"Plus, it's not about cutting spending but about spending wisely."
Statement makes no sense. Currently, funds going out exceed funds coming in, largely due to ever-expanding entitlement spending. Since an immediate and dramatic increase in revenue is unlikely, the only remaining variable in the equation is cutting spending.
Funds going out exceed funds coming in for two reasons. First, the near elimination of taxes on corporations and the super-rich; second, profuse spending on corporate welfare and a foreign policy based on insuring profits for the corporate-financial-military-complex. The bank bailout (5 years in) is currently running $75 billion a month (just reduced from $85 billion a month). That's $900 billion a year, which is more than the $800 billion annual cost of Medicare.
You can keep drinking Limbaugh's Kool-Aid or you can turn on your brain and use it to think for yourself.
saint, the gov't could also spend money in a way that makes them money. look at the interstate (or railroad before that). funded by government. a lot of people make (or made) tons of money off that. walmart distribution wouldn't work without paved roads and teamsters.
funding foreign wars gives money to haliburton and builds infrastructure outside of the unites states so those countries can build their profit base. sending subsidies to oil companies or other corporate entities that already have plenty of money doesn't help anyone. taxing the middle class extra so you can reduce capital gains tax is just plain stupid.
spending wisely does make sense. investing in building a better country is a good idea.
"Ever-expanding entitlement spending" is a red herring. What Miles and curt have said is right: we spend billions on wars and in other countries and on tax breaks for enormous countries. The amount we spend on a well-educated populace, taking care of our elderly, and doing research to improve our society's well-being is a pittance by comparison.
As an example on a smaller scale: in the past decades universities have spent billions creating on-campus wellness centers (workout facilities) and malls (food courts). They've simultaneously stopped spending on tenured faculty and instead are paying a non-livable wage to adjunct professors. So the students, who are paying enormous sums of money to have access to 100 exercise bikes and round-the-clock yoga studios, are being taught by angry, bitter poverty-level degree holders with no job security and no institutional support to do a good job, and the students themselves are graduating into enormous debt and very poor skills and job prospects. But they might be able to get a minimum wage job wiping sweat off the exercise bikes. In the big picture, is all that spending on exercise facilities smart? Is it good for our society as a whole?
That is nothing new. I recall the U of A putting an fee on all summer students one year to help fund the building of a Student exercise facility. I remember scratching my head and asking what the Fuck!
Oh the things we spend money on an to what end! I'm always amazed at how much it cost to build a school building here in the Northeast. When you hear them tossing around million and millions of dollars and to what end. Usually high drop out rates in under performing schools. Then there is never enough money to maintain what has been built so it starts failing in a short period of time which usually ends up in Law Suits usually over poor air quality.
"Funds going out exceed funds coming in for two reasons. First, the near elimination of taxes on corporations and the super-rich; second, profuse spending on corporate welfare and a foreign policy based on insuring profits for the corporate-financial-military-complex. The bank bailout (5 years in) is currently running $75 billion a month (just reduced from $85 billion a month). That's $900 billion a year, which is more than the $800 billion annual cost of Medicare......You can keep drinking Limbaugh's Kool-Aid or you can turn on your brain and use it to think for yourself."
Miles, you have such a gentlemanly way about you.
Practically speaking, you can't tax your way out of this. The pool is too small -- the percentages you'd need to collect would disable the country. The math will not work.
As far as the 800B medicare, unfortunately you can't stop there -- you've also got Medicaid, Soc. Sec., and now the Health Care Reform Act. Whether any of us like or hate those programs just doesn't matter. These, are major costs, and the list includes many other significant costs.
For some reason, you've also presumed that I enjoy corporate welfare, unfair taxation, useless defense spending, and bank bailouts. etc. -- I don't. Cuts in these areas are overdue.
If you don't like the word "entitlements" -- that's fine. How about "mandatory spending" -- which is simply all the spending that we are legally obligated to pay out. It includes all of the items we've listed and then some.
The point remains, and it's a simple one -- our financial path is unsustainable.
