Wow. So ‘fiscal responsibility’ according to your conservative friend involves an initial step of increasing the debt until it can’t possibly be increased any more.
And then entitlement programs will be the thing that has to be cut, but at that point we’d still be stuck with interest payments on the debt consuming a much larger chunk of the Federal budget, probably for decades, than they do now.
It is instructive that this strategy is sometimes called “starving the beast.” Except, this is a form of starvation that is unknown to humanity, in while piles and piles of food keep being delivered to the beast, but the bill at the restaurant is simply never paid.
Oh, if the poor and indigent in the United States could only be starved in such a way.
This is nonsense. That comment may make you feel good I suppose, but each and every president since at least Kennedy has increase the national debt. Your presidents, and the other party’s presidents.
The problem is with each of us, the taxpayers. If your local Congressman campaigned that he (or she) would have a 2% increase in taxes and a 2% across the board spending cut in order to get the debt and deficit under control, they would never get elected.
This is our problem. And with the service on the debt at 9% at a time when bonds being sold at rock bottom prices, this is a problem that is going to be catastrophic someday.
Yes, I shit you not. Something like that. I guess he assumes that people ‘come to their senses’ before then and recognize the need for eliminating social programs before it gets too dire. But their goal is to create the perception of an emergency - perhaps even to the point of having an actual emergency - so that everyone agrees that it’s the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society who have to take it up the ass - because obviously, they’re poor because they’re lazy and are living the high life on their dime. Oh they’ll give us the platitudes about how they don’t mean everyone who accepts government programs is a bum and that some people really do need it, but that sympathy is not going to get in the way of making liberals shed more tears.
That isn’t what was being claimed.
Robot Arm clearly said that DEFICITS go up, not debt. Look at this picture: link. If you’d like a refresher of why talking about growth of deficits is not exactly the same as growth of debts, I’m happy to oblige.
Sure, if you need some help with this let me know, I’m all about fighting ignorance.
Nice link. Lies, damn lies and statistics. Here’s one for you: link. We can slice this many ways. These snide comments don’t help this discussion though, but it’s illustrative of why politically we can’t get things done.
We can all spin data and links all we want. The issue is that at this point, I don’t think we can just spend or just cut our way out of it, we need to do both. And our parties are so far apart on how to do this (at our behest) I don’t know how to do it.
As far a Clinton goes, that was such a unique period. Clinton was a Democrat leaning right at that time socially, with both houses under Republican control. There was a bit off a lingering peace dividend with the dot com economy booming. Clinton can take credit for that, the Republican congress can, and American business can.
I note that the link I gave relates to deficit by percentage of GDP, and yours is spending in absolute dollars.
Economists overwhelmingly use percentage of GDP as measures of these sorts of things, because counting absolute dollars is inherently a poor measurement because it does not account for a variety of factors - inflation among them.
Also note that the statistic you provided isn’t even on the same point we were discussing. Tracking spending over time is not a measure of either debt or deficit. What you linked to is, really, nothing but a red herring.
That is true. We can use measures that are objective, or those that are misleading.
There are many reasons why the deficit during Democratic Administrations tends to go down. I am not saying that it is simply because of who is in the White House, but we see a fairly consistent pattern of better fiscal policies under Democratic Presidents. I’m not clear on why you want to deny this, as opposed to simply attributing it to other factors, which is a reasonable argument. But arguing that deficits don’t trend upwards during Republican Administrations? Man, that’s just off in left field.
Plotting our deficits in inflation adjusted dollars instead of a percentage of GDP is dumb. It’s like me comparing the debt I had as 20 year old to the debt I have now at the age of 45 without looking at how my income has increased. I know that you really want to hold on to the narrative that Democrats are tax and spend (which is fine, they are), but Republicans are the party of borrow and spend. They have proven that for all their talk of fiscal responsibility, they have none. Reagan borrowed a shitload of money (and with it ended the cold war), Bush the senior raised taxes and was voted out because of it (he is my favorite Republican because he was honest), Bush the younger with his ruinous wars, Medicare part D, and tax cuts for the wealthy, and now Trump is given a huge hand out to corporations and the investor class.
Look, I agree with you that lower taxes is better for me and for everybody, but we should approach this from the opposite direction. We need to decide as a nation what government services are necessary, and then set taxes to fund them. The Republicans just want to tax less without having the discussion or making the hard decisions. The reason they won’t make the hard decisions is they will lose (keep the government hands off my Medicare yelled the old Republican who has no understanding!). I am not arguing against entitlement spending cuts here, just making the point that these programs are very popular and the crux of the problem with regards to government spending growth. The Democrats are more honest about this, they want to increase spending and say so, but they also want to increase taxes to pay for it. Republicans are just liars.
