Sequester hurting surviving children of war dead and returning veterans.
The credit rating of the United States has been reduced and countries are abandoning the dollar which use to be the world standard. We are 17 trillion in debt. Here’s a graph.
Our Debt to GDP ratio is at 100%. we were at 60% 7 years ago.
That’s absurd. No one cares what S&P says about the credit rating of the US; US treasuries are still the most popular long term investment in the world. And the dollar is gaining strength every day; the price of gold has been dropping for months, and is expected to fall off a cliff in the next year.
Is there any government program that you think is very important, successful, and an example of how taxpayer money ought to be used?
This is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Treasuries are now having to offer huge, 1980s-like interest rates to get people to want them.
Oh wait, regardless of our Debt-to-GDP ratio or whatever S&P was on about, Treasuries are so popular that people will take them with negative effective rates of return. Yeah, that’s “abandoning the dollar”, all right.
Now, what happened just before the credit rating was reduced? Was it a sudden huge increase in debt - or was it moron Republicans in Congress threatening to force a default on our debt due to not raising the debt limit?
And you are calling the markets stupid, given that interest rates are so low, and continue to be low, despite continued cries of doom from the right. Maybe the markets have it totally wrong - or maybe you do.
Sure. You said this:
So, you define “waste” the same as ITR champion. If the spending is not important to you, then it is wasteful.
I did not post the definition that you claim that I posted, nor anything like it. You claim that it’s a paraphrase of what I said, but it’s not a paraphrase of anything I said. Likewise, if I were to write “Drum God has said that he thinks government money should be spent teaching pigs how to dance” and then claimed that I’d paraphrased you, that would be wrong, since you never actually said anything like that.
Now I told you that my definition of government waste was this:
Waste is government spending that accomplishes nothing, that goes to things the government shouldn’t be involved in, that accomplishes only a very little and could be done more cheaply, or that is redundant. Maintaining over 5,000 nuclear warheads when we could effectively deter all threats with a small fraction of that number is wasteful. Spending enormous sums on ships and planes that probably won’t ever serve a single useful mission is wasteful. Keeping large army bases open in places such as Germany is wasteful. Buildings that cost billions of dollars are wasteful. Redundant agencies are wasteful.
As anyone can clearly see, that definition makes no mention of whether spending is important to me. It is focused on the question of whether a particular instance of spending is important to anybody. Let me offer an example:
Unused bridge gets $500k federal grant
The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded Greene County a $520,000 federal grant to restore a historic covered bridge that is closed to traffic and carries few pedestrians
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All told, the Stevenson Road Covered Bridge will cost $650,000 to restore, according to engineering estimates, with the county kicking in the last $130,000. The bridge sits alongside Stevenson Road, connecting grassy areas on either side of Massie’s Creek, and is not attached to a park, bike/walk path or other attraction.
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The bridge carried traffic until 2003, but was a problem for emergency vehicles, which had to detour around it. That year, the county built a $650,000 modern concrete bridge 100 feet downstream and moved Stevenson Road there, stranding the old bridge.
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But Xenia Twp. trustee Jim Reed, who was not involved in the county’s grant application, is upset about federal priorities, given that spending on a nonfunctional bridge will cost more than Xenia Twp.’s entire annual roads budget of $610,000.
I classify this as wasteful spending, not because it’s unimportant to me, but because it’s unimportant to anyone. I don’t understand why, given all the bleating about the terrible things that will happened due to the sequester, we can’t just take the money currently spent on things like this and redirect it. (Based on the remainder of your post, it seems you only have sarcasm to offer in response.)
Because the law does not allow the sequester to work that way. This is why people think the sequester is bad. Does this need to be repeated again and again?
But I repeat my question: is there a government program that you think is efficient, successful, and well-managed?
I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
Let me be clear, just in case anyone tries to paraphrase me again. You ask whether I think any government program “is very important, successful, and an example of how taxpayer money ought to be spent.” Some programs fit part of the description but not all of it. For instance, we should have a military to defend our country, so the military is necessary. We haven’t been invaded lately, so the military is successful. But we could easily defend our country while spending far less on the military. Most of our military budget is spent on useless things (invading Iraq, torturing innocent people to death) or useless things (ferries that are never used and get sold for less than 1% of their original price, research on new types of beef jerky). So the military is not a good example of how taxpayer money ought to be used.