Deep cuts are all that remain as a solution. Short-sighted partisan politics (from the strident mainstream voices of both parties) as to where these cuts should occur are the reason that the real solution will never happen.
"...."Ever-expanding entitlement spending" is a red herring. What Miles and curt have said is right: we spend billions on wars and in other countries and on tax breaks for enormous countries. The amount we spend on a well-educated populace, taking care of our elderly, and doing research to improve our society's well-being is a pittance by comparison....."
That's incorrect. In no way is it a red herring. Entitlements outpace defense spending by about 4 to 1.
By the way -- Miles, I looked at your website -- I didn't previously make the connection....your firm and it's legacy is impressive. What a portfolio of great work.
here is 2010 gov't spending in a pie chart. it's from the internet,and the internet never lies. if we're going to get rid of social security, we have to do it now. baby boomers are the problem, and they're already collecting. if we don't take entitlements away from the baby boomers now, then there's no point in reforming it at all.
or do what the baby boomers do. blame gen. y since they're collecting so much money out of social security....
Practically speaking, you can't tax your way out of this. The pool is too small -- the percentages you'd need to collect would disable the country.
False assumption, as demonstrated by historical facts posted on the previous page. High tax rates (>90%) combined with domestic spending gave us a golden age where poverty and the national debt were slashed while we built nationwide infrastructures, put men on the moon and waged decades of nuclear-armed cold war by building and maintaining the biggest and most expensive military on the planet.
This historical fact dispels the myth that there isn't enough revenue available and that it would disable the country. It's been done before and it could be done again. The difference now is that the rich own DC and will never allow it to happen.
This all goes back to Raygun and what even Bush Sr. called "voodoo economics". The claim is that cutting taxes increased tax revenue by stimulating the economy. In fact it was his deficit spending - he tripled the national debt in 8 years - and a variety of tax increases that he referred to as "revenue enhancements" - that increased tax receipts. Also, much of the deficit spending did directly stimulate the economy because the money was spent here and taxed as it was spent.
Now "stimulus" is $75b a month handed to the banks while real unemployment is 23%, some 50 million people have no health insurance, and 1 in 6 are on food stamps - and many of these are employed (by WalMart, McDonalds, etc.).
So to go back to your point, no, you can't tax your way out. But taxes are only 1/2 of the problem. The other half is how the money is spent, and right now it is going straight into bankster's pockets, endless wars for profit, oil companies, private insurers (the ObamaDoesn'tCare Act) and in general the pockets of the corporate financial complex that owns government.
Ethanol? A guaranteed market for corn overproduced by government subsidies to corp. agriculture. Corn fed beef? Cows are ruminants, they eat grass, not grain. taxpayer subsidized, overproduced corn is feed to cattle (the creation of another market) along with antibiotics and other drugs to keep them from getting sick on it. NAFTA (among other things) allows ADM and other corporate AG giants to sell taxpayer subsidized, overproduced corn in Mexico for 20% less than Mexican farmer's production cost. And you wanted to know why so many Mexicans came to America in the early 90's?
We're doomed. Not because we can't fix this but because we won't.
False assumption, as demonstrated by historical facts posted on the previous page. High tax rates (>90%) combined with domestic spending gave us a golden age where poverty and the national debt were slashed while we built nationwide infrastructures, put men on the moon and waged decades of nuclear-armed cold war by building and maintaining the biggest and most expensive military on the planet.
This historical fact dispels the myth that there isn't enough revenue available and that it would disable the country. It's been done before and it could be done again.
You're comparing the post war boom to now as if they're similar enough to do the same thing now as then. The post war was a unique situation, and by the later 1960's the situation became very different -- so the early 70's to date like a completely different era. What worked then won't work now. Several other factors were in play -- by the end of the 60's, other countries were starting to catch up to us, so more competition... also, Medicare and Medicaid and other programs were enacted that would from then on require greater and greater funding... also much of the boom-time time infrastructure was already in need of replacement. Many other factors. The post-war v. current economic contexts are apples and oranges -- two completely different times.
We're doomed. Not because we can't fix this but because we won't.....see the end of my last post.
Your points illustrating several ways in which we are giving away the keys to the store -- I'd agree.
The answer is simple if you're just a common poor joe like me,which is the majority of the population nowadays. Turn your business into a corp 'S' and stop paying into SS, stop voting, and stop putting yourself into debt...that means save, that is really all you can do. Endlessly debating the ubiquitous problems of this nation does nothing, expect make you an internet troll. It is good to realize the situation, but do you think bickering constantly will road block the multinational corporations that have infiltrated democracy in this nation.... actions, not bickering with words.
Nowadays you should supposedly have 6 months of income in case of an emergency, I believe that it should be more like 6 years, especially after going through this previous 'recession'. That is what I am working towards. That means not splurging, even when I feel comfortable, not having kids until ready, and not taking on debt.
There is a difference between bickering and having a frank discussion. And while voting is essentially a corrupt system, it would be more difficult for them to manipulate if everyone voted for Jill Stein. Also, vote with your wallet. Preferably locally and organically. Keep the money out of corporate and government hands.
Jan 1, 14 7:50 pm ·
·
The real elephat in the room is that america is a collapsing empire. It's real and obiviuos to see but so much angst effort is being miguided into trying to prolong a stateus quo.
As for worst US president of all time? That would have to be Lincoln. Without him the union and the ridiculusly oversized federal government/empire wouldnt have terrroized the planet for the past 100 years.
Excellent observation on collapsing empire. The parallels with Rome are obvious. As to Lincoln, there is a book or two that pushes this idea but I don't buy it. If anything, the US was still trying to defend itself from existing colonial forces that would have been opportunistically happy to see the country facture and fail. Don't forget that all the major powers in Europe had been dividing and conquering the world for centuries.
Jan 2, 14 10:04 am ·
·
yeah, rome and all that but i tend to think of it more in terms of orlov's collapse gap comparison with russia. america's finances are so dodgy these days it could literallya happen overnight. Or maybe they can keep the show rolling for a few more years.
it would be nice to lose the rat race and replace it with something more simple, like walden pond or whatever. a few things i want to keep though;
sanitation. plumbing and a sewer system. these are conveniences that i hope are maintained even after the collapse. of course if we have plumbing in america, no matter how bad it gets, people will use clean drinking water to water their lawns.
electricity. to keep the internets running.
internets. this is global, but icann and the people that kind of keep it going are here. would some other country be able to pick it up and keep it running? would the americans currently running it be willing to let go of control after the collapse?
that might be about it. i'll learn to grow and kill my own food.
on the other hand, i expect the collapse to be more comparable to japan's lost decade. screwing up the usd will have more collateral damage than screwing up the yen though.
Interesting comment, SneakyPete. It dovetails with something I heard on NPR this morning that has been in the news quite a bit lately: the idea of scarcity brain, how scarcity affects your ability to make good decisions.
Personally I think people pursue interests like sky diving, bungee jumping, etc. because they have no real fear in their lives (this is what Fight Club was about, of course). If a plague hit us, all of our decision making would change right quick, I imagine.
It seems like it would be really, really hard to not have internet. But then I think of my husband's recent 3-week visit to Cambodia and how direct his interactions with most things/people were. Perhaps after a few weeks I wouldn't even notice anymore.
"As for worst US president of all time? That would have to be Lincoln. Without him the union and the ridiculusly oversized federal government/empire wouldnt have terrroized the planet for the past 100 years."
I found Orlov's premise to be based on bad historical analysis. For example, "no winner" in the arms race (despite the economic collapse and dissolution of the USSR), "evil empire" conjecture is an opinion (not a fact), "unsustainable deficits" (economic voodoo), etc., and therefore concluded that whatever conclusion he had drawn to be faulty.
“In the long run, it seems to us, the decline and fall of the West is a kind of foregone conclusion. Perhaps top elites may have been working to destabilize Western finances for decades and even centuries with an eye toward implementing a thoroughly internationalist economic system.”
The 40-Year Slump - featuring an architect!
"Plus, it's not about cutting spending but about spending wisely."