The markets have been trading on tax cuts since the election, I doubt they are responsible for the selloff. Bit of a stretch.
Plotting our deficits in only one way is dumb. That is the point I was making. It was mentioned up thread that economists only look at this data in percentage of GDP. When I work with economists in the Fed, they always have what ever data they are reviewing shown a number of different ways.
As an example, DOD argues that their budget is being decreased over time. And that’s 100% rock solid take it to the bank true - if one uses their percentage of the budget compared with GDP. But if there was a tread about DOD and that was trotted out, there would be complaints that one was data shopping by using that.
Your argument that comparing your finances with the government’s finances doesn’t make any sense, in any way.
You have no idea what my “narrative” is, so please don’t try and assume that you do.
The larger problem with Starve the Beast is the assumption that the response to a crisis will be to cut entitlements. The electorate will throw out legislators who actually attempt to do so. Instead we’ll get higher interest rates. In addition, increased inflation will chip away at standard of living enabling us to pay our debt with much less valuable dollars.
I have often heard Republicans say raising taxes on the rich will stifle investment and hurt the economy, yet there was a thriving economy with plenty of investment after the 1993 tax increase.
Here’s the thing: if there’s a question about defense spending, there’s lots of ways to plot that, each with some value. So long as the measures actually reflect defense spending, each measure probably adds something to the conversation.
However, this little mini argument started in relation to someone talking about deficits, to which you responded with posts about overall spending and debts. Those are conceptually related, but aren’t actually responsive to any issues about deficits at all, for completely obvious reasons.
So if your economist friends in the Fed are examining, say, lending rates, and I start saying they are wrong because look at my data on stagnating wages, your friends will stand there looking at me like, “Yeah, dude, we’re talking about lending rates, and you’re trying to distract the conversation to some ax you have to grind about a different issue.”
Same thing here: a poster made a point about deficits, and you responded with points on aggregate spending and debts. That isn’t actually the same topic, which is why I called it a red herring.
I’m not prepared to argue about your narrative. I’m just saying you have twice tried to prove your point about deficits by relaying arguments that don’t address the point at all.
Who are his producers now?
Fox and Friends
…The Aristocrats!
I was thinking Putin and Pals.
The only point that I wanted to make about deficits, is that it’s a problem that both parties contribute to, and the debt is an issue that both parties contribute to. As taxpayers, we are collectively largely ignoring the problem. And this issue of pointing the finger at the other party has got to stop. Fundamentally we know that one party would like to increase one basket of goods and decrease another, and the other party would like to do the opposite. The constant loser in this tug-of-war are people like me - fiscal conservatives. Frankly If I were king for a day I’d raise taxes and freeze spending for two years. But my crown isn’t in the mail.
And yes we all know the difference between the debt and the deficit. But for this item - the inability to get spending under control - it really doesn’t matter which concept we use to debate the problem.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but I’d make two final points before moving on:
First, deficits and debt should not be summarized as a spending problem. It’s both a spending and revenue problem. If you look at the substantial increases in the deficits in 2009-2010, conservatives would have people believe that Obama just crammed more spending in on ridiculous things. That is really, really misleading: social safety net went up as a result of more people qualifying for various aid programs established long before Obama ever entered government, and revenues went in the tank because people were losing their jobs and businesses were going under. But again, if you listened to Republicans back then, “We’re spending too much squwaaaaaaaak!!”
Second, from what I’ve read in this thread of what you think a good fiscal policy is, I would strongly object to you thinking that you are a fiscal conservative. I think there’s a popular misunderstanding that fiscal conservatism means supporting balanced budgets and addressing the debt. It does not. Fiscal conservatives, time and time again, have supported massive, unpaid-for tax cuts that simply increase the debt. Fiscal conservatives haven’t voted for a tax increase in decades, no matter how big deficits got. The fact is that fiscal conservatives have these goals in this priority: 1) lower taxes, 2) lower spending, 3) balanced budgets. I contend that 3 is entirely dispensable, even though many who call themselves fiscal conservatives would think that balanced budgets should be the top priority.
You should have 3 takeaways, this will be used as an excuse to cut medicare, medicaid and social security.
Politics is so depressing in America. Its all white nationalism and plutocracy anymore.
