign of a deficient leadership? Same applies to the Trump administration, until when will that narrative stick? Because the "common sense", a big trope used by both states propaganda, claims that you can only be fooled once lol
Sabinus 7mo ago
Is it just me, or are we taking the beginning of Iraq War v 2 very calmly?
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
  Far too calmly. This is exactly why the Constitution requires Congress to declare war - so that we can't wind up in a war because of the decisions of one man. Sure wish that was still in force...
  - lern_too_spel 7mo ago
    Congress can stop it at any time. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5799286-iran-war-powers-resolution-defeated/ https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5799286-iran-war-powers-... This was true of past conflicts as well. Doe v. Bush tried to challenge the Iraq Resolution because Congress had not declared war, but the US Court of Appeals dismissed the case because Congress had not opposed funding the war. The sad reality is that this is what the people had voted for, and the government is still working as intended.
    - Lapel2742 7mo ago
      >Congress can stop it at any time. No. Your congress can't stop it because it takes two to tango and Iran is clearly not willing to end the war just like that. You people should have stopped that criminal long ago.
      - rolandog 7mo ago
        Sure, but do we agree that the unitedstatesian's (pet peeve: they shouldn't be called americans, per definition) Congress could at least stop one side of the war (the one that initiated the aggression). The Iranians would probably call that a victory, and probably not pursue further retaliation. The US would then need to comply with whatever sanctions the UN might apply due to them having started an illegal war.
yanhangyhy 7mo ago
this never ends well....
- cosmicgadget 7mo ago
  Yeah but he painted himself into a corner with the Hormuz thing.
TesterVetter 7mo ago
[dead]
sitzkrieg 7mo ago
sending young americans off to die for israels relgious war and bury epstein news. the entire usa still operating my team vs your team. president trump is pedophile child rapist and noone can bother to care. sad times all around
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
walletdrainer 7mo ago
Can there be any acceptable way out of this that doesn’t look like the Nuremberg trials? It’s not like there can be any doubt about the criminality of all this, especially after Hegseth's “no quarter” comments. Hegseth explicitly stated that the current US policy is to summarily execute surrendering combatants! It’d be convenient though, we could even use the same rope to hang both Trump and Putin.
- classified 7mo ago
  Nuremberg trials sounds good to me. Not that it's realistic though.
  - red-iron-pine 7mo ago
    the only way cheeto is going to peacefully leave office is force. he's facing so many incredibly felonies, as does his family and associates, that he / they cannot. they will burn the US to the ground before they face justice. it will require force, and once you have a mob angry enough to do that we'll see Nuremberg. Or perhaps something closer to Spanish or French revolutionary actions.
    - tim333 7mo ago
      Dunno. After Jan 6th we got Merrick Garland going um, er... for a few years until it was too late. I'm not holding my breath for Nuremberg 2.
- dmos62 7mo ago
  White House said they'll bomb the energy sector if Iranians don't comply. That would be a war crime. Yes, Russia has been doing that for years, but a US president saying that is a new low. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-iran-trade-threats-over-energy-targets-war-escalates-2026-03-22/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-iran-trade-t...
tsoukase 7mo ago
The whole Western power against a deserted country and the USA will send young walking soldiers. AI, robots/drones, space tech, international hegemony, all inferior to a guy with a long gun.

134 points by cdrnsf 7mo ago

exabrial 7mo ago

[flagged]

