Donald Trump has repeatedly pledged to slash the national deficit and curb debt during his second term, but a sobering assessment of the nation’s financial health by one of the federal government’s premier fiscal watchdogs suggests Trump 2.0’s policies have not only collectively pushed the federal deficit significantly higher, but put the country on an unsustainable path.
In its latest budget and economic outlook, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan federal agency, revised its cumulative deficit projection for the 2026–2035 period upward by $1.4 trillion compared with its forecast from just a year ago.
“Our budget projections continue to indicate that the fiscal trajectory is not sustainable,” CBO Director Phillip Swagel said in a statement, noting the agency’s latest projections. Under laws passed in Trump’s first year back in office, the national debt in 2030 will surpass the historic high of 106% of GDP, which it reached in 1946. Meanwhile, the balance of Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2032, one year earlier than the CBO projected last January.
My bet is that as the economy falters further and the world abandons US treasuries, he’s going to make things even worse with QE and forcing rate cuts. Problem is that I have no idea what to do with that prediction. Plant beans and stock up on iodine?
I am investing in ways to make my future costs lower. For example, I have solar on my house. It covers about half of my bill, and will for the foreseeable future. I am looking into additions to solar, as I live in Alaska, and need to figure out winter times.
I am looking into heat pumps, they aren’t great for dead of winter, but they might eliminate shoulder season heat costs.
We buy the best quality, and locally produced food and goods we can, to help support our health and our community resilience.
Buy once, cry once, whenever we can, because replacement of stuff will be harder.
We live beneath our means, and take the money we save being boring and pay off debt, so that we truly own what is ours, because someday, paying a mortgage or for a vehicle, might be too difficult.
Practice using what you have, instead of buying stuff to solve your problem. Ingenuity is something that can be learned and practiced, but isn’t something that comes naturally to people.
Learn to make stuff, or about your surroundings. If you live in a place you can forage, learn about what you can eat in your area to supplement what you have to buy.
Plan to be a poor person, because that is a situation that is likely, and that you can survive.
Most people will not make it, if we wind up in a situation where you are dependent on what you plant, and goods you stock up on. That stuff is just prolonging the inevitable. Total independence is just not a thing most people are prepared for mentally, or have the skills to pull off. So, prepare for a future where luxuries are limited, material goods are in short supply, and you have to figure out how to make do with what you have.
a lot of places have little windmills here, if that works for you. they’re relatively inexpensive and easy to maintain. the biggest concern is where the shadow goes (the pulsing shadow of the blades is not fun that hour it’s on you) but more modern blade designs have helped eliminate that
I was looking at the same. Some naysayer I know was saying it would never pay back before the panels “failed”.
Of course, he was assuming that the panels would fail with 100% certainty at a certain period of time. He was also assuming that electricity costs are going to stay stagnant. If I have a battery backup installed, that obviously rejiggers things, and I’m assuming they not last very long, either at least when it comes to the timelines one talks about in regards to things like houses.
I am definitely not going to assume that, LOL. That hasn’t even been true in the past year alone, nevermind what some of the more negative predictions have for how costs will be impacted by things like data centers.
Yeah early photovoltaic solar panels weren’t great, in the same way early ev batteries weren’t great. They’ve become far longer lasting and more efficient. The listed life isn’t when it craps out, it’s when it is no longer guaranteed to be within a certain stated efficiency. Much like how phone batteries slowly lose charge capacity as cells break, that’s how solar panels are. For a long time you won’t notice but eventually it’ll break down enough it’s noticeable, and eventually before it stops producing it’ll just not be worth the space that could be used for new panels.
Yep, the ‘payoff time’ on mine is long, but I am betting they last much longer than that, and that energy prices won’t scale normally. I really want sodium ion batteries to work out, but they are sounding less promising.
We have a big natural gas shortage looming here, and most homes are heated with it. Such an obvious thing to be trying to prepare for, sure heat pumps won’t heat all winter here, but… If I can generate heat using my free electricity 2 or 3 of the months needing heat a year, that is a permanent discount, that only gets better as costs go crazy. People around me don’t really seem to be thinking this way.
I live in Colorado and so probably different heating/cooling circumstances, but people also don’t seem to be thinking about future costs of energy either.
Now, it could be that things turn around, Donvict is out of the picture, and we have a huge boom in solar and wind and through legislation or just from the market being saturated, prices drop. But given the way that things are going right now thanks to the utterly insane Republicans, all I see is those guys fighting against the future in every way possible while they stand aside and let Donvict and his criminal family just grift their way to billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains.