Sequester Day!

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Agreed. I was skeptical too about that statement in the light of the current political chaos in Italy. I don't even have to go that far. It took Belgium nearly a year to form a government over an entirely different issue, and several of our coalition governments have collapsed. But there is an advantage I can see too. Established parties tend to get stuck on their ideology, whether 'left' or 'right' wing. A new party could make a difference to this sort of political inertia. (Or just make a lot of noise and disappear into oblivion, as I've seen happen many times as well).

Yes.
We once had a new party that gave us hope and promised us many new ideas - and delivered nothing.

No, and I will tell you why: the party system in the U.S. is fundamentally different from other countries. Take Germany, whose federal system of government is closest to our own in Europe. There, parties are organized around specific platforms, and members share more or less the same beliefs. Members have disagreements, and they do change their minds, but they have broad based agreement on platforms. They also have more member programming and a centralized administrative structure.

In the U.S, the party looks different. Both parties have a national committee but they are not the central body. The national committees administer presidential campaigns and issue talking points, but have no real power over the state committees or congressional committees. They are the organizations responsible for choosing whom to funnel money to when running for either state offices or Congress. Note I did not say endorse a candidate. Anyone, regardless of beliefs, can run in that party's primary, where voting rules are determined by the state.

More importantly, each of the two parties are very big tents. Take the Democrats. The Democrats include environmentalists, factory workers, immigrants, and professionals, among other groups. Many of these groups have opposing interests, and it is impossible to please them all. However, in each state, one of these groups likely dominates over the other. For instance (and I don't know if this is true, but I am guessing), the Democrat party committee of Ohio may emphasize unions and trade protectionism, and the Democratic party committee of Oregon may emphasize pollution controls. The Republican party is the exact same way.

If you want to learn the real reasons for gridlock, I'd say they are a combination of gerrymandering and single member districts. I have overwritten my welcome, but I am happy to explain those concepts in greater detail.

You're partially correct. These people will be paid unemployment, for a while - I believe 6 months or a year in most cases - unless they find other jobs in which case they're no longer paid unemployment. Beyond that, the amount that people are paid on unemployment is, in most cases, far below what they would normally be paid at their job. But also, unemployment costs are split between the central federal government and the individual state governments. Bottom line, while someone's on unemployment instead of being employed by the federal government, it saves the federal government money, even counting lost tax revenue.

$16 trillion is a lot, no doubt, but its not the real problem. The real problem is if we continue to let that amount grow. Getting the budget deficit down to zero is what must be done. Even just paying it off a little bit, say $10 billion a year, would be fine. Over time deflation will devalue the deficit vs. GDP and vs. government revenue and then it can be paid down further or will simply not matter as much, with interest payments being a smaller percentage of government revenue.

Yes, I can see (I hope) how multiparty systems would not work in first-past-the-post voting systems. I'm not sure if I understand how that works in practice as we have a proportional voting system. Let's see. So that would mean that - assuming that we would have voting districts - a minority party like the SGP (orthodox calvinists) could gain more seats by drawing the borders of the district in such a way that the majority of the electorate would be in the municipalities with known strong support of the SGP, and that the other votes would go to waste. Have I understood that correctly?

Yes, that's basically correct. For instance, lets suppose that there are going to be 5 districts in a state. Lets suppose group A is 60% of the population, and group B is 40% of the population. So, nominally, group A would get 3 representatives, and group B would get 2 representatives.

Now, suppose for instance that everyone in group B lives in the center of the state. Suppose group A is in charge of drawing the district boundaries. Group A then proceeds to draw up the district boundaries such that each district contains a small part of the area where group B lives. Group B does not have a majority in any of the 5 districts, and when the elections happen, group A ends up with 5 representatives and group B ends up with none.

What happens in reality is quite similar - the difference being that the groups are more intermingled - so we often see district boundaries being drawn with absurd, non-sensical shapes that do not match geography or any other method of dividing up an area, other than the method of achieving the goals outlined above to split up one groups vote and to ensure that they are a majority in as few districts as possible.

Why does the United States have to pay interest on its own money?

Governments and households aren't bound to the same constraints. Some people believe they should be, but that's a different argument.

Lol, 85 billion.

So in other words we're going over Niagra Falls with the only ore/paddle up our collective arses five minutes later rather than five minutes sooner - and this is the great horror of government austerity that the media has been going on about as if it were the next weather SnowAcolypse or Snowmaggedon.

I think we're just fried as a culture. Stick a fork in us, we're Rome repeating itself.

Because its not its own money. Typically the government issues bonds (savings bonds, treasury bonds, etc.) - they are for a set term and pay a certain amount of interest - for instance I might be able to buy a U.S. government 5-year $500 savings bond for, say $363. In 5 years, I can redeem the bond for $500. But the difference between $363 and $500 is money the government must pay me back that I didn't give it - interest - and the amount I pay for the 5-year savings bond is set by the current interest rate, such that 5 years of compounded interest at current interest rates on the amount of money I pay = $500.

Now, you may say "Hey, the U.S. government prints its own money, why doesn't it just print more money?" Because doing so increases the money supply, which devalues the dollar and drives inflation. It devalues the national debt, because the dollar amount we owe remains the same but the value of those dollars decreases, but causing high inflation in one's own economy is not a good idea.

Expenditure can exceed income, in the long run, but only to a certain degree and only so long as interest rates are kept in check. Having a debt and even a deficit is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if the borrowed money is invested wisely. So long as the debt does not exceed a level where the costs of simply maintaining the debt (interest) become too much to bear, its not the end of the world. If the U.S, balanced its budget today, and held the debt firm at the $16.2 trillion or so its currently at, we'd be ok so long as interest rates did not rise too much. We'd even be ok if it kept growing, but the rate at which it grows has to be carefully controlled - if not a balanced budget, then one that is nearly balanced.

How exactly does government issued bonds vs 3 maxed out credit cards differentiate?

When the person with 3 maxed out credit cards is going to print his own money, he'll go to jail.
The US government pays somewhere around 2% interest in their bonds, so investors seem fairly confident they will get their money back. Compare Greece, Italy, Spain the last couple of years.

I can agree with this. In this instance it means that no matter how bad these budget cuts happen to be for the economy as a whole, many congress members have nothing to fear and no reason to compromise because their seats are safe...

However, if these cuts actually result in a 1% reduction in GDP, it will mean significant pain and job losses somewhere...

Nationally, the GOP will (rightly in my opinion) get the blame. The end result could be devastating for Republicans at a national level. They could become a regional party with Democrats dominating the Presidency.


They'll be a regional party of zealots kinda like the Democrats were before the civil war.

We are closer to that than you think!

The irony here is that our system was created by men who were classically educated and it was meant to be run by men who were classically educated.

Now our system is being run by barbarians who have no idea what compromise or dialectic is. They have no idea about how to run the government. They just know how to exploit and abuse certain rules in order to thwart the other side...

How long before the public is so frustrated and disgusted by our system that they are willing to follow a dictator?

I think a huge chunk already is...