Russian Threats to American Democracy

Can our democracy really be toppled by social media?

Thomas Friedman recently posted what he referred to as a "code red" regarding the threat that Donald Trump poses to U.S. Democracy, in which he argues that the Russians have Trump in such a compromising position that he will do or say whatever they want him to.

If that is true, and I tend to suspect that it is, it is certainly grounds for impeachment, but how is it a threat to our democracy?

I can see how having Putin control both the Russian Republic and the White House would be a threat to our national security and to the role of the U.S. globally, but how it is a threat to our democracy, per se, is less clear.

The key allegation in the Friedman piece is that "Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy." But, what cyber warfare is he referring to? Is he referring to the hack of John Podesta's Gmail account, which I wrote about previously?

Is he talking about the thousands of dollars the Russians spent on Facebook ads? Facebook ads? Really? Is that how we make decisions about who to vote for in this day and age?

Or maybe, he is referring to the spoof Twitter accounts that caused certain hashtags to trend, drawing attention to them, apparently funded by the Russians.

What is next, Photoshopped pictures uploaded to fake Instagram accounts, that are somehow going to influence our politics?

If Friedman is right that the Russians (and by extension, Trump) are an existential threat to our democracy, then the problem is the moral, intellectual and political weakness of the electorate, not suggestive Russian ploys.

I don't care how many Facebook ads get purchased (I don't use Facebook anyway) or what hashtags are trending on Twitter (which I barely pay any attention to in any event). I care about a candidate's background, education, experience, achievements, and plans for the future.

If Facebook is altering the outcome of the elections as so many think it is, then it is because the U.S. electorate is apathetic, lazy, morally vague and doesn't want to put the work in to find out who is the best candidate. And, an apathetic and lazy electorate is definitely a threat to ANY democracy, one with or without foreign enemies.

Don't Pour Gas on a Bonfire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDz_9kfrcFk

Like a bunch of Yahoos with a pile of wood and a 5 gallon jug of gasoline, Trump and the Republican Congress are ignoring the deficit and pushing for more economic growth when it is obvious that we are already close to full employment.

The important fact that they are ignoring is that we already have over $20 trillion in debt that needs to be periodically refinanced.

Currently, the interest rate on the 10 year bond is below 3% (but climbing quickly), which means that we *only* have to divert about $580 billion a year to service this debt.

But, what if interest rates on the 10 year bond rise to 9%, as they did in the wake of Ronald Reagan's tax cuts in the 1980's? That $580 billion becomes $1.8 trillion in interest payments alone.

The 2015 federal budget was $3.8 trillion, so interest payments of $1.8 trillion would be over half of the federal budget.

Of course, that is not something that the economy can bear, so the Federal Reserve will have to issue additional debt instruments to bridge the gap, which will force them to offer ever higher interest rates, creating a death spiral that will destroy the dollar and the U.S. economy.

What our democratically elected leaders fail to understand is that a nation must take on debt in times of crisis and war, and repay that debt in times of growth.

The Republican bet in this case is that we can grow out of our deficits, but with an additional $1 trillion in deficits already forecast for 2019 (and each subsequent year), the economy would have to grow by $11 trillion (based on a current GDP of about $20 trillion) to bring in the additional revenue to make up the shortfall and balance the budget.

Do we really think we can more than double U.S. economic output over the next four years? That implies an annual growth rate of over 20%.

Here is the historical GDP growth data in the post-WWII period:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth

We've never done it before, but who knows....

In any event, when hyper-inflation hits it will make repayment of the debt MUCH, MUCH EASIER, as inflation will reduce it down to almost nothing.