balanced budget
I am generally in favor of politicians who demonstrate a record of less government spending and smaller government. You mean like Clinton? Doug Yes, and definitely NOT like Boosh!~) Jon ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Bush snuck his Social Security Plan into the Budget
Bush's Social Security Sleight of Hand By Allan Sloan The Washington Post Wednesday 08 February 2006 If you read enough numbers, you never know what you'll find. Take President Bush and private Social Security accounts. Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday. His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years. If this comes as a surprise to you, have no fear. You're not alone. Bush didn't pitch private Social Security accounts in his State of the Union message last week. First, he drew a mocking standing ovation from Democrats by saying that Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security, even though, as I said, he'd never submitted specific legislation. Then he seemed to be kicking the Social Security problem a few years down the road in typical Washington fashion when he asked Congress to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of baby boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, adding that the commission would be bipartisan and offer bipartisan solutions. But anyone who thought that Bush would wait for bipartisanship to deal with Social Security was wrong. Instead, he stuck his own privatization proposals into his proposed budget. The Democrats were laughing all the way to the funeral of Social Security modernization, White House spokesman Trent Duffy told me in an interview Tuesday, but the president still cares deeply about this. Duffy asserted that Bush would have been remiss not to include in the budget the cost of something that he feels so strongly about, and he seemed surprised at my surprise that Social Security privatization had been written into the budget without any advance fanfare. Duffy said privatization costs were included in the midyear budget update that the Office of Management and Budget released last July 30, so it was logical for them to be in the 2007 budget proposals. But I sure didn't see this coming - and I wonder how many people outside of the White House did. Nevertheless, it's here. Unlike Bush's generalized privatization talk of last year, we're now talking detailed numbers. On page 321 of the budget proposal, you see the privatization costs: $24.182 billion in fiscal 2010, $57.429 billion in fiscal 2011 and another $630.533 billion for the five years after that, for a seven-year total of $712.144 billion. In the first year of private accounts, people would be allowed to divert up to 4 percent of their wages covered by Social Security into what Bush called voluntary private accounts. The maximum contribution to such accounts would start at $1,100 annually and rise by $100 a year through 2016. It's not clear how big a reduction in the basic benefit Social Security recipients would have to take in return for being able to set up these accounts, or precisely how the accounts would work. Bush also wants to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated for most people by adopting so-called progressive indexing. Lower-income people would continue to have their Social Security benefits tied to wages, but the benefits paid to higher-paid people would be tied to inflation. Wages have typically risen 1.1 percent a year more than inflation, so over time, that disparity would give lower-paid and higher-paid people essentially the same benefit. However, higher-paid workers would be paying substantially more into the system than lower-paid people would. This means that although progressive indexing is an attractive idea from a social-justice point of view, it would reduce Social Security's political support by making it seem more like welfare than an earned benefit. Bush is right, of course, when he says in his budget proposal that Social Security in its current form is unsustainable. But there are plenty of ways to fix it besides offering private accounts as a substitute for part of the basic benefit. Bush's 2001 Social Security commission had members of both parties, but they had to agree in advance to support private accounts. Their report, which had some interesting ideas, went essentially nowhere. What remains to be seen is whether this time around Bush follows through on forming a bipartisan commission and whether he can get credible Democrats to join it. Dropping numbers onto your opponents is a great way to stick your finger in their eye. But will it get the Social Security job done? That, my friends, is a whole other story. -- Gary Denton http://www.apollocon.org June 23-25
Fwd: FEMA failed to act and just how they gutted FEMA's budget
Why New Orleans Is in Deep Water By Molly Ivins Creators Syndicate Thursday 01 September 2005 Austin, Texas - Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now. To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives. This is not just politics or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies. This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics, or, There's nothing I can do about it, or, Eh, they're all crooks anyway. Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the National Rifle Association would argue, Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people. Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people. One of the main reasons New Orleans is so vulnerable to hurricanes is the gradual disappearance of the wetlands on the Gulf Coast that once stood as a natural buffer between the city and storms coming in from the water. The disappearance of those wetlands does not have the name of a political party or a particular administration attached to it. No one wants to play, The Democrats did it, or, It's all Reagan's fault. Many environmentalists will tell you more than a century's interference with the natural flow of the Mississippi is the root cause of the problem, cutting off the movement of alluvial soil to the river's delta. But in addition to long-range consequences of long-term policies like letting the Corps of Engineers try to build a better river than God, there are real short-term consequences, as well. It is a fact that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies - ordering federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands. Last year, four environmental groups cooperated on a joint report showing the Bush administration's policies had allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands. Does this mean we should blame President Bush for the fact that New Orleans is underwater? No, but it means we can blame Bush when a Category 3 or Category 2 hurricane puts New Orleans under. At this point, it is a matter of making a bad situation worse, of failing to observe the First Rule of Holes (when you're in one, stop digging). Had a storm the size of Katrina just had the grace to hold off for a while, it's quite likely no one would even remember what the Bush administration did two months ago. The national press corps has the attention span of a gnat, and trying to get anyone in Washington to remember longer than a year ago is like asking them what happened in Iznik, Turkey, in A.D. 325. Just plain political bad luck that, in June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now. (Try this timeline on for size. In January of 2001, George W. Bush appointed Texas crony Joe Allbaugh to head FEMA, despite the fact that Allbaugh had exactly zero experience in disaster management. By April of 2001, the Bush administration announced that much of FEMA's work would be privatized and downsized. Allbaugh that month described FEMA as, an oversized entitlement program. In December 2002, Allbaugh quit as head of FEMA to create a consulting firm whose purpose was to advise and assist companies looking to do business in occupied Iraq. He was replaced by Michael D. Brown, whose experience in disaster management was gathered while working as an estate planning lawyer in Colorado, and while serving as counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association legal department. In other words, Bush chose back-to-back FEMA heads whose collective ability to work that position could fit inside a thimble with room to spare. By March of 2003, FEMA was no longer a Cabinet-level position, and was folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its primary mission was recast towards fighting acts of terrorism. In June of 2004, the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans
Budget Anxiety and No Action
One of the best reporters at the Washington Post caught an infromative panel as leaders of Conservative and Liberal think tanks attacked both parties. Posted for those not wanting to register. *Almost Unnoticed, Bipartisan Budget Anxiety* By Dana Milbank Post Wednesday, May 18, 2005; A04 The timing could not have been more apt. On the eve of a titanic partisan clash in the Senate, eggheads of the left and right got together yesterday to warn both parties that they are ignoring the country's most pressing problem: that the United States is turning into Argentina. While Washington plunged into a procedural fight over a pair of judicial nominees, Stuart Butler, head of domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and Isabel Sawhill, director of the left-leaning Brookings Institution's economic studies program, sat down with Comptroller General David M. Walker to bemoan what they jointly called the budget nightmare. There were no cameras, not a single microphone, and no evidence of a lawmaker or Bush administration official in the room -- just some hungry congressional staffers and boxes of sandwiches from Corner Bakery. But what the three spoke about will have greater consequences than the current fuss over filibusters and Tom DeLay's travel. With startling unanimity, they agreed that without some combination of big tax increases and major cuts in Medicare, Social Security and most other spending, the country will fall victim to the huge debt and soaring interest rates that collapsed Argentina's economy and caused riots in its streets a few years ago. The only thing the United States is able to do a little after 2040 is pay interest on massive and growing federal debt, Walker said. The model blows up in the mid-2040s. What does that mean? Argentina. All true, Sawhill, a budget official in the Clinton administration, concurred. To do nothing, Butler added, would lead to deficits of the scale we've never seen in this country or any major in industrialized country. We've seen them in Argentina. That's a chilling thought, but it would mean that. Each of the three had a separate slide show, but the numbers and forecasts were interchangeable. Walker put U.S. debt and obligations at $45 trillion in current dollars -- almost as much as the total net worth of all Americans, or $150,000 per person. Balancing the budget in 2040, he said, could require cutting total federal spending as much as 60 percent or raising taxes to 2 1/2 times today's levels. Butler pointed out that without changes to Social Security and Medicare, in 25 years either a quarter of discretionary spending would need to be cut or U.S. tax rates would have to approach European levels. Putting it slightly differently, Sawhill posed a choice of 10 percent cuts in spending and much larger cuts in Social Security and Medicare, or a 40 percent increase in government spending relative to the size of the economy, and equivalent tax increases. The unity of the bespectacled presenters was impressive -- and