Forbes Americas Over Spending Problem
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About Me
- John
- I am married and we have 3 adult daughters and a dog. We live in Plymouth MN. My interests are learning, communicating, home improvement projects, motorcycling, boating, and other outside activities. Thank you for reading my blog and have a great day !!!
27 comments:
What's the child's share of the assets of America? What does his or her balance sheet look like?
--Hiram
Do we have an asset problem? Too many highways? Too many schools? Too much police and fire protection? Too much medical care? Too many of those things that debt was used to pay for?
This child could have been born in a country with none of those things and no debt. Would that have been a better deal?
--Hiram
Good point, but the linked pages show that we will likely have to give up some of these niceties. Since many of them are just that.
The most disturbing one from my perspective is the US Spending chart. The total cost of govt going from ~20% of GDP in 1950 to ~40% in 2012 is very disturbing. Definitely not a trendline we can continue.
All,
Please do not confuse the spending links in the post with this chart. They are spending and this the National Debt history. It seems an appropriate link given the topic of the post.ZFacts National Debt Info
Thinking on it further, I think she would have liked it more if everything had been paid for and the total cost of govt was around 20% of the GDP. Then her generation would have been free to spend their money on making the country greater. Rather than paying to replace and maintain the aging infrastructure.
good point, but the linked pages show that we will likely have to give up some of these niceties.
But that's a political choice we make on her behalf, one by the way, we show no signs of having the political guts to actually make. I have often talked here and elsewhere, for example, about cuts we can make in health care costs, and when I do, very often the response is that we can't do that because it would mean death panels, socialized medicine, rationing, and that 56 percent of medical doctors would quit their jobs to pursue exciting opportunities in the field of used car sales. And maybe all of those things might be true, but I for one, just don't know how how you implement spending cuts without cutting spending.
Another thing I do know, is that with all the talk about the national debt, Republicans who quite frankly look like they will win the White House, are advocating and will in fact pass tax cuts. That will increase, not decrease the deficit. They remain both the party that loves both talking about tough choices, and the avoiding of the actual making of them.
--Hiram
I don't disagree, both parties keep giving into us citizens like parents spoiling their kids. Yet we kids would vote them out of office if they started acting like responsible adults by saying no. It is a messy situation.
That US Spending graph seems appropriate for Halloween.
Imagine yourself in the dark bowels of the Titanic as the water keeps rising and you have no means of escape because the exits are blocked. (insert your own scream here...)
I guess I would argue that the Republicans are trying to do something very responsible by changing Social Security and Medicare over to fixed contribution programs rather than fixed benefit programs. Yet a lot of people including yourself cry foul about this excellent idea.
both parties keep giving into us citizens like parents spoiling their kids.
I know I would take a look at cutting medical spending. I was just fine with Obama's cutting 700 billion from Medicare. It's the Republican Party who has objections.
I am sorry, you just can't be the party of spending cuts if you don't want to cut spending. Republicans don't want to cut health care costs. They don't want to cut military spending, they in fact want to raise it. Give them credit, they do want to cut Social Security, I mean really why should be be keeping our promises to our elderly who we just don't need much anymore.
We will look at benefit cuts. But we won't look at them in a context where Mitt Romney is cutting taxes on the wealthy, and raising taxes on the rest of us. That simply makes no sense at all.
==Hiram
That's funny, that's what everyone says.
"Those cuts make no sense at all, and we should spend some more on my priorities."
No wonder the evil hideous spending monster is coming to get us. (Buh hahahaa...)
As I said, spoiled kids...
Some fools keep talking about tax increases on the rich (or not giving out tax cuts) as if they would actually do anything to solve the SPENDING problem. Confiscate the income of the top 1%, and government will still add over $1 trillion to the debt next year alone. It's just silly. CUT spending, I don't care on what, it must be cut, period. Any other nation would have been bankrupt by now, and we cannot remain an exception for very long.
Poor kid. If you add in unfunded liabilities-- the cost of political promises-- her debt is over a quarter million dollars, and she can't find a job! The total assets of the US cannot cover (they're about half) the total liabilities unless those liabilities are removed. The annual federal deficit now exceeds our annual GDP. That's the definition of bankrupt in any normal sense of the word. What seems so strange about this: when you have a spending problem, stop spending?
J. Ewing
Some fools keep talking about tax increases on the rich (or not giving out tax cuts) as if they would actually do anything to solve the SPENDING problem
We spend money on three things. The military, and Mitt would spend more money there. Health care, where I would like to cut spending, but where any attempt to cut spending is instantly attacked as death panelism, etc. And Social Security where promises that were made would have to be broken.
I know, I have heard the speeches, I have watched the commercials. Republicans want to cut spending. There just isn't any doubt about that. But with my limited intellect, I just don't understand how you cut spending without cutting the things you spend money on.
--Hiram
Hiram,
Avoiding Social Security amd Medicare for now. Since there are some strings attached to these.
Do you have any concerns about eliminating all means tested welfare and food programs from the federal budget and making the states responsible?
Do you have any concerns about eliminating all means tested welfare and food programs from the federal budget and making the states responsible?
One concern about means testing with Social Security is that if people particularly wealthy people didn't benefit from the system, they wouldn't have an interest in defending it. And that's kind of the situation we have gotten ourselves in anyway. We see rich CEO's whose retirement isn't dependent on Social Security argue for it's reduction. Curiously, they don't advocate for the elimination of tax expenditures that benefit them.
The guy who has worked hard all his life, maybe in a job that has had negative effects on his health rarely appears on Sunday morning talk shows, doesn't often buy full page ads in the Wall Street Journal, is never invited to speak at the Jackson Hole economic conference. Why is that? Why should that have an impact on our national discourse? Explain to me, why his voice, his ideas, his interests are of less concern than those of Jaime Dimon. Or Mitt Romney's for that matter.
--Hiram
As we continue posting over the years, it seems to become more clear to me that the Democrats would like us to convert to a Unitary System and away from a Federalist system. Federalism
I guess that's fine with me if we get rid of most of the State and Local governmental costs while we are at it. No sense paying multiple systems for the same things...
Please note per the link that there are some significant downside risks to it. Especially given our countries size and diversity.
Hiram,
You avoided my question... I asked to ignore SS and Medicare for now. What about the rest...
Eliminating all means-tested welfare doesn't solve the deficit, either, believe it or not, and turning it back to the states doesn't reduce the cost, just puts it another place. The one advantage would be that the states have balanced budget laws and can't print money, so they would have to raise taxes to pay for it, AND be more efficient and restrictive (i.e. less generous) or go broke. Nothing wrong with that and perhaps as it should be.
The only way to solve the problem of deficits is to tell people the truth, that politicians have been overpromising and that those promises cannot be fulfilled very far into the future. Also, just trying to fulfill those promises is driving us into bankruptcy. There is a simple solution, which is to convert SS, over time, to a private system, and to convert Medicare, over much less time, to a competitive private-insurance-based system with a fixed, means-tested benefit.
J.
You just said there was a trillion dollars in welfare and the deficit is about a trillion. Looks like that would take care of it pretty good for now.
Granted Medicare is still the monster of the future.
I saw this on a friend's facebook page. It was interesting and why I will likely keep voting for the crazy and conflicted Republicans. We have a better chance of getting there with them.
Conservatism is Calling Video
You avoided my question... I asked to ignore SS and Medicare for now.
Usually, when we talk about means testing we are talking about Social Security and Medicare. Without those things, I am not sure what we are talking about. I do believe, I guess, those with greater means should pay more in taxes. but I don't think they should get less for their taxes. I don't think the parents of rich kids should have to pay tuition at public schools simply because they might have the means to.
--Hiram
hiram, the "means tested" programs do NOT include Social Security and Medicare. You have often said that these are programs people "pay for" through their FICA taxes over the years. You get your money "back" just by surviving to age 67. That fiction must eventually be surrendered by the politicians who promised it.
