Of course it is a problem on both sides, I never said otherwise. But it seems to me that it is more of a problem on one side than the other. One side seems willing, albeit reluctantly, to negotiate. Whether they actually give something or not remains to be seen. The other side, until just recently, refused to give an inch. YMMV.
Anyway, I think you are being purposefully obtuse in this thread. You are asking one question over and over and I am not sure what you expect to get. I get the feeling you are playing a game of gotcha-ya.
No, it means that intelligent people recognize that the government does not function like a household and adjust their expectations. In government, the people (and their constituents) who spend the money often aren’t the ones who have to pay the bills. A balanced budget sounds nice in theory, but people would benefit from it unequally. Why should the people who would hardly benefit it all have to pay? Would you force them to?
Measure for Measure I read two of your links (the third wouldn’t load) and they seemed to be about how we ended up with this deficit, which I am not interested in. I want to know why the country keeps going further into debt - unless your point was we keep having wars we can’t afford?
If you cannot see that “has to fall under $X” indicates that there will be very little money left after bills are paid, that might be a clue as to why you don’t understand how people get into financial difficulty.
No thanks - I really don’t feel like paying for wars created by rich people!
Yup!
Well, I thought I did when I said “So, “we cannot expect the government to stay on budget” means that we’ve given up on them doing so, rather than it would be impossible for them to do it?” but then you reiterated all this stuff. The message I got from your links was that the government is perfectly capable of staying on budget and not running up an ever increasing deficit, but because of corrupt politics special interests are allowed to screw us over. Yes?
No, one thing I don’t do is play games. If you think I’m being obtuse, it’s actually just that I really don’t get why it is that the government cannot draw up a budget and stick to it. If I understand Try2B Comprehensive correctly, they could they just don’t want to.
I don’t care about other countries since I do not live in them. Nor do I know whether or not any of them having been running a huge deficit for decades.
Why would people benefit unequally from a balanced budget? How is “people who would hardly benefit it all have to pay” any different than what we have now? We are already forced to pay for many things we will never need/use and if we complain, the liberals tell us we are required to do so for the good of the society. You expect me to believe your pronouncements without any proof or even logic.
(I don’t have time to do anything with this other than once a day, in the evening, so apparently I’m going to end up with “walls of text”.)
Where do you get any of these ideas from? “Has to fall under $X” means it will be less than X, but by a penny or a billion dollars, it doesn’t say. And what makes you think I don’t understand how people get into financial difficulty?
And I guess this means you weren’t done with me after all.
I’m granting you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you are smart enough to understand that these two concepts are equal, and that you are denying it because you’re a fucking loony with some weird need to win the argument, even when you have to contradict yourself to do it.
If you honestly think those mean different things, then you have no business talking about money or anything more complicated than one plus one.
I do see a difference. It’s a big difference; almost a billion dollars. I’m just saying that bosstone’s post didn’t specify one way or the other. It said “fall under $X”. It didn’t say how much.
And I said based on the context, it appeared that “fall under $X” meant closer to that penny.
And yet, you claimed to do so then went on to prove you weren’t.
You started the conversation by acting like a jerk. Explain why I should extend courtesy to you?
Look, I’ll spell it out for you. In your own household analogy, you stated that when a roommate didn’t pay their share, the others had to put the expenses on a credit card. Which shows that these folks were budgeting all or almost all of their income. I responded that an intelligent budget includes savings for emergencies, like roommates not paying their share. You went into a tirade. I shrug my shoulders. If your problem is that your analogy didn’t work - not my problem. If your problem is that no one is allowed to challenge you - again not my problem. If your problem is you misunderstood something and went with assholeishness rather than asking for clarification - yet again, not my problem. If all you want to do is wave your hands and stamp your feet, I’ll probably not have time for you.
I would say you have given up on them doing so, since you claim to be apolitical and a non-voter. Let me criticize your non-voting apoliticism with this quote from the Lapham’s article:
I haven’t given up, neither have a lot of us. Apparently you have, if you were ever in the fight to begin with. But I really don’t have a personal problem with you, my larger point is that the law becomes a game and people like me tend to be out-gunned. I have to attend to making my living, while people who already have it made and who don’t care what happens to people like me can put way, wayyyy more effort into bending the system to their will. I think if one looks closely one can see that the Republican programme seeks to make this difference even more prominent by shoving down workers and elevating the ‘job creators’, among other things.
Pretty much, yeah. I don’t know if I’d label them ‘special interests’- I don’t know what to label what is going on. I know that tax increases on the super-rich are a big part of the ultimate answer, that the dreaded ‘income re-distribution’, until we can enact a more equitable system, is a big part of the answer, but at the same time the super-rich have the most influence over a government which is supposed to be about 'We the People" (but somehow isn’t) and therefore aren’t on board… at all.
The rest of us would have to get our story straight and organize to effect change, but the powers that be appear to put colossal obstacles in the path of that effort, not to mention pushing all kinds of bullshit into the minds of the credulous, plus plenty of other devious efforts besides (like shaping a society that renders very many dependent while at the same time disparaging the dependent), such that it can look almost hopeless to effect change. I don’t think it is impossible, but it does look like a pretty tough road to hoe. That’s why I bitch that ‘Justice is merely a word’ if you really want my two cents.
No. I figure that this stuff is so completely self-evident that it surprises me that I would need to work it out for someone who is supposed to be a grown-up.
