…do you understand/care what that would do to our economy. If all of a sudden we had to have a balanced budget, you understand that govt money taken out of the economy equals lost jobs. How many lost jobs would be acceptable to you? What would you do with all these newly unemployed, put them on the govt dole??
It’s nice to talk about living within your means as a govt, but really do you understand the human toll it would take? Do you understand the toll it would take on our quality of life? One man’s pork project is another community’s bridge or museum or bike path.
There is waste and duplication of services and I’m OK looking into that. The overpriced toilet seat at NASA or the overpriced OTC drugs at the hospital, that over payment does not just get tossed into the river. That over payment goes into someones pocket who then spends or invests it.
If these things were cut out, do you really think the no longer needed tax money would go back in your pocket? Even if it did, the govt collecting money and spending it by the bucketful will do more good for the society/economy than and an individual getting a few extra bucks to spend at Wallyworld. So tired of seeing some people saying that govt spending is somehow less valuable to personal spending.
I was reading a far too lengthy post in another thread about “How are you liberal, how are you conservative” and instead of responding to that thread, I decided to open a new one.
I like pork spending. A significant part of my budget goes to pork. Pork chops, pork sausage, pork shoulder, pork belly and bacon. Of course to counter that, a significant part goes towards other meats, vegetables, fruit, whole grains and a gym membership.
That said, paraphrasing your argument: ‘it eventually all goes back into the economy anyway’, may be taken to mean that more discretionary spending is better, so lets spend more. Okay, let’s. How much more are you willing to pay in taxes to fund this kind of economic plan? And how are you going to sell this idea so people like it and see it as in their own best interest? And how realistic is that anyway?
I’m not saying I don’t agree. I lean more in the socialist direction (by most US political standards). But if it were me, I’d do a line by line review and revision of the tax code to ensure the tax burden would not fall too unfairly on some groups and not others before I started writing checks for more discretionary projects. Oh, and what’s considered “fair” would be a lengthy and shouty discussion as well.
I believe it goes like this… The more money the gov’t spends on the things you want, the less of your money you have to spend on the things you want. Everybody wins. What more do you want?
Shodan (and others): If an individual gets extra money they will spend the extra on dinner, Wallyworld, maybe buy a bicycle, I don’t know. If govt gets extra money, the money can be spent on building a bridge. That building project, employs people and improves the quality of life for everyone. Big things will never get done if the govt trickles back all the extra tax money back to our pockets.
You probably don’t watch MSNBC, but there is an advertisement with Maddow standing in front of the Hoover Dam saying an individual couldn’t have made this, by definition it has to be made by the govt. Our infrastructure would be at a stand still if all the money was just funnelled back into the individuals pockets.
I’m pretty damn liberal, but the Hoover Dam is a terrible example. Unlike many other of the reclamation projects of dubious utility undertaken by the federal government from the 1900’s-1960’s, the electricity revenues from the Hoover Dam easily paid for its construction. A private company would have had no problem building it.
The OP is correct that money spent by the government doesn’t just disappear. But that doesn’t mean it went someplace useful. Okay, maybe the government paying for a new bridge sounds a good idea. But when the government pays fifty million dollars for a bridge that should have cost ten million dollars, that was forty million dollars that ended up in somebody’s pocket - and people like you and me don’t own a major construction company or have the influence to get an over-priced bridge built. Often times, excess government spending is a way to funnel money to wealthy campaign contributors.
I watch MSNBC from time to time. I like RM. I agree with her, most of the time. I like big infrastructure projects. I think there should be more of them. I think there should be a national healthcare system. I think universities should be better funded and tuition less prohibitive.
But you’re fighting a culture that thinks that all the highways and bridges and power grids that we’ll ever need have already been built. Why keep building more? Just leave the money in my pocket so I can start the next Microgooglebook. It’s easy for the politicians plying for popularity votes to sell americans the american dream. It costs nothing to convince the majority of the people in this country that the only thing keeping them from being the next 1%er is that 28% witholding tax on their paycheck every week. And it’s not entirely the politician’s fault. Too many people are all to ready to hope, pray and believe that they too will live the american dream, one day, soon, right around the corner. Reality suggests otherwise but who wants to deal with that depressing fact.
What’s lacking is leadership and honesty in our politics. I don’t know how to fix that without a leader charismatic, sincere and intelligent enough to change society.
If I spend my own money on dinner, Wallyworld, or buying a bicycle, how does that not translate into jobs? Waiters, chefs, busboys, salesmen, clerks, warehouse managers, truckers, and bicycle repairmen need jobs just as much as dam builders do.
The infamous $600 “overpriced toilet seat” was on the B-2 bomber (paid for by the DoD, not NASA) and was actually a molded enclosure for the toilet area, not a hinged oval seat and lid you buy at the grocery store.