it made their conclusion all the more depressing. As Ron Haskins, a former Bush White House official and current Brookings scholar, said when introducing the thinkers: If Heritage and Brookings agree on something, there must be something to it. Yet that is not how leaders of either party talk. Former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill recounted how Vice President Cheney told him that deficits don't matter. President Bush projects deficit reductions in the coming few years but ignores projections that show them exploding after that. And Democrats, fighting Bush's call for cutting Social Security benefits through indexing changes, are suggesting that only tinkering with the program is indicated. The congressional staffers, accustomed to sitting on opposite sides of the room in such events, seemed flummoxed by yesterday's unusual session in the Rayburn House Office Building. One questioner suggested Republicans are to blame for multiple tax cuts; another implied the problem is a Democratic appetite for spending. The bipartisan panel would not be goaded. I'm willing to talk about taxes if you're willing to talk about entitlements, Butler offered. Not surprisingly, the Heritage and Brookings crowds don't agree on an exact solution to the budget problem, but they seem to accept that, as Sawhill put it, you can't do it with either spending or taxes. Eventually, you're going to need a mix of the two. Butler wants taxes, now at 17 percent of GDP, not to exceed 20 percent. Sawhill prefers 24 or 25 percent. But such haggling seems premature when both parties still deny the problem. I don't think we're there yet, Walker said. The American people have to understand where we are and where we're headed. And where is that? No republic in the history of the world lasted more than 300 years, Walker said. Eventually, the crunch comes. He wasn't talking about filibusters. http
Re: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan
- Original Message - From: JDG [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 10:25 PM Subject: Re: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan Dan, I'm not really sure that it is accurate to describe Bill Clinton as wanting to save Social Security with the surplus, but I can't admit to being particularly interested in that debate right now either. Now, paying down the national debt would only really have benefited Social Security to the extent that the overall ratio of US debt to GDP might become so overly burdensome in the near future as to prevent the government from borrowing to cover revenue shortfalls in Social Security. After all, nothing done in the current year can affect nominal budget *deficits* in future years. The last statement is clearly false. We are fortunate that the interest on the debt is low because interest rates, overall, are low right now. But, given a T-bill rate of only 6% (which is below the 40 year average of 7.5%), every trillion in debt reflects a 60 billion/year deficit. Second, the effect borrowing to cover revenue shortfalls in the future has to depend on previous borrowing. For example, let us assume that, instead of cutting income taxes and raising deficits, Reagan Bush I and Bush II had budgets with deficits that changed the total national debt, (including that held in governmental accounts) as a % of GDP, in the same way they changed under Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Clinton. If that happened, we would have the trust fund exceeding the total national debt, (which would be in the low 20% of GDP range.) In this situation, if we funded SS with deficit spending after about 2015 or so through 2050, as intended, the national debt in 2050 would be lower than if we followed the course we did and then agreed to fund general government from the excess of SS taxes vs. outgo and then yearly cut SS benefits to match the tax rate. With the lower national debt, we could pay for many other functions of government via. T-bills and be in the exact same place in 2050 that we would be if SS benefits were cut from 2015 through 2050. Let me try to put it another way. We agree that for algebra, addition commutes, and is associative, right. In other words a + (b+c) + (d+e) = (a+e) + (d+c) + b, right? So all analysis that involve these functions are equivalent. So, by cutting income taxes at the same time the SS tax is raised above that which is needed to fund is equivalent to shifting the tax burden for general government To which I can only point out, that you can't have it both ways Dan. On one hand, the Social Security Trust Fund represent savings from which the government is borrowing. On the other hand, the Social Security Trust Fund represents taxes. You'll have to pick one or the other, Dan - its not fair to keep switching to the one or the other as need to bash Republicans. I thought about this, and I think that there is a vast difference in perspective between us concerning the nature of government. That's the only way that I can see you setting up this dichotomy. The SS Trust Fund is supposed to be saved and accumulated taxes. I was almost 30, with a job and a family at the time the plan was announced, by Greenspan et. al. The agreement was that the balance between general governmental spending and non SS taxes would stay roughly where it had been. Thus, the excess SS taxes would then represent a change in the amount of funding available later. It is true that there is no difference between a total government debt of 7 trillion with a SS trust fund of 3 trillion and a debt of 3 trillion, and just a debt of 4 trillion and no money set aside for SS. But, there is a big difference between a total debt of 4 trillion and a SS trust fund of 3 trillion and a total debt of 4 trillion and no SS trust fund. At the time payroll taxes were raised, it was with the