Statement makes no sense. Currently, funds going out exceed funds coming in, largely due to ever-expanding entitlement spending. Since an immediate and dramatic increase in revenue is unlikely, the only remaining variable in the equation is cutting spending.
Funds going out exceed funds coming in for two reasons. First, the near elimination of taxes on corporations and the super-rich; second, profuse spending on corporate welfare and a foreign policy based on insuring profits for the corporate-financial-military-complex. The bank bailout (5 years in) is currently running $75 billion a month (just reduced from $85 billion a month). That's $900 billion a year, which is more than the $800 billion annual cost of Medicare.
You can keep drinking Limbaugh's Kool-Aid or you can turn on your brain and use it to think for yourself.
saint, the gov't could also spend money in a way that makes them money. look at the interstate (or railroad before that). funded by government. a lot of people make (or made) tons of money off that. walmart distribution wouldn't work without paved roads and teamsters.
funding foreign wars gives money to haliburton and builds infrastructure outside of the unites states so those countries can build their profit base. sending subsidies to oil companies or other corporate entities that already have plenty of money doesn't help anyone. taxing the middle class extra so you can reduce capital gains tax is just plain stupid.
spending wisely does make sense. investing in building a better country is a good idea.
"Ever-expanding entitlement spending" is a red herring. What Miles and curt have said is right: we spend billions on wars and in other countries and on tax breaks for enormous countries. The amount we spend on a well-educated populace, taking care of our elderly, and doing research to improve our society's well-being is a pittance by comparison.
As an example on a smaller scale: in the past decades universities have spent billions creating on-campus wellness centers (workout facilities) and malls (food courts). They've simultaneously stopped spending on tenured faculty and instead are paying a non-livable wage to adjunct professors. So the students, who are paying enormous sums of money to have access to 100 exercise bikes and round-the-clock yoga studios, are being taught by angry, bitter poverty-level degree holders with no job security and no institutional support to do a good job, and the students themselves are graduating into enormous debt and very poor skills and job prospects. But they might be able to get a minimum wage job wiping sweat off the exercise bikes. In the big picture, is all that spending on exercise facilities smart? Is it good for our society as a whole?
That is nothing new. I recall the U of A putting an fee on all summer students one year to help fund the building of a Student exercise facility. I remember scratching my head and asking what the Fuck!
Oh the things we spend money on an to what end! I'm always amazed at how much it cost to build a school building here in the Northeast. When you hear them tossing around million and millions of dollars and to what end. Usually high drop out rates in under performing schools. Then there is never enough money to maintain what has been built so it starts failing in a short period of time which usually ends up in Law Suits usually over poor air quality.
"Funds going out exceed funds coming in for two reasons. First, the near elimination of taxes on corporations and the super-rich; second, profuse spending on corporate welfare and a foreign policy based on insuring profits for the corporate-financial-military-complex. The bank bailout (5 years in) is currently running $75 billion a month (just reduced from $85 billion a month). That's $900 billion a year, which is more than the $800 billion annual cost of Medicare......You can keep drinking Limbaugh's Kool-Aid or you can turn on your brain and use it to think for yourself."
Miles, you have such a gentlemanly way about you.
Practically speaking, you can't tax your way out of this. The pool is too small -- the percentages you'd need to collect would disable the country. The math will not work.
As far as the 800B medicare, unfortunately you can't stop there -- you've also got Medicaid, Soc. Sec., and now the Health Care Reform Act. Whether any of us like or hate those programs just doesn't matter. These, are major costs, and the list includes many other significant costs.
For some reason, you've also presumed that I enjoy corporate welfare, unfair taxation, useless defense spending, and bank bailouts. etc. -- I don't. Cuts in these areas are overdue.
If you don't like the word "entitlements" -- that's fine. How about "mandatory spending" -- which is simply all the spending that we are legally obligated to pay out. It includes all of the items we've listed and then some.
The point remains, and it's a simple one -- our financial path is unsustainable.