Or to take another example, let’s look at the Department of Transportation. I would agree that we’d be a very different country if we didn’t have Interstate Highways, Airports, and some much-used bridges, tunnels, and so forth. So the Department of Transportation does some important things and, inasmuch as all of us can drive or fly nearly anywhere in the country without much hassle, it’s been successful. It also repairs abandoned, useless bridges in Ohio and and builds a bronze statue of Herbert Hoover’s wife. I don’t understand how a bronze statue of Herbert Hoover’s wife will transport anyone to anywhere, so I don’t see why the Department of Transportation is paying for it. Thus the Department of Transportation is not a good example of how taxpayer money ought to be used.
Medicare? Does some good but also allows for plenty of fraud, conservatively estimated at $60 billion per year. Food stamps? Also do some good, also cost us in fraud. Some people will say that waste and fraud are unavoidable, and then apparently conclude that we shouldn’t even try to cut down on them. I don’t see why we shouldn’t try to cut down on them, especially when I hear so much complaining about the horrible consequences of minor budget cuts.
You just proved him correct. “that goes to things the government shouldn’t be involved in” is extremely subjective. A pacifist by your definition would legitimately find all defense spending as wasteful. A super free marketer would find the SEC wasteful. The pacifist can legitimately call defense spending wrong and immoral, but not wasteful.
There have been a lot of atomic weapons which never got used, and which got scrapped. Were they wasteful? Even if their existence helped prevent WW III? And, given that we can’t tell the future, I am less than comfortable with your certainty that new weapons systems won’t be used.
You’ve never responded to my question about how you propose to eliminate waste in our existing political system.
I don’t recall ever saying that I had any proposal for eliminating waste, though I’d certainly like to see it reduced. In post #174, I linked to a report from a federal office which lists almost a hundred billion dollars in savings that could be achieved without the government ceasing to deliver any service. There’s no need for the to explain how the federal government could save money. The government already has explained that; it just hasn’t implemented its own suggestions.
Just because it’s subjective doesn’t prove that Drum God’s “paraphrase” of my definition of waste was accurate.
Apparently it’s my response to this point that needs to be repeated again and again. Who makes the law? The last time I checked, it was Congress and the President. So if those people wanted to do so, they could write a new law that terminates the funding for bronze statues of first ladies, abandoned bridges, ferries that have no place to dock, and suchlike, and redirects that money to medical centers and other places which are supposedly laying off staff because of the sequester. Congress and the President could do this today if they wished to. But they’re not doing it.
I’d say that the Sparta Teapot Museum could go too.
ITR Champion: AFAICT, not a single one of your examples of government waste is something that is actually cut by the sequester. The sequester is a big dumb wrecking ball that hits everything, without any judgement or specifics at all. I can see why you are opposed to waste, but I don’t understand why you support the sequester.
I am open to being corrected. Can you connect the dots for us between the waste you see and what the sequester does?
I think he’s saying that if the sequester eliminated all government waste and didn’t impact any actually important services, we would all be better off.
In other news, if I had wheels and a sunroof I’d be a car.
My city has electric buses. The stimulus package bought us hybrid buses.
It’s because my state put forth a study and found that the trains were not financially viable.
So, would it be more accurate to define waste as “spending that is not important to me or someone who agrees with me?”
I like your anecdote about the $650K being spent to restore an old bridge. You say that this is spending that isn’t important to anyone. That is complete nonsense. Someone submitted the grant request. That someone was probably an elected official or someone who answers to an elected official. Someone reviewed the grant request. Someone approved the grant request and authorized the money to be allocated. That would seem to be several people who felt that the spending was important. It just isn’t important to you. That’s okay, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t important to anyone.
Again, someone got the ball rolling on that bridge. That someone was probably elected or hired to do such things. That someone (or his/her boss) may get reelected based on his/her ability to secure projects such as this. So, the project is important to the people who voted for this person. If it isn’t important to them, they are free to vote for some other candidate who will vow not to bring such projects to the community.
I get why you’re calling this bridge project wasteful spending. I just think you’re wrong. What makes you the arbiter of what is wasteful?
So you’re saying that your city has hybrid buses that are not paid for? But they are paid for by the stimulus. I don’t understand your original statement about buses not being paid for.
What does “financially viable” mean? Does it mean that fares for the train ride won’t cover its operating cost? That may or may not be a good measure of viability. It depends on what the goals are for building the train.
Sounds like your city is run by greedy jerks who ask for things that they don’t need. Your city clearly shouldn’t have asked for the hybrid buses, and allowed some other city that actually needed them to receive them. Seriously, why would your local officials ask for things they didn’t want?