I was going to ask you what Canada does differently than the U.S. to produce such stellar results (in fact, I’d still love to hear the answer to this), then I caught THIS little gem (bolding mine)
So the Canadian system is very good, gets top-ten results for the same money that buys the U.S. results in the 20s…and they both have the exact same problem, that just happens to be a conservative bugbear? I provisionally, based on your response to my above question, call shenanigans.
No, actually in the real world I am right on the money.
Regards,
Shodan
I did click, but lost interest after a few more clicks since the site navigation was anal-retentive. In fact I only got to one concrete proposal:
They propose to eliminate $107 billion from the U.S. Dept of Education’s $107 billion budget. That’s right: they aim to Kill that Beast completely. Most of the $107 billion is subsidies to state education. Not sure how much of that $107 billion is dedicated solely to Waste™, but if the Waste™ is less than then full $107 billion, “Libertarians” propose either to worsen schools or just transfer the burden to the states. Either way, that proposal seems more comical than just ineffectual.
Sounds much like the Clinton budgets. Did you support them?
Why is it comical to give the states more control and more funding responsibility for the education in that state? Given that the states already fund a significant amount of that education, is it already comical? If not, at what point does the funding by the state become comical? 60%? 80%?
I am not opposed to state control of education. I am opposed to passing off gibberish as substantive proposals.
The States are already suffering serious financing problems much like the Federal Government. Ever dollar needed for education which is cut off by the Feds will have to be made up by the States. Stated differently, the revenue/cost situation for all U.S. governmental entities taken together is what is relevant to consider.
Is my point clear? (I assumed the point would be implicitly clear, to start with.) The idea of giving States more control of education may be fine. In the context considered, however the Lib site pretends the taxpayers have then just saved $107 billion, which is absurd enough to be called “comical.”
There are concrete proposals for every department on that site. I don’t see what your problem is with the site navigation - 3 clicks to DOE gets me this:
They also argue to cut the defense budget, eliminate the DOE, eliminate subsidies to business at Commerce, kill 90% of Agriculture, etc. If you read the site and focus on their cuts - the theme is obvious. Push responsibility back to the states, get the government out of gaming the system in favor of certain types of business, and balance the budget.
As for the Clinton era budgets - the surplus during the tech bubble was nice, the AMT was messed up in application to those of us in tech with ISO shares and some NQSO shares in regards to exercise and resale restrictions. The initial cuts Clinton made were fine, but the Republican held the House and Senate for the latter half - so which budgets during his 8 years are you talking about?
It is clear with your most recent explanation. I did not think it clear the first time, obviously.
Having states more responsible for funding education is not a comical suggestion. Reducing federal funding only for states to pick up the slack and claiming this is an overall savings is a comical suggestion.
Personally, I think that the closer control is to home, the better fiscal management you are likely to see, but any savings would be small beer compared with the amount being “cut”.
Just to get back to the original question here:
Since I saw a handy chart today showing what discretionary, non-defense spending as a share of GDP has been over the last fifty or so years. “[N]on-defence discretionary spending was equal to 3.6% of GDP in 1963. It was also equal to 3.6% of GDP in 2008. It is not behind the increase in government spending as a share of the economy over that time period. It has not made government any less affordable. It is not projected to rise substantially in the future.”
Basically, we haven’t added new programs that we didn’t have 20 to 25 years ago, on balance. Sure some stuff is newer, but some stuff has gotten cut, so we’re really not spending more on it in general.
It’s hard to tell exactly which year is which from that chart, but if we take 2008 as the point at which discretionary spending dips back down to 3.6%, then we can see that by 2011 it has gone back up to 4.5% A 0.9% increase in a $3.7 trillion budget is $333 billion. That’s hardly chump change - it is 30% of the projected deficit in the 2012 budget.
Your math is wrong. The percentages are of the economy, not the budget, and I think you got some decimals misplaced, so nondefense discretionary went from about $468 billion to $585 billion, based on an economy of about $13 trillion.
Edit: Ah - I see my numbers were a little aggressive. Non-security discretionary has peaked at $507 billion. See table S-4: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/tables.pdf
Yep - I screwed up.
Of course, saying that the economy is “about $13 trillion” doesn’t really get into the fact that GDP went down significantly from 2008 to 2009. The numbers as a percentage of GDP are good for showing general trends, but for comparisons of one year to the next, the actual dollar amounts become more useful. Especially for years when GDP fluctuates more than usual.