I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

[flintlock]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

Tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend. Tax, tax, tax, spend, spend, spend. Why is it that every "answer" to the budget problems of the USA always either more taxes or cutting SS? I never seem to see any discussion of cutting the huge bureacracy, cutting waste, downsizing government, and all the myriad of smaller but ultimately more realistic things we can do to cut into this mess. We have a govt office for every thing you can think of. I'm talking local and federal levels. There are so many levels of bureacracy for even the smallest issue. No one even questions it anymore, we've grown so used to it. But the fact is the world survived and thrived for centuries without most of it.

Hell, you have to have an govt permit to wipe your ass these days. That is what adds up to huge deficits. The incredible friction of doing business in this country. A lot of American companies spend more on accounting, government compliance, and personel departments than they do on their primary business focus. Not only is our government bloated, it has forced our companies to become just like the government, huge inefficient entities. All this makes us less competitive in the world.

As for Social security, I say honor the commitments we've made. But obviously something is out of whack here. I agree with the previous poster who said there is no "Right" to social security. And the fact that so many see it that way proves that its orginal purpose has been lost on an entire generation. I'm all for safety nets to some degree. But when people learn to beat the system, the system is no longer sustainable.

If this movie doesn't address the huge growth of government as a reason for this debt, then its a waste of time in my opinion

[ASH]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

Lastly as for 'letting Granny freeze': On the one hand, it is easy for an educated, economically well off, and young person to say that.

On the other hand those Grannies have an equal number of votes as you do: 1 per person.

And there are lots more Baby Boomer Grannies and Grampies than whippersnappers like yourself.

From FY2000 census:

Total population: 281M
Total population over the age of 21: 196M
Total population over the age of 45 (Baby boomers and earlier): 97M
Total population from 35-44: 45M

Of course, it is now 8 years later...

Even the older of the 35-44 cohort are well within sight of retirement (52) - and these group comprises the tail end of the Boomers.

So I'd be really careful about highlighting your views in public - the Granny Police State may get you! ;)

Heh heh. The self-interest inherent in my position is not lost on me. Actually, the idea that the social contract should be in the self-interest of all contracting parties is fundamental to my philosophy of government, and explains my opposition to the transfer of wealth from the few to the many. (And thus is my reactionary self-interest neatly rationalized by sophistry!) In fact, I sincerely believe the stuff I'm saying... but I'm self-aware enough to realize how it plays.

As for the demographics, yes -- you're probably right. At one time, I had the vague hope that the workers would have the upper hand, because I think the worst worker-to-retiree ratio that is supposedly going to occur is about 2:1. There should be enough workers to out-vote the retired population at any given time. However, if you include those who are about to retire, I imagine they will be more concerned about the benefits they hope to receive than they are about the taxes they must shoulder, and will therefore vote with the retirees.

Just as you say, at this point taxes are going to go up AND benefits will be cut. No one is going to be happy.

[ASH]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

Tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend. Tax, tax, tax, spend, spend, spend. Why is it that every "answer" to the budget problems of the USA always either more taxes or cutting SS? I never seem to see any discussion of cutting the huge bureacracy, cutting waste, downsizing government, and all the myriad of smaller but ultimately more realistic things we can do to cut into this mess. We have a govt office for every thing you can think of. I'm talking local and federal levels. There are so many levels of bureacracy for even the smallest issue. No one even questions it anymore, we've grown so used to it. But the fact is the world survived and thrived for centuries without most of it.

Hell, you have to have an govt permit to wipe your ass these days. That is what adds up to huge deficits. The incredible friction of doing business in this country. A lot of American companies spend more on accounting, government compliance, and personel departments than they do on their primary business focus. Not only is our government bloated, it has forced our companies to become just like the government, huge inefficient entities. All this makes us less competitive in the world.

As for Social security, I say honor the commitments we've made. But obviously something is out of whack here. I agree with the previous poster who said there is no "Right" to social security. And the fact that so many see it that way proves that its orginal purpose has been lost on an entire generation. I'm all for safety nets to some degree. But when people learn to beat the system, the system is no longer sustainable.

