> What are some of the less painful means?

Reducing the deficit. Credit changes how private money is made through the monetary system. Fiscal policy directly creates and destroys dollars in the economy–it's fare more powerful.

Reducing the deficit by any substantial amount means cutting entitlements or raising taxes substantially. That's political suicide (not that political suicide wasn't already committed by this administration).

Energy prices for Joe Average can be stabilized by having non-essential users (AI data centers) subsidize everyone else through taxes or controlled rates.

> subsidize everyone else

Just households. The inverse of what Germany did.

That's not realistically possible. The point of raising rates is cut usage of everyone else to free up capacity for data centers.

It absolutely is. In a crisis, like the one we are in, the high-margin non-essential uses should subsidize the low-margin essential ones.

A crisis doesn't magically create generating capacity.

Say a system had X capacity and 100% utilization. Now someone wants to build a data center that consumes 0.1X power. Demand is now 1.1X and to prevent the system from going over capacity 0.1X of pre-existing demand has to be destroyed.

Subsidizing other users makes the problem worse because they will increase their energy usage in response to the lower prices.

I'm a huge fan of a household allotment to a reasonable amount followed by market rates for everyone. We can start with water and electricity.

Every household gets X gallons of water a month at a regulated rate. After that, everyone competes equally.

Lots of people are in well water and lots of people have solar.

Regulation and increased taxes/fees just make everything more obtuse and expensive, not better or simpler.

Simpler isn't always the thing to optimize for when people can't afford to heat their homes.

But you're right, we could also solve this problem very simply, without gradiated utility rates, by taxing the crap out of corporate profits and redistributing them to everyone else. This would punish corps who aren't building data centers, but if you don't mind turning the whole country into an AI server farm, I guess that would work too.

So you require the data center to pay for increasing generating capacity by 1.1X as part of its permitting.

They do but that also does not magically create supply.

What? Maybe I wasn't clear, but I meant that you make them pay for increasing the supply.

I understand but it takes time to build power plants. You still have the same immediate capacity problem and need to reduce demand until the new supply comes online.

No, but energy is sold at market prices, and money is fungible and money can be moved.

Money does, in fact, create generating capacity, as expensive, idling energy sources are turned up.

> Reducing the deficit by any substantial amount means cutting entitlements or raising taxes substantially

2016's $585bn DoD budget [1] bought what $817bn does today [2]. 2027's NDAA requests $1.1 trillion [3]. On top of like $100bn–on par with Saudi Arabia's military budget–we gave to ICE.

I'd generally consider myself a defence hawk. I think we should support Ukraine. I value our commitments to Korea and Taiwan. But what in the actual fuck are we doing blowing an already-bloated deficit on checks notes a WW2 battleship.

[1] https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/2016%...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

[3] https://comptroller.war.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/F...

The elephant in the room is still Medicare and Social Security. Not only are they a much larger share of federal spending, they are growing much faster than the budget as a whole. If we froze spending on these programs today, over the long term the budget would essentially balance itself due to rising tax revenue combined with the slow grower growth of discretionary spending. The CBO models that scenario in their "payable benefits scenario". Remember, Congress has to re-authorize defense spending so the defense budget doesn't grows unless Congress wants it to. Entitlements on the other hand, are on auto-pilot!

The independent ability of the Fed to do unpopular things is one of the strengths of the American system. Carter paid the price politically to establish it; subsequent politicians have benefited for decades subsequent.

Entitlements absolutely need to be cut. It’s beyond unsustainable already and it will get worse and worse. As you’ve mentioned, it’s political suicide, so most likely nothing will change and we will keep getting massive government overspending and inflation.

> Entitlements absolutely need to be cut

Or taxes raised. I'm personally a fan of adding a few and then doubling all tax brackets.

Easiest one, ending most of the stupid tarrifs.

Changing stupid energy policy that is propping up oil demand.

When China is selling batteries and solar below cost or at tiny profit, the federal government is effectively giving the subsidy to other countries.

When wind is the cheapest with the highest ROI we should be doing more of it.

For #1, didn't the court rule them as illegal? Sorry too much in the news cycles to keep tabs on.

If I recall correctly, the court ruled that the way Trump was doing them was illegal. So Trump started doing them via a different mechanism (or stated legal rationale, or something), and as far as I know the courts have not yet ruled on that new approach.

I don't know if the new Congress is going to be able to put a stop to this.

End the war, end the trade war.

The rich take less profit for themselves. They won't do it willingly in a system they've built for their primary benefit.

End the optional negatives: eliminate the tariffs that are working their way through the economy. End the war against Iran.

Do some positives. Work with Congress to arrive at a sane resolution to the US economy's persistent reliance on undocumented labor. (The policy of deporting all immigrants, legal or not, is inflationary.) Implement a healthcare backstop policy to guarantee access to healthcare for all citizens. (Health insurance premium inflation is running around 2x+ overall inflation.)

There are a lot of options.