jleyank 7mo ago
the US has run deficits for years, so it's not reckless taxation in the form I think you mean. "Pay for its bills" would be a novel concept, involving undoing various "give money to rich people" tax cuts. In the current environment, very unlikely.
commandlinefan 7mo ago
IIRC, the US debt is at 39 trillion right now, with no plan to pay it back. Which is logical, because it's unpayable. There's no way in the world that will ever be paid back. I still haven't seen anybody properly analyze how high the debt can go before it actually can't go any higher, but we're going to find out.
- pfannkuchen 7mo ago
  Monetize it or default are the only options I think. Monetizing affects everyone while default only (directly) affects bond holders. Monetizing is much easier to obfuscate though so that is probably what will happen.
  - nradov 7mo ago
    Perhaps, but the monetization would have to be pretty extreme. And that would send interest rates to the moon, making further borrowing difficult. While these things are impossible to predict, my guess is that in a couple decades the government will do some sort of technical default. Force Treasury bond holders to exchange their current holdings at par for new bonds with longer maturities and artificially low interest rates. Politicians will be able to claim that no one has lost money since the nominal bond values will remain the same even though the market values will be much lower. The other thing I expect to happen is that the government will force retirement accounts (both defined benefit pension plans and defined contribution 401k plans) to purchase Treasury bonds. Because of course they're so much "safer" for retirees than risky stocks.
- Ancalagon 7mo ago
  Without any funny business (meaning no re-valuation of the debt, which I guess there are strategies for) and assuming an interest rate on the debt of between 3-5%, I figured between 10-20 years before the interest payments eat up most essential services.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- triceratops 7mo ago
  Private US wealth is in the range of 200-400 trillion. A blanket 1% annual wealth tax would wipe out the debt in 10-20 years. 75% of US debt is held domestically. So most of that money will go back into the country. It's highly unlikely a lucrative revenue stream like this would ever go to paying off the debt. But theoretically the money exists.
  - carefree-bob 7mo ago
    The problem is that the constitution doesn't allow for a wealth tax. If you remember, we had to pass an amendment to be able to levy a tax on income, and that amendment is clear in that it only applies to income. Interestingly, it was also promised to be only 1% or so on the richest households, and it has become, er, different. But more important to the point, as the government already taxes about 20% of income, that is equivalent to holding about 20% of the wealth, as the wealth is just an income generating device and the value of the wealth is the flow of income it generates, of which 20% is already taxed. What I'd like to know is why people are obsessed about stocks and flows in completely different ways. For example, not caring about the deficit but worrying about the debt, or vice versa, or focusing on taxing wealth but not really caring about taxing income. I think the idea of taxing income makes a lot of sense, and don't want the government to try to value assets, particularly illiquid assets. And if it was up to me, I would dramatically simplify the tax code to eliminate all deductions and tax all income at the same rate, regardless of source. No reason to have one tax rate for carried interest, another tax rate for dividend payments, a third tax rate for wage income. Treat all income the same, and apply a progressive rate to the total income. Your tax form should not be more than a page long.
    - triceratops 7mo ago
      > What I'd like to know is why people are obsessed about stocks and flows in completely different ways...focusing on taxing wealth but not really caring about taxing income. Because wealth grows faster than income. r > g It's easy, especially for rich people with lots of wealth, to have low taxable income. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century#Contents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce... > not caring about the deficit but worrying about the debt Are there people like that? The debt is the sum of all deficits.
- no-name-here 7mo ago
  > it's unpayable The deficit/debt exist because US tax rates (even including fed+state+local) are so low compared to every other major advanced economy in the world, even before last year's "One Big Beautiful (Ugly?) Bill". In fact, the US could have raised rates by more than 15% and still been the lowest. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/april/weo-report?c=156,132,134,136,158,112,111,&s=GGR_NGDP,&sy=2025&ey=2025&ssd=1 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/ap... If US tax rates were even just the average among other G7 countries, it would be trillions more than the deficit per year. (The US also has the lowest spending (fed+state+local) among them as well, but even though our spending is the lowest among them, the tax rates are so very low they're still not enough to cover even the lower spending compared to them. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/April/weo-report?c=156,132,134,136,158,112,111,&s=GGX_NGDP,&sy=2025&ey=2025&ssd=1 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/Ap... )
cosmicgadget 7mo ago
Printing money is monetary policy. Running a huge debt is fiscal policy. You're advocating for more taxation to cover the debt, yes?
- Hasslequest 7mo ago
  I think their point is that by giving the gov control of monetary policy, you give the executive branch access to an unrestricted lever of taxation. They support "normal" taxation because they are easier to control than inflation

lwansbrough 7mo ago

It’s just embarrassing at this point. How long will the Americans put up with this humiliation ritual?