If this movie doesn't address the huge growth of government as a reason for this debt, then its a waste of time in my opinion

The thing is, most of the growth in government to which you allude IS the entitlement programs.

These historical budgetary breakdowns are from the OMB:

Percentage of Outlays

National Defense / Human Resources / Physical Resources / Net Interest
1955 = 62.4% / 21.8% / 40% / 7.1%
1965 = 42.8% / 30.9% / 9.5% / 7.3%
1975 = 26.0% / 52.1% / 10.7% / 7.0%
1985 = 26.7% / 49.9% / 6.0% / 13.7%
1995 = 17.9% / 60.9% / 3.9% / 15.3%
2005 = 20.0% / 64.2% / 5.3% / 7.4%
2007 = 20.2% / 64.4% / 4.9% / 8.7%

The "Human Resources" category includes education, health, Medicare, income security, Social Security, and veteran's benefits. The "Physical Resources" category includes energy, natural resources, commerce, housing, transportation, and community development. The category "Net Interest" does not count the interest that the government awards itself for holding its own bonds. (This off-budget interest adds to the national debt, but need not be paid out of current revenue, and so does not show up in cash flow accounting. The off-budget interest will have to be paid out of fresh tax revenue later when the government agencies cash-in their bonds, and will show up in the budget as an expense to the Treasury Department. I once worked up some charts to re-calculate the budget fractions taking the off-budget interest into account, but they need revision in light of newer numbers.) This tally does not show the other functions of government, which include funding for science, international relations, agriculture, the administration of justice, and other basic government functions. In 1955 that category amounted to 9.8% and has since fallen to 4.8%. Also, undistributed offsetting receipts -- essentially being user-fees that defray the costs of government -- are not included. These ran from 5.1% of expenditures in 1955 to 3.0% in 2007.

Since education is mixed in there with the entitlement programs, perhaps it would be illustrative to talk about the breakdown in terms of direct payments to individuals. In 1955, direct payments to individuals comprised 20.9% of all federal government spending; in 2007, direct payments to individuals comprised 61.9% of all federal spending. In other words, the vast bulk of the "Human Resources" budget category is entitlements.

The takeaway I get from this is that social spending has grown to steadily eclipse the other functions of government. Moreover, as regards future budgetary problems, of the projected 75-year budgetary shortfall of $54 trillion, $34 trillion is due to Medicare and $7 trillion to Social Security. Tax hikes and cuts in spending must somehow total a ~35% change in revenue/expenditures to close this gap.

Cutting government waste is an admirable goal, but the magnitude of the budgetary problem is so vast that it cannot be addressed through efficiency alone. Honoring the prior commitments of government is another admirable goal, but it is simply not possible. It is also unjust. The Baby Boomers paid for the "Greatest Generation" to retire, which was swell of them. However, they also paid excess payroll taxes over and above the immediate expenses of the Greatest Generation. The surplus payroll taxes were then used for the immediate expenses of government, the fruits of which were immediately enjoyed by the Baby Boomers. However, these excess payroll taxes were replaced by government account series bonds, which obligate FUTURE tax-payers to divert FUTURE tax revenue to support the retirement of the Boomers... plus interest. By this mechanism, the Boomers will get to spend their tax money twice -- the first time by paying for the immediate government services they voted for while workers themselves (which seems fair), and a second time by requiring my generation to pay for a ficticious "surplus" that was already spent the same year it was collected. Most Boomers feel entitled to these "obligations" because they "paid into the system" -- but they feel that way because they imagine the entitlement system works somehow like a savings account of 401k. In reality, there is no saving of tax revenue from one year to the next, and the entitlement programs have always been pay-as-you-go. Being largely a principled generation, I suspect that if most Boomers understood the mechanics of the federal budget and the Trust Funds, they'd feel a bit sheepish.

[Guest]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

Ash - a quite astonishingly primitive perspective on the meaning of "social contracts" which define modern societies! Perhaps your views on the economy's obligations to the "elderly and infirm" would find their most congenial setting in the middle ages. I am floored to read you post such stuff. It just goes to show - one can read the posts of someone who demonstrates great sophistication and intelligence and conclude they are a person of very well rounded education, and then they can casually drop in observations such as:

<< Once someone retires, they are no longer producing in the economy, so their value as human capital ceases to matter; further investment in them has no return >>

I surmise you must regard this "Darwinian" social organization as a thing of "sleek and leanly organized beauty" even? :rolleyes:

Have you lived anywhere outside of the US? Most European countries for instance, consider us already somewhat "primitive" in our conceptions of a safety net for the elderly and the notion of a "social contract". Your comments put you at the outer fringe of what Americans regard as acceptable notions of "social contract", and from a European perspective your notions would probably be regarded more as an anomalous curiosity than much of anything else.

More to the point, it leans on a fallacy, that by maintaining a social safety net for the "elderly and infirm" a nation fatally reduces it's dynamism. This is indeed, a quite remarkably obtuse viewpoint not to speak of flirting with some really ugly reactive notions. In even a moderately wealthy nation, there should be sufficient wealth generation to provide an essential safety net for these groups, and still maintain a robust capacity for growth. American stated GDP growth is so heavily doctored that once we remove the "doctoring" we are really no more productive than the Europeans, and they maintain a far more civilized set of social services than do we.

You may look around and consider these social contracts to be a prime reason for America's competitive decay. If you do see it that way, I suggest that is a serious misapprehension. Just one example of the fallacy of "unaffordable safety nets for "unproductive elderly" in the country, would be to simply reduce military expenditure, such that we spend as much on military strength per capita as do an average of any other OECD nations worldwide. At least prior to the fiscal morass of this decade, we'd have quickly come up with sufficient funds to provide basic safety nets for what you refer to as "the elderly and infirm".

What you may miss ASH, is that in fact this would be the difference between a civilized nation and a broken, dysfunctional nation in the modern world. Your prescriptions for a "more dynamic economy" do not meet with my approval. I am a moderate conservative, but I find your conception of a society which finds it's inspiration in such a crude and cartoonish misapplication of "Darwinian" principles to the delicate business of social contracts, to be questionable. Specifically regarding your comment: "their value as human capital ceases to matter"? I must further observe, that I even find your observation repugnant. This sort of thinking is glib, smug as to it's own socio-economic accomplishments, and has little to offer our country going forwards.

I contrast it with the intricately involved discourse you put forth on the efficiency of ballistic missile "deterrent" systems and surmise your education has a hole at it's center.

Sorry, the complacency within these comments calls for someone to offer a sufficient critique to catch your attention as to what's wrong in such remarks. C1ue's commitment to a "social contract" based on his past comments, seems to me perfunctory anyway. It is a testament to your comment's curiously extreme nature that it even caused him to offer you a mild reproof. Scary philosophy you've got there ASH! BTW, I'm an agnostic, and haven't stepped foot inside a Church in 20 odd years. But I understand you are observant? How do you reconcile such a Darwinian "philosophy" with your Christian faith? I have to imagine you regard St. Francis (gave all his possessions away) as one of the world's most unmitigated fools!

Heh heh. ... In fact, I sincerely believe the stuff I'm saying... but I'm self-aware enough to realize how it plays.

It seems obvious to me that social services like education and healthcare for the young and working-age have a far superior return for society than investment in retirement benefits for the elderly. Once someone retires, they are no longer producing in the economy, so their value as human capital ceases to matter; further investment in them has no return in terms of productivity. Further, the eldery and infirm are least likely to engage in street crime or revolution, so the public order arguments are also weak. Benefits for retirees should be the absolute last on our list of priorities for social spending -- not first in line. It hardly makes sense to go into debt to support such non-productive expenditures, or to squeeze out vital discretionary spending targeted at younger and more productive age cohorts..

[phirang]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

NEVER trust the oligarchs! Jesus H Christ!

Many consider themselves uber menschen, even though they inherited their status. Some are great, fascinating people, but many are just dirt-bags, including this Pete Peterson sack o' shit.

Let's see how much of a bad-ass this Peterson guy is: strip him of his wealth (like he earned it... pff), throw him in Afghanistan with a goat and tube of lube, and let's see how his uber-menschhood works over there...

He'd be a patahn's biotch in about, oh, 2 hours.

These guys want to kill the poor. If they had carte blanche, they'd rev-up Auschwitz to gas the poor and use slave labor from abroad, creating a society akin to Saudi Arabia.

edit: sorry, there is zakat in Saudi. I guess Burma is really their model.

[mikedev10]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

where can i go to read about the facts of why we really needed social security in the first place and how charity was unable to meet the needs of those that needed help?

[phirang]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

where can i go to read about the facts of why we really needed social security in the first place and how charity was unable to meet the needs of those that needed help?

Have you seen children covered in filth, starving, and with flies all over them?

We can have that here, and not just for crack-addicts or criminals... people forget that in FSU, there were PhD's mopping floors, if they were lucky.

[flintlock]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

Good point, and I really already knew entitlements where the biggest problem. I tell my parents all the time that their generation really got a sweet deal at our expense. But unfortunately most entitlements won't go away or even shrink due to our switch to socialism. I think its going to take an all out approach including higher taxes, cuts in entitlements, and leaner government. 2 of these three items seem to be "off the table" at least for now. My point is we could all benefit from a simpler less complex government. Everyone focuses on the Federal level, but recently the biggest growth in government is at the local levels. Every podunk town in America has a huge jobs program to employ its citizens, creating jobs where none was needed.

Ever try getting a permit to do some small job on your home? In my county you'll be filling out a book sized application. Some overpaid paid bureaucrat will look at it and either issue the permit or not. Clerks will be paid to handle the paperwork. Then a series of inspectors will drive their county provided vehicles on at least three trips to inspect it. In a lot of cases I see, the inspection and oversight of minor projects costs more than the project itself. All rationalized by some vague quest for perfection. Meanwhile Rome burns.

Here in Georgia, we have 159 counties. Within each county we have numerous towns and cities, each with a distinct government entity. Almost every one of these jurisdictions has some sort of police, fire, building code enforcement, etc. Its a hugely inefficient duplication of services. Government has become big business. It is a source of income for those working for it as well as those profiting by selling services to it. Its becoming government for government's sake, not the people it is supposed to serve. The only serious growing sector of jobs these days is in government. A huge percentage of our work force is now either working for government in some capacity or derives their income from support of government services. One only needs to look to the Soviet Union for the result of that kind of system. You can't run an economy just based on providing each other services. At some point someone has to actually produce something of real value. Of course the FIRE economy has put so many out of work that the government feels they must employ them.

A lot of people forget that these days, we are taxed at the Federal level, but then a lot of that money is parcelled out back to the states and local level by the Feds. The Feds run it through their meat grinder of inefficiency then give it back to us. Its basically just a government sponsored shake down. Look for a lot more of it now that tax revenues are down.

I know it won't solve the problem, but it would be a start, and one that wouldn't even hurt that much.

[c1ue]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

I know it won't solve the problem, but it would be a start, and one that wouldn't even hurt that much.

I agree that the size of government is a huge drain on the economy - as many of the workers don't add to GDP except in the salary funnel sense.

However, it is a mistake to think that removing those salary funnels will necessarily make anything better by itself.

While the US government 'only' employs about 2% of the population, iTulip has posted numbers well above that.

If defense contracting and what not is included, then we're looking at something like 30% of all jobs in the US are dependent on the government in some way.

A sudden 10% drop in government thus would translate into an immediate 3% (or more) unemployment jump.