Deep cuts are all that remain as a solution. Short-sighted partisan politics (from the strident mainstream voices of both parties) as to where these cuts should occur are the reason that the real solution will never happen.
"...."Ever-expanding entitlement spending" is a red herring. What Miles and curt have said is right: we spend billions on wars and in other countries and on tax breaks for enormous countries. The amount we spend on a well-educated populace, taking care of our elderly, and doing research to improve our society's well-being is a pittance by comparison....."
That's incorrect. In no way is it a red herring. Entitlements outpace defense spending by about 4 to 1.
By the way -- Miles, I looked at your website -- I didn't previously make the connection....your firm and it's legacy is impressive. What a portfolio of great work.
here is 2010 gov't spending in a pie chart. it's from the internet,and the internet never lies. if we're going to get rid of social security, we have to do it now. baby boomers are the problem, and they're already collecting. if we don't take entitlements away from the baby boomers now, then there's no point in reforming it at all.
or do what the baby boomers do. blame gen. y since they're collecting so much money out of social security....
Thanks, Saint.
Practically speaking, you can't tax your way out of this. The pool is too small -- the percentages you'd need to collect would disable the country.
False assumption, as demonstrated by historical facts posted on the previous page. High tax rates (>90%) combined with domestic spending gave us a golden age where poverty and the national debt were slashed while we built nationwide infrastructures, put men on the moon and waged decades of nuclear-armed cold war by building and maintaining the biggest and most expensive military on the planet.
This historical fact dispels the myth that there isn't enough revenue available and that it would disable the country. It's been done before and it could be done again. The difference now is that the rich own DC and will never allow it to happen.
This all goes back to Raygun and what even Bush Sr. called "voodoo economics". The claim is that cutting taxes increased tax revenue by stimulating the economy. In fact it was his deficit spending - he tripled the national debt in 8 years - and a variety of tax increases that he referred to as "revenue enhancements" - that increased tax receipts. Also, much of the deficit spending did directly stimulate the economy because the money was spent here and taxed as it was spent.
Now "stimulus" is $75b a month handed to the banks while real unemployment is 23%, some 50 million people have no health insurance, and 1 in 6 are on food stamps - and many of these are employed (by WalMart, McDonalds, etc.).
So to go back to your point, no, you can't tax your way out. But taxes are only 1/2 of the problem. The other half is how the money is spent, and right now it is going straight into bankster's pockets, endless wars for profit, oil companies, private insurers (the ObamaDoesn'tCare Act) and in general the pockets of the corporate financial complex that owns government.
Ethanol? A guaranteed market for corn overproduced by government subsidies to corp. agriculture. Corn fed beef? Cows are ruminants, they eat grass, not grain. taxpayer subsidized, overproduced corn is feed to cattle (the creation of another market) along with antibiotics and other drugs to keep them from getting sick on it. NAFTA (among other things) allows ADM and other corporate AG giants to sell taxpayer subsidized, overproduced corn in Mexico for 20% less than Mexican farmer's production cost. And you wanted to know why so many Mexicans came to America in the early 90's?
We're doomed. Not because we can't fix this but because we won't.
False assumption, as demonstrated by historical facts posted on the previous page. High tax rates (>90%) combined with domestic spending gave us a golden age where poverty and the national debt were slashed while we built nationwide infrastructures, put men on the moon and waged decades of nuclear-armed cold war by building and maintaining the biggest and most expensive military on the planet.
This historical fact dispels the myth that there isn't enough revenue available and that it would disable the country. It's been done before and it could be done again.
You're comparing the post war boom to now as if they're similar enough to do the same thing now as then. The post war was a unique situation, and by the later 1960's the situation became very different -- so the early 70's to date like a completely different era. What worked then won't work now. Several other factors were in play -- by the end of the 60's, other countries were starting to catch up to us, so more competition... also, Medicare and Medicaid and other programs were enacted that would from then on require greater and greater funding... also much of the boom-time time infrastructure was already in need of replacement. Many other factors. The post-war v. current economic contexts are apples and oranges -- two completely different times.
We're doomed. Not because we can't fix this but because we won't.....see the end of my last post.