The objection to “Congressional pork-barrel spending” isn’t just that it is wasteful, but that it is a use of general tax dollars to benefit a few favored interests with influential lobbyists. The money typically doesn’t go back into savings, investment in works of social or technical benefit, or general cash flow that benefits the vitality and robustness of the economy; it largely goes to enrich a few special interests at the expense of more worthwhile efforts such as infrastructure maintenance and renewal, educational development and outreach, crime abatement, et cetera. It also takes money from local control to finance the federal budget in ways that may provide very uneven benefit.
If we assume a fixed money supply, whether the budget is balanced or not shouldn’t matter; the same total amount of money is available from the combination of public and private spending, and will finance jobs accordingly. Realistically, the federal government is much less efficient about fiscal planning and control than even the worst private industry, in no small part because of federal subsidies and pensions. By that logic, government spending should be limited to those services that private industry cannot practically or economically provide, such as general defense, universal literacy, pure and applied science research that is not of immediate industrial benefit, fiscal regulation, et cetera.
Because the government has a monopoly on how it spends a substantial amount of the GNP, the ways in which it manages or mismanages revenues can have a dramatic impact on the overall perception and reality of the money supply and financial markets, which argues that it should demonstrate exemplary restraint and control over excessive spending. A carte blanche to spend freely without considering balance leads to positive feedback and uncontrolled cycles of inflation.
Another point worth bringing up is the OP is talking about two separate issues: a balanced budget and excessive government spending. You can both, neither, or either without the other.
In my previous post, I gave a reason why excessive government spending can be bad. So here’s a reason why an unbalanced budget is bad: interest. I mentioned how a ten million dollar bridge can cost fifty million dollars because of sweetheart contracts. But a government project can also cost more than it should if you fund it with borrowed money. If you tax people ten million dollars, you can pay for a ten million dollar bridge. But if you borrow the money, you can end up paying twenty million dollars for the same bridge - ten million dollars for the bridge and ten million dollars for the interest on the loan.
Again, it’s an issue of where does that money go. In the case of government borrowing, a significant share of the money goes overseas. Foreign countries, like China, loan the American government money. So when we pay back the loans, our tax dollars end up going to China. And I can’t see how that situation is doing any good in this country.
I guess state and local governments and constituents would have to vote and decide on how to fund projects based on their own merits to the state and local economies and pay for them with with bonds backed by the taxing power of the local governments on the local constituents. Things that need to get built for economic reasons would get built because the constituents would have a vested interest.
Pork is just stealing money from everyone else to pay for what you would never buy if it cost you your own money.
The problem I have with pork barrel spending that who has a better idea what road needs to be built A) The state highway department, that has a whole staff of experts to evaluate existing infrastructure conditions, cost benefit ratios, and such, or B) The state senator. Also, I don’t have a cite but I’ve heard that spending money on infrastruture is not a great return on creating jobs, since a lot of the expense is for things like steel that expensive relative to the number of jobs created, if that makes any sense, and also for engineers or architects that probably aren’t going to be laid off immediately like a McDonalds cook if there’s a small lull in things.
The St. Croix Crossing is notorious because of the extreme expense, but at least it solves a very real traffic problem. The ulimate pork barrel project in my state is MN 60, where legistation required it be converted to 4 lanes even though all the sections are well under the 10,000 vehicles per day where you start thinking about it…
Pardon me, but I haven’t really seen the crux if my issue addressed. How big a hit to the economy is acceptable so we can “live within our means” as a country? If repubs get their way and heavy duty austerity measures, what kind of economic shrinkage would be reasonable??
The thing is, are we getting something of use? Oftentimes we are not. I am into trains, so when the details of the “stimulus” package were released, I checked what was going toward “rebuilding our crumbling rail system”. Amtrak got not a single locomotive, passenger car, mile of track or additional train. What it did get is a quarter million dollar wheelchair ramp in Minot, North Dakota, a station that might get two passengers a day, and one disabled person a year. For that kind of bread, we could set up a $50,000 trust fund, and use the interest to send a limo for the yearly gimp, and put $200,000 into something worthwhile.
I’ll bet the contractor that built that ramp contributed to a Democrat candidate or PAC, per what Little Nemo said. Must be a nice living!
More correctly stated, The more of your money the gov’t spends on the things the government thinks that you want, the less of your money you have to spend on the things you want that the government doesn’t think you should have. Everybody does not win - in fact most people lose in the short term and nearly everyone loses in the long term through government insolvency. See Greece for the most recent proof of that corrected phrase.
And do you understand that every dollar of debt the government incurs is a dollar that must be paid back through someone elses labor some time in the future? It’s not sustainable and systems that are not sustainable typically collapse.
Why do you think we can’t just fix the economy by paying people to dig holes and fill them up again?