The means tested programs are those for which you must pass a "means test." You only get the benefit if you have insufficient "means," i.e. income. Just like SS and MC, they are "entitlements" but you become entitled in different ways. That is why it will be easier to get out from underneath the welfare load than the SS/MC load, because the fiction that this is something you "paid for all your life" doesn't exist. Medicaid, for example, could be turned back to the states tomorrow, as a fixed block grant and no regulations (as Paul Ryan has proposed), and it would instantly reduce the federal budget AND, no doubt, improve the efficacy of the program.
John, you are correct that, rounding to the nearest trillion dollars, welfare and the deficit are about the same. I am reminded, however, of the last good Democrat from Illinois, Sen. Everett Dirksen, who famously said, "A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." In this case, the real money amounts to about a quarter TRILLION dollars more deficit than welfare spending. In other words, cut out all means tested welfare from the current budget, and you would be left with roughly the same deficit as that wild spender G.W. Bush had in his last budget.
J. Ewing
the "means tested" programs do NOT include Social Security and Medicare
I know, the question is often raised as to whether they should be.
"You have often said that these are programs people "pay for" through their FICA taxes over the years. You get your money "back" just by surviving to age 67. That fiction must eventually be surrendered by the politicians who promised it."
Have I said that? I have meant the opposite. That FICA taxes pay for these things is more of an illusion than a reality. In real terms, the money the government takes out of your paycheck is nothing more or less than a tax. In what account the government chooses to place that money simply does not matter, just as which account Target might place a credit card doesn't matter.
I know this is a difficult concept to understand because a lot of people have over decades tried with a great deal of success for various political reasons to persuade us otherwise. But when you think long and hard about it, it becomes clear that that's the way it is. And that's the way it works. If Social Security were an insurance program, deceased people would get a benefit. That they don't, is pretty strong evidence that it isn't.
==Hiram
Thinking about means testing, should, for example, rich kids pay more when they go to state universities? Not get the full benefit of the variety of subsidies we give to students? It's not really something I have thought very much about, and I guess I would be inclined to say no. But I am open to being persuaded on the issue I guess.
--Hiram
hiram, at the risk of agreeing with one of your definitions, I will agree that SS is, indeed, just an accounting gimmick-- a tax that the government spends, coincidentally in roughly equal amounts, on SS benefits. But the dollars are all fungible. My opinion on SS reform starts with eliminating that phony bookkeeping entry and just balancing the total federal budget.
J.
SS is, indeed, just an accounting gimmick-- a tax that the government spends, coincidentally in roughly equal amounts, on SS benefits.
We do seem to be in agreement on that. Also on the fungibility of dollars.
--Hiram
You are in agreement then that the old timers don't need to get their money back since it isn't theirs.
It would just be nice if we kept the Entitlement program in place for them, but we shouldn't feel too compelled since they were just paying their taxes back then.
And since they spent too much and did not pay enough, (ie national debt), we should be ok stopping payments until the debt is paid off?
You are in agreement then that the old timers don't need to get their money back since it isn't theirs.
How does the issue of whether question of whether old timers, people who are dependent on Social Security, need the money, relate to whether the money is or isn't theirs. If the money isn't theirs, then can we sue to get it back? People, after all, do not have a legal right to what isn't theirs.
"And since they spent too much and did not pay enough, (ie national debt), we should be ok stopping payments until the debt is paid off?"
Speaking of rights, do people in debt have the right to stop payments on the obligations they owe? The next time I get a phone bill, can I get off the hook of paying for it by sending a note to the phone company telling them I have a mortgage?
--Hiram
John, the question of "entitlement" to SS benefits has long been settled. SCOTUS has ruled that SS beneficiaries have ZERO rights to benefits. Congress can reduce or eliminate them at any time, at whim.
That said, any SS reform plan ought to start with "promises were made and should be kept" but only for those nearing or in retirement already. Simply shifting gradually to a fully private-account system, where SS taxes are invested in private accounts-- details see the Chile model-- would greatly improve the whole system, for everybody.
J. Ewing
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