Your points illustrating several ways in which we are giving away the keys to the store -- I'd agree.
The answer is simple if you're just a common poor joe like me,which is the majority of the population nowadays. Turn your business into a corp 'S' and stop paying into SS, stop voting, and stop putting yourself into debt...that means save, that is really all you can do. Endlessly debating the ubiquitous problems of this nation does nothing, expect make you an internet troll. It is good to realize the situation, but do you think bickering constantly will road block the multinational corporations that have infiltrated democracy in this nation.... actions, not bickering with words.
Nowadays you should supposedly have 6 months of income in case of an emergency, I believe that it should be more like 6 years, especially after going through this previous 'recession'. That is what I am working towards. That means not splurging, even when I feel comfortable, not having kids until ready, and not taking on debt.
It is really pretty simple.
There is a difference between bickering and having a frank discussion. And while voting is essentially a corrupt system, it would be more difficult for them to manipulate if everyone voted for Jill Stein. Also, vote with your wallet. Preferably locally and organically. Keep the money out of corporate and government hands.
The real elephat in the room is that america is a collapsing empire. It's real and obiviuos to see but so much angst effort is being miguided into trying to prolong a stateus quo.
As for worst US president of all time? That would have to be Lincoln. Without him the union and the ridiculusly oversized federal government/empire wouldnt have terrroized the planet for the past 100 years.
Excellent observation on collapsing empire. The parallels with Rome are obvious. As to Lincoln, there is a book or two that pushes this idea but I don't buy it. If anything, the US was still trying to defend itself from existing colonial forces that would have been opportunistically happy to see the country facture and fail. Don't forget that all the major powers in Europe had been dividing and conquering the world for centuries.
yeah, rome and all that but i tend to think of it more in terms of orlov's collapse gap comparison with russia. america's finances are so dodgy these days it could literallya happen overnight. Or maybe they can keep the show rolling for a few more years.
it would be nice to lose the rat race and replace it with something more simple, like walden pond or whatever. a few things i want to keep though;
sanitation. plumbing and a sewer system. these are conveniences that i hope are maintained even after the collapse. of course if we have plumbing in america, no matter how bad it gets, people will use clean drinking water to water their lawns.
electricity. to keep the internets running.
internets. this is global, but icann and the people that kind of keep it going are here. would some other country be able to pick it up and keep it running? would the americans currently running it be willing to let go of control after the collapse?
that might be about it. i'll learn to grow and kill my own food.
on the other hand, i expect the collapse to be more comparable to japan's lost decade. screwing up the usd will have more collateral damage than screwing up the yen though.
I often find myself envious of the folks in zombie flicks. At least the actions they take on a daily basis have a direct effect in their lives.
Interesting comment, SneakyPete. It dovetails with something I heard on NPR this morning that has been in the news quite a bit lately: the idea of scarcity brain, how scarcity affects your ability to make good decisions.
Personally I think people pursue interests like sky diving, bungee jumping, etc. because they have no real fear in their lives (this is what Fight Club was about, of course). If a plague hit us, all of our decision making would change right quick, I imagine.
It seems like it would be really, really hard to not have internet. But then I think of my husband's recent 3-week visit to Cambodia and how direct his interactions with most things/people were. Perhaps after a few weeks I wouldn't even notice anymore.
"As for worst US president of all time? That would have to be Lincoln. Without him the union and the ridiculusly oversized federal government/empire wouldnt have terrroized the planet for the past 100 years."
Example?
I found Orlov's premise to be based on bad historical analysis. For example, "no winner" in the arms race (despite the economic collapse and dissolution of the USSR), "evil empire" conjecture is an opinion (not a fact), "unsustainable deficits" (economic voodoo), etc., and therefore concluded that whatever conclusion he had drawn to be faulty.
^ And that's the short list...
Collapse and global taxes?
“In the long run, it seems to us, the decline and fall of the West is a kind of foregone conclusion. Perhaps top elites may have been working to destabilize Western finances for decades and even centuries with an eye toward implementing a thoroughly internationalist economic system.”
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