cdrnsf 7mo ago
As long as a significant portion of the population continues voting for it.
- lwansbrough 7mo ago
  Well let’s hope, as Bush once said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… can’t get fooled again.”
  - cdrnsf 7mo ago
    Hopefully. They've bene fooled into voting for him 3 times already.
    - throw310822 7mo ago
      The US have been fooled by Israel for the past... thirty, forty years at least? Look who Trump is sending around the world to negotiate on behalf of the US: two committed Zionists, personal friends of Netanyahu and past financers of the Israeli army. The other negotiators regard them as Israeli assets, plain and simple. While they pretend to "negotiate", Israel launches surprise attacks that have not been agreed with the US and that forces them to intervene.
      - libertine 7mo ago
        Either Russian propaganda is leaking into US, or people are being so easy to manipulate it's becoming scary. What's the deal the US not having agency? Lol Russia was manipulated by NATO and they were fooled over and over again, according to the state propaganda - if that was true, why are they still stuck with the fool who keeps being fooled? Isn't that the sign of a deficient leadership? Same applies to the Trump administration, until when will that narrative stick? Because the "common sense", a big trope used by both states propaganda, claims that you can only be fooled once lol

Sabinus 7mo ago

Is it just me, or are we taking the beginning of Iraq War v 2 very calmly?

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
Far too calmly. This is exactly why the Constitution requires Congress to declare war - so that we can't wind up in a war because of the decisions of one man. Sure wish that was still in force...
- lern_too_spel 7mo ago
  Congress can stop it at any time. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5799286-iran-war-powers-resolution-defeated/ https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5799286-iran-war-powers-... This was true of past conflicts as well. Doe v. Bush tried to challenge the Iraq Resolution because Congress had not declared war, but the US Court of Appeals dismissed the case because Congress had not opposed funding the war. The sad reality is that this is what the people had voted for, and the government is still working as intended.
  - Lapel2742 7mo ago
    >Congress can stop it at any time. No. Your congress can't stop it because it takes two to tango and Iran is clearly not willing to end the war just like that. You people should have stopped that criminal long ago.
    - rolandog 7mo ago
      Sure, but do we agree that the unitedstatesian's (pet peeve: they shouldn't be called americans, per definition) Congress could at least stop one side of the war (the one that initiated the aggression). The Iranians would probably call that a victory, and probably not pursue further retaliation. The US would then need to comply with whatever sanctions the UN might apply due to them having started an illegal war.

yanhangyhy 7mo ago

this never ends well....

cosmicgadget 7mo ago
Yeah but he painted himself into a corner with the Hormuz thing.

TesterVetter 7mo ago

[dead]

sitzkrieg 7mo ago

sending young americans off to die for israels relgious war and bury epstein news. the entire usa still operating my team vs your team. president trump is pedophile child rapist and noone can bother to care. sad times all around

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

walletdrainer 7mo ago

Can there be any acceptable way out of this that doesn’t look like the Nuremberg trials? It’s not like there can be any doubt about the criminality of all this, especially after Hegseth's “no quarter” comments. Hegseth explicitly stated that the current US policy is to summarily execute surrendering combatants! It’d be convenient though, we could even use the same rope to hang both Trump and Putin.

classified 7mo ago
Nuremberg trials sounds good to me. Not that it's realistic though.
- red-iron-pine 7mo ago
  the only way cheeto is going to peacefully leave office is force. he's facing so many incredibly felonies, as does his family and associates, that he / they cannot. they will burn the US to the ground before they face justice. it will require force, and once you have a mob angry enough to do that we'll see Nuremberg. Or perhaps something closer to Spanish or French revolutionary actions.
  - tim333 7mo ago
    Dunno. After Jan 6th we got Merrick Garland going um, er... for a few years until it was too late. I'm not holding my breath for Nuremberg 2.
dmos62 7mo ago
White House said they'll bomb the energy sector if Iranians don't comply. That would be a war crime. Yes, Russia has been doing that for years, but a US president saying that is a new low. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-iran-trade-threats-over-energy-targets-war-escalates-2026-03-22/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-iran-trade-t...

tsoukase 7mo ago

The whole Western power against a deserted country and the USA will send young walking soldiers. AI, robots/drones, space tech, international hegemony, all inferior to a guy with a long gun.