[Rajiv]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

I would suggest that you add the following to your reading list

John Iceland's Poverty in America

from Chapter 1

In 1971, Robert Lampman, who had been a key economic adviser to President Lyndon Johnson on antipoverty initiatives, predicted that poverty would be eradicated by 1980.1 James Tobin, another policy adviser, had been equally hopeful when he declared his views in a 1967 New Republic article entitled "It Can Be Done! Conquering Poverty in the U.S. by 1976."2

Today these predictions seem decidedly naive. In fact, by the mid-1970s, with the country in the midst of a recession and an oil crisis, it had already become clear that these optimistic forecasts would prove inaccurate. Poverty rates fluctuated in response to economic booms and busts in the last decades of the twentieth century but saw no further overall decline; they are still particularly high among minority groups, children, and female-headed families. It now seems as unlikely as ever that we will witness drastic falls in poverty in the near future. This leads one to ask: Were Lampman and Tobin fabulously misguided, or did they in fact offer reasonable predictions given the trends at the time? Why does poverty remain so pervasive? Is poverty unavoidable? Are people from particular racial and ethnic backgrounds or family types inevitably more likely to be poor? What can we expect over the next few years? What are the limits of policy?

also American Poverty and Welfare Reform

I. Poverty in America

Ironically, poverty may well be the richest country's most serious social problem. According to the March 2000 Current Population Survey, over 32 million Americans - 11.8 percent of the population - were poor. A family, and every individual in it, is considered poor if its total income is below the poverty threshold, which was $17,029 for a family of four in 1999. A typical poor family needed an extra annual income of $6,687 to escape poverty.

The poverty experience varies by family type and age group. Female-headed families with no husband present had the highest poverty rate - 28 percent of those families were poor, compared with only 5 percent of married families. Although only 18 percent of all families were female-headed families, they made up 53 percent of poor families. Children (under 18 years old), regardless of their race or ethnicity, are especially vulnerable. In 1999, about one in six American children lived in poverty, representing 38 percent of the total poverty population.

Among the racial and ethnic groups, blacks and Hispanics suffered particularly high rate of poverty (24 percent and 23 percent, respectively), about three times higher than the rate for non-Hispanic whites in 1999 (8 percent). The poverty rate for Asians and Pacific Islanders was 11 percent.

Poverty is not a recent social problem. It has a long history in the United States. In 1960, 22.2 percent of American population lived below the federal poverty threshold; between 1970-1990, roughly 11 percent to 15 percent of the population experienced poverty. The poverty rate of 1999 was the lowest in two decades.

Poverty weighs on the national conscience because the poor are primarily the most vulnerable members of the American population - single parent families, children, the least well educated, the aged, and the handicapped. Poverty is also interwoven with other costly social problems such as crime, substance abuse, homeless, out-of-wedlock births, poor education achievement, and domestic violence. It is also a costly social problem in that each year federal and state governments spend billions of dollars on programs that assist the poor.

[ASH]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

Ash - a quite astonishingly primitive perspective on the meaning of "social contracts" which define modern societies!

Perhaps your views on the economy's obligations to the "elderly and infirm" would find their most congenial setting in the middle ages. I am floored to read you post such stuff. It just goes to show - one can read the posts of someone who demonstrates great sophistication and intelligence and conclude they are a person of very well rounded education, and then they can casually drop in observations such as:

<< Once someone retires, they are no longer producing in the economy, so their value as human capital ceases to matter; further investment in them has no return >>

I surmise you must regard this "Darwinian" social organization as a thing of "sleek and leanly organized beauty" even? :rolleyes:

Have you lived anywhere outside of the US? Most European countries for instance, consider us already somewhat "primitive" in our conceptions of a safety net for the elderly and the notion of a "social contract". Your comments put you at the outer fringe of what Americans regard as acceptable notions of "social contract", and from a European perspective your notions would probably be regarded more as an anomalous curiosity than much of anything else.

More to the point, it leans on a fallacy, that by maintaining a social safety net for the "elderly and infirm" a nation fatally reduces it's dynamism. This is indeed, a quite remarkably obtuse viewpoint not to speak of flirting with some really ugly reactive notions. In even a moderately wealthy nation, there should be sufficient wealth generation to provide an essential safety net for these groups, and still maintain a robust capacity for growth. American stated GDP growth is so heavily doctored that once we remove the "doctoring" we are really no more productive than the Europeans, and they maintain a far more civilized set of social services than do we.

You may look around and consider these social contracts to be a prime reason for America's competitive decay. If you do see it that way, I suggest that is a serious misapprehension. Just one example of the fallacy of "unaffordable safety nets for "unproductive elderly" in the country, would be to simply reduce military expenditure, such that we spend as much on military strength per capita as do an average of any other OECD nations worldwide. At least prior to the fiscal morass of this decade, we'd have quickly come up with sufficient funds to provide basic safety nets for what you refer to as "the elderly and infirm".

What you may miss ASH, is that in fact this would be the difference between a civilized nation and a broken, dysfunctional nation in the modern world. Your prescriptions for a "more dynamic economy" do not meet with my approval. I am a moderate conservative, but I find your conception of a society which finds it's inspiration in such a crude and cartoonish misapplication of "Darwinian" principles to the delicate business of social contracts, to be questionable. Specifically regarding your comment: "their value as human capital ceases to matter"? I must further observe, that I even find your observation repugnant. This sort of thinking is glib, smug as to it's own socio-economic accomplishments, and has little to offer our country going forwards.

I contrast it with the intricately involved discourse you put forth on the efficiency of ballistic missile "deterrent" systems and surmise your education has a hole at it's center.

Sorry, the complacency within these comments calls for someone to offer a sufficient critique to catch your attention as to what's wrong in such remarks. C1ue's commitment to a "social contract" based on his past comments, seems to me perfunctory anyway. It is a testament to your comment's curiously extreme nature that it even caused him to offer you a mild reproof. Scary philosophy you've got there ASH! BTW, I'm an agnostic, and haven't stepped foot inside a Church in 20 odd years. But I understand you are observant? How do you reconcile such a Darwinian "philosophy" with your Christian faith? I have to imagine you regard St. Francis (gave all his possessions away) as one of the world's most unmitigated fools!

Thanks for your critique Lukester. I apologize if I gave offense, and I regret dropping several pegs in your estimation.

I recognize how far on the fringe my basic viewpoint is. I am led to it by a line of reasoning which I will present later, seeking your correction. (I haven't time for an adequate exposition just presently.) My views are malleable, and I have been "talked down" from other positions in the past.

Also, I'm afraid I'm guilty of playing up the "curiously extreme" and "cartoonish" aspects of my position for effect. I was self-consciously trying to be shocking. This is kind of childish, and I notice not something you typically engage in, so please forgive me if you found it repugnant rather than comic. I won't make out like I was trying to do "A Modest Proposal", as my points are not facetious, but the method of delivery was somewhat.

However, the core of my point remains, which is that if society's resources are limited, investment in the productive elements of society should take priority. I didn't intend to write -- and I don't think I did write -- "that by maintaining a social safety net for the 'elderly and infirm' a nation fatally reduces it's dynamism." Rather, I proposed a general justification for wealth transfer between members of a society (the notion of a "public good" that was to the advantage of all), I identified several specific and tangible public goods served by social programs (productivity among them), and I pointed out that the material return on investment was different for different age cohorts. If the federal government is spending too much money, then taxes need to be raised and expenditures need to be cut. It makes sense to prioritize those expenditures.

I think the main reason my viewpoint is offensive is that it recognizes only tangible public goods. This has the theoretical attraction of being neutral with respect to subjective values. My idea was that the worth of tangible public goods is inherrant in their material function, and so would be a less controversial basis for discussion. However, this line of argument is rhetorically very weak because certain intangible values -- such as not letting granny starve -- are almost universally held. Actually, I am aware of this (making a joke about it earlier). My love of the "clean" argument has probably led me into error in this case. (Also, I recognize that appreciation of tangible goods does have a subjective component, so the argument isn't as clean as it pretends to be, anyway.)