I live in a co-op with 68 units in Manhattan. People buy in, people sell out, people die. Each person either is an original renter (very few of those) or has a mortgage and owns shares of the owners’ corporation. The building also has what is known as an underlying mortgage. Everyone in the building pays common charges, much of which go to servicing this debt.
We basically have two choices. Make interest-only payments and refinance every few years or pay the debt down, increasing the burden on everyone. It would be better for the building if the mortgage were gone because it would either significantly reduce common charges or significantly increase our discretionary budget to put in the roof garden we’ve always wanted. After all, for a household, paying down debt is good, right?
But the only people this scheme would really benefit would be people who move into the building right after the mortgage is paid off. It won’t help old people, who will feel the pain of higher payments and die before they get any benefit. It won’t help young people who might want to sell in a few years. They would have to pay more, get no benefit, and have to compromise on price to induce someone else to be willing to move into a building with high common charges. So a policy that is better for “the building” in the abstract is actually better for absolutely no one who lives there. My building, like almost every other co-op in the city, has been kicking the can down the road for decades. I am aware of one building that actually paid off its underlying mortgage. It went bankrupt.
Even at the household level, what is good for the parents is not necessarily what is good for the children. Children want to consume, parents get stuck with the bills. But parents can consume and stick their children without enough money for college or other necessities, too. A family bond and a certain commitment to parental stewardship and childhood responsibility can keep preferences aligned enough to function.
There is no such stewardship and responsibility here. Your generation looted the public trust for decades and now you want my generation to eat the cost of fixing it without reducing your entitlements. The short answer to that question is “fuck you.”
How is a serious illness “being irresponsible”? Or being laid off, for that matter (I’ll grant being fired is at least partly an indication of irresponsibility)?
Also, a more general question for curlcoat: how will everything be better when the budget is balanced and the debt is paid off? Leaving aside whether it’s possible to balance the budget, or whether it’s practical to, why is it necessary to? No circular answers, please.
She’s claiming that if you don’t plan for every contingency you’re irresponsible. Someone ran a red light and landed you in the hospital with a broken everything? Your own fault if you didn’t set aside tens of thousands of dollars ahead of time to pay for your recovery.
The last time the federal government ran such a surplus, the new Republican President argued that it should be spent on tax cuts for the wealthy:
[QUOTE=George W. Bush]
“This surplus is not the government’s money,” he said in a characteristic line yesterday in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “It’s the people’s money. And I believe we ought to listen to the people of America and share that money with the people who pay the bills.”
[/QUOTE]
It seems that he is missing out on a lot of middle ground in there, such as I (and many others) have no desire to act nor do we wish to be cared for; for the most part, we wanted our elected government to take care of the business they said they would and are being paid to. And I’m not seeing how serving the state with the purse rather than the person leads to ruin.
No, I probably never was - prior to 2007 I was working full time and battling various health issues, so I really didn’t have time to follow all of this. Plus I don’t really have the education to understand a lot of it. Which is why I ask questions. I simply don’t understand why the country cannot stay on budget; and why have one if it’s going to be ignored?
A lot of this is why I don’t bother with the whole thing any more. It just doesn’t seem to matter who is President or who is in the Congress or House, it’s always the same thing; the rich get richer, the middle class gets taxed more and the poor grow in number. More social programs are demanded without any clue as to how they will be paid for, and every so often we go to war. Anything the general public wants is ignored.
Well, good luck with it. That society rendering people dependent thing is something you’ll find to be a major stumbling block, since it seems that even supposedly intelligent people think that poor people are there thru no fault of their own, and that they would all want to work and contribute if given a chance.
Gosh, I am sooo sorry that I don’t know as much as you do on this particular subject and dared to irritate you with a question or two. :rolleyes:
None of your co-op example seems to apply to the federal government and since you are being a jackass, I will not ask you to explain. Especially since you seem to lack the ability to do so.
“My generation”? If you are speaking of anyone in power in government, that has zero to do with anyone here. And what I am saying is that we should all be paying less. But you go right on with your delusions.
So, in other words, you got caught out on being a dick over something you misunderstood, so you are going to sign off with an insult and a threat. Go you.
Those things aren’t the irresponsibility, not having savings laid by is. I lost my last job in Sept 2007, and my husband was laid off Feb of 2008. We were without income until Sept 2008 except for my disability and his unemployment (which added up to about what our mortgage payment is) yet we did just fine because we live well under our means. We are now renovating our house and it’s taking years because we don’t charge the supplies and are doing as much of the work ourselves as possible. I just put half down in cash on a newish car and intend to overpay the loan on the rest. Contrast that with people who buy more house than they can really afford, buy cars with little or nothing down, charge annual vacations and all the other things that will haunt them should their income be interrupted. Somehow, people these days seem to think they “deserve” what they want, when they want it, so they buy their big house, two SUVs and have their three kids all within five years and live on the edge. Then when one or both lose jobs, everyone says something along the lines of “oh, they didn’t see this coming” or “it sure wasn’t their fault”.
The fuck? Why would I give a circular answer?
Anyway, it’s better when my budget is balanced and my debt is paid off - why wouldn’t it be better for the country? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if we didn’t have to keep raising taxes to make payments on the deficit? And apparently raising the deficit means our credit rating will go bad? I don’t get why it wouldn’t be a good thing to do.
Yeah, it would be nice if they’d not do that again…