Gloom, Doom, or Boom? Finance and Economics

[AzariLoveIran]

TAX-CUTS-DEBT.jpg (42.37 KiB) Viewed 782 times

[Demon of Undoing]

I reject the idea that " tax cuts cost money ". This assumes it's the governments money to begin with.

Instead , what costs money are the expenditures that can't be afforded and will be executed without actual revenue to support it. An important distinction. Let's lay the blame where it lies ; not on the people who are obligated to pay for whatever level of government revenue some clerk decides upon , but upon those that are determined to spend the nation into penury to support their special interests.

[Ammianus]

[Demon of Undoing]

[monster_gardener]

[skyhook77sfg]

especially raised beds with stone walls like the inca and anasazi pioneered if your microclimate includes cold nights.

[Ammianus]

Ah I see, tax cuts are giving our citizens their just and rightful due. They are thus salubrious and commendable in both times of prosperity and penury. If anything, there's never bad time to have them. Hence, there more we have them, the better we'll be. The less the tentacled beast that is Govmint has, the better we'll be as well. A logic that cover both grounds and both eventualities.

[CgDs]

[Demon of Undoing]

There is absolutely an obligation to fund liabilities. I submit to you , however , that the USG does not believe that , except that they consider debt as income. When you give an unlimited budget , you get unlimited government.

I think people should get what they pay for. You want tax cuts ? Sell off some Federal property, maybe lose all bases in Europe. You want cradle to grave financial , medical and physical security ? Just hand over your wallet and let me plug this socket into the back of your skull...

[Mr. Perfect]

The Chart is bogus.

[AzariLoveIran]

[Mr. Perfect]

Az, debt is real, chart is bogus. There is not a single person here who could go into the raw data and reconstruct that chart. In fact, if 5 people did it you would get 5 different charts.

Not a problem though. As you say, it all pays for itself in the end. Right?

[AzariLoveIran]

[monster_gardener]

[Demon of Undoing]

Yeah , see , the fact that ALI can characterize the situation as a scam ( accurately, I might add) is sort of proof of my point. We aren't running an economy. We are running a Ponzi scheme. Which us fine , guess , as it seems like we may yet be able to run it for some time yet. But I always think of consequences. You don't run a rigged game and when it's over , everybody sort of laughs about it. Con men have to get out of town quickly for a reason, and we have nowhere to go.

I just don't like being part of a scam.

[Tinker]

[Demon of Undoing]

No. When people know what they are getting , that's one thing ( and I don't think the deck is inherently stacked tge way you seem to ). Straight out not paying for what you take is theft. I guess there is a fiction agreed upon that if you do it with borrowed money that it's fine , but homey don't play that.

I'm 40% towards a solution.

[Tinker]

[Demon of Undoing]

I don't see a broker that finds a market for the fruit we used to harvest as any sort of a liability ( unless you make a stupid deal with him). He may well make my citrus more profitable by getting me a higher price and quicker shipment to avoid spoilage ( as a ferinstance). Same could even be said all the way up to ( shudder) taxes. As long as it is efficient. There doesn't have to be theft at any level to work that way. But when the game is rigged so that the government is stealing , it means we are stealing , and it corrupts every piece of fruit that comes off the tree. I don't like thievery. Not off the backs of Germans , nor of poor people in Kreplachistan.

Now piss off, would you ? I gotta light this lantern and go look for an honest man ...

[Tinker]

[AzariLoveIran]

[skyhook77sfg]

dare we talk about spending more on so called defense than rest of world combined for so long...

dare we ask why the more we outspend the world on militarization of our country's econmy

the less growth we have as a consequence of a consumer economy without consumer purchasing power?

if we do ask, here are some facts that should lead true conservatives and real progfessives to tea bag the congress

that perpetuates the need to constantly find enemies that justify the permanent military industrial congressional complex


SPENDING MORE FOR LESS



Since 2001, Congress has given the Pentagon more than $1 trillion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the same period, Congress and the Pentagon have added a second trillion dollars to the nonwar (base) part of the Pentagon budget.

You'd think all that added money would give us larger forces, a newer hardware inventory and better trained people. Instead, the windfall made our forces smaller, older and less ready to fight.

A rare few in Congress have begun to notice that more money has bought less defense.

They portend a major shift in the consensus on defense spending. The coming change is a byproduct of the realization that the Pentagon is an integral part of a federal government with spending that is out of control. The Pentagon and the majority of champions of higher defense budgets in conservative think tanks and Congress are trying to head off the coming cuts with seemingly dramatic, but substantively feeble, initiatives.

Here are the facts underlying the need for real reforms.

At $707 billion, the defense budget is today higher than it has ever been since the end of World War II. That statement has been true since 2007; under the Gates plan, it will remain so out to the year 2020 if war spending stays constant.

This spending level is unrelated to the military threat. During the Cold War, from 1948 to 1990, when we faced the sizeable forces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, annual Pentagon spending averaged $440 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. Today, big spending advocates point to China as the future threat we must prepare for, but if we add the defense budgets of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Cuba together, and then double that sum, the Pentagon still spends substantially more.

As to the current threat (terrorism), we almost certainly spend more in one day than the terrorists spend in an entire year.

The size of our defense budget today is not the product of the external threat. It is the result of internal Pentagon dynamics, none of them healthy.

Since 2000, Congress and presidents have funded the Pentagon with $7 trillion out to the year 2011. Of that amount, $1.3 trillion has been for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, the nonwar parts of the Pentagon budget will have received $5.7 trillion.

We can calculate what the Pentagon would have received for the same period in the absence of the wars and of any spending above inflation: $4.7 trillion. That means the Pentagon's "base" budget received a plus-up of almost $1 trillion for 2000-2011.

What did the Pentagon and Congress do with this trillion-dollar windfall? The Navy budget received an additional $293 billion, 2011 funding increased over 2000 by 44 percent. Yet the size of the Navy's combat fleet dropped from 318 ships and submarines to 287, a decline of 10 percent.

This is not a smaller, newer fleet; it is a smaller, older fleet - about four years older, on average, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Is it more ready to fight? Almost certainly not; for the past year, the press has repeatedly reported on severe maintenance problems throughout the fleet, and Navy combat pilot training in the air has remained at historic lows.

The situation in the Air Force is worse. It received a windfall of $320 billion, an increase of 43 percent. During the same 2000-2011 period, the number of active and reserve fighter and bomber squadrons went from 146 to 72, a decline of 51 percent. Like the Navy, it's also older on average: According to CBO, it is now about nine years older and at a historic high of about 23 years.

(Our aircraft are older than our ships.)

Air Force budget data tell us that fighter pilot air training hours today are only one-half to one-third of what they were in the 1970s, an era not touted for high readiness.

The so-called good news is from the Army. It received a plus up of $297 billion, a 53 percent increase. The number of brigade combat teams grew from 44 to 46, an increase of 5 percent.

In sum, an extra trillion dollars for the Pentagon has been processed into forces that are, with minor exceptions, smaller, older and less ready to fight.

The defense management leadership in the Pentagon and Congress has squandered a trillion dollars.

Those who recently have become politically active out of disgust with the budget mess in Washington should be particularly incensed by these facts.


BUT THEY ARE NOT.

why not?

[AzariLoveIran]

[Demon of Undoing]

[noddy]