Anyway, for the record, I am not a Christian. I am an agnostic.

[phirang]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

Thanks for your critique Lukester. I apologize if I gave offense, and I regret dropping several pegs in your estimation.

I recognize how far on the fringe my basic viewpoint is. I am led to it by a line of reasoning which I will present later, seeking your correction. (I haven't time for an adequate exposition just presently.) My views are malleable, and I have been "talked down" from other positions in the past.

Also, I'm afraid I'm guilty of playing up the "curiously extreme" and "cartoonish" aspects of my position for effect. I was self-consciously trying to be shocking. This is kind of childish, and I notice not something you typically engage in, so please forgive me if you found it repugnant rather than comic. I won't make out like I was trying to do "A Modest Proposal", as my points are not facetious, but the method of delivery was somewhat.

However, the core of my point remains, which is that if society's resources are limited, investment in the productive elements of society should take priority. I didn't intend to write -- and I don't think I did write -- "that by maintaining a social safety net for the 'elderly and infirm' a nation fatally reduces it's dynamism." Rather, I proposed a general justification for wealth transfer between members of a society (the notion of a "public good" that was to the advantage of all), I identified several specific and tangible public goods served by social programs (productivity among them), and I pointed out that the material return on investment was different for different age cohorts. If the federal government is spending too much money, then taxes need to be raised and expenditures need to be cut. It makes sense to prioritize those expenditures.

I think the main reason my viewpoint is offensive is that it recognizes only tangible public goods. This has the theoretical attraction of being neutral with respect to subjective values. My idea was that the worth of tangible public goods is inherrant in their material function, and so would be a less controversial basis for discussion. However, this line of argument is rhetorically very weak because certain intangibles -- such as not letting granny starve -- are almost universally held. Actually, I am aware of this (making a joke about it earlier). My love of the "clean" argument has probably led me into error in this case. (Also, I recognize that appreciation of tangible goods does have a subjective component, so the argument isn't as clean as it pretends to be, anyway.)

Anyway, for the record, I am not a Christian. I am an agnostic.

I think the real problem is that there is no "credit risk" for social default. Sharia seems harsh, but it has its uses: it keeps families together(unhappy or not, who cares at macro level).

Define a civic religion, and then decide what is necessary or not. If you have Sharia, then you can have charity, since there's a death penatly for social default!

[ASH]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

NEVER trust the oligarchs! Jesus H Christ!

Many consider themselves uber menschen, even though they inherited their status. Some are great, fascinating people, but many are just dirt-bags, including this Pete Peterson sack o' shit.

Let's see how much of a bad-ass this Peterson guy is: strip him of his wealth (like he earned it... pff), throw him in Afghanistan with a goat and tube of lube, and let's see how his uber-menschhood works over there...

He'd be a patahn's biotch in about, oh, 2 hours.

These guys want to kill the poor. If they had carte blanche, they'd rev-up Auschwitz to gas the poor and use slave labor from abroad, creating a society akin to Saudi Arabia.

edit: sorry, there is zakat in Saudi. I guess Burma is really their model.

I think you would know better than I, so I will take it under advisement. I have no particular reason to carry Peterson's water, and I don't know anything about him. I was just going off of what others had posted.

[ASH]

Re: I.O.U.S.A - its a start (sort of)

... But unfortunately most entitlements won't go away or even shrink due to our switch to socialism. I think its going to take an all out approach including higher taxes, cuts in entitlements, and leaner government. 2 of these three items seem to be "off the table" at least for now. My point is we could all benefit from a simpler less complex government. Everyone focuses on the Federal level, but recently the biggest growth in government is at the local levels. Every podunk town in America has a huge jobs program to employ its citizens, creating jobs where none was needed.

That's a good point. I suppose I should distinguish between what is wasteful and what we merely cannot afford. Even if the quantitative problem is entitlement spending, that is not to say it is by definition wasteful. It would be valid to regret that we can't afford the level of benefits we have promised, while reserving one's ire for the inefficiencies that compound the problem.