You Balance The Budget

[Munger]

It's pretty easy to realize that one who speaks of reducing the deficit but does not talk about cuts in Medicare and the Military is not serious. Earmarks, Medical Malpractice Reform, and various other favorite whipping posts are window dressing.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...s-graphic.html

[jk]

Re: You Balance The Budget

i did the exercise, balanced the budget and still had about a quarter of the list to go. big surplus- no problem if you're willing to butcher sacred cows.

[Munger]

Re: You Balance The Budget

i did the exercise, balanced the budget and still had about a quarter of the list to go. big surplus- no problem if you're willing to butcher sacred cows.

I agree. It's not that hard. You can get 90% of the way there by capping Medicare, reducing troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, eliminating tax loopholes, and putting the estate tax back to Clinton levels. That leaves 50 other things to choose from to get to a fully balanced budget.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: You Balance The Budget

It's pretty easy to realize that one who speaks of reducing the deficit but does not talk about cuts in Medicare and the Military is not serious. Earmarks, Medical Malpractice Reform, and various other favorite whipping posts are window dressing.

True, but ...

So long as the families owning the world's largest pools of capital wealth control our nations (and almost every other nations) monetary system by means of lending all currency into existence from the banks (money center banks and central banks) that they control, it won't matter much what budget passes Congress. That budget can be confidently expected to serve the interests of those who own and control the money supply.

Or, to put it another way, I expect that we will indeed see Medicare and Military spending cut back, cut way back. This will be part of a national austerity, leaving almost all of us poorer ... for most of our money will be flowing to these great wealth pools, to service the nations debt! We're not to that point yet. They are still piling up the national debt, while keeping the interest rates on Treasuries low and the average maturity date short, so that we don't really notice.

At some point:

• a mass hysteria will be fueled over inflation, for which high Treasury yields will be the "answer",
• a great concern over the short maturity (requiring constantly rolling over the debt) of our (U.S.) national debt will be fueled, for which restructuring that debt into longer bonds will be the "answer", and
• a great fear of the immense national debt will be stoked, for which "austerity" (cut everything except debt repayment) will be the "answer".

On the other side of these events, those holding Trillions of Dollars of U.S. currency and short term T-Bills (much of it outright stolen from us in various recent bailouts, quantitative easings, and other less publicized shenanigans) will have a grand opportunity to buy some 20 and 30 year U.S. Treasury Bonds paying quite fine yields for a quite low price. Life's a bitch when you're filthy rich.

Note, unfortunately, war would work "wonders" to stoke the national debt even higher, jack up the price of oil (and hence of inflation fears), and provide China an excellent excuse to refuse to continue to hold U.S. Treasury debt, thereby motivating our need to finance long so as to stop having to constantly roll it over.

Be careful what you ask for, Munger. We might get it.

[sunskyfan]

Re: You Balance The Budget

Working to balance the budget while the FED (should be called the RED) is dumping $100 billion dollars a month with QE N seems silly. Not that I have a problem with a balanced budget but if you think you have a moral hazard ridden economy now start starving people of medical care while Wall Street sees a 140 billion dollar bonus pool.

[Munger]

Re: You Balance The Budget

I'm with you. Mostly I was trying to point out the hypocrisy of the usual suspects talking about balancing the budget while at the same time pushing tax cuts and taking Medicare and Military cuts off the table.

Medicare is a huge problem though. It will have to be dealt with one way or another. Single payer or the like will probably have to be adopted.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: You Balance The Budget

Medicare is a huge problem though. It will have to be dealt with one way or another.

Choosing medical methods and pharmaceuticals that were more affective at promoting health, rather than more affective at promoting profit, would be a better solution in my view.

Instead of figuring out how to fund bad medical choices, we should be making better choices.

Restoring a healthier food and water supply would also help reduce medical costs.

The chronic illnesses of our time, such as obesity, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease, are symptoms of a number of very bad (for our health) albeit profitable (for a few large corporations) medical, agriculture, food and water processing and delivery choices.

The medical bills of healthy people are much easier to fund.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: You Balance The Budget

Medicare! pshaw! What we need are ice floes!

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: You Balance The Budget

Medicare! pshaw! What we need are ice floes!

Nah - ice floes won't do the job. Medicare is mechanism for separating people from any remaining wealth they may have saved up, before putting the patient in "hospice", meaning to remove all but the least expensive treatments once they cannot fund further life continuing efforts.

Ice floes would leave the savings of the elderly with their family, not with the medical establishment. We cannot allow that in our modern age.

[goodrich4bk]

Re: You Balance The Budget

I was surprised at how easy it is. Cuts in federal wages and total headcount seem just fine to me, but not because I think the programs are necessarily wasteful or not needed. Rather, I've watched for 15 years wages and employment in the private sector shrink and I just think it is a "no-brainer" that all Americans must share the pain of global wage arbitrage, not just the front line workers in private industry. As for the military items, that I could do in my sleep. We spend as much on our military now as all other countries combined, so when you are just talking about "less obscene" I really don't see what the difficulty is. Given our geography and the lack of any enemy in our entire hemisphere, the notion that military cuts are "difficult" is ludicrous.

On the medicare, I opted for the 1% rise cap as the most humane option. And I bumped retirement to 68, not 70. Remember, this is for full retirement; those who really need to retire early can still do so but they receive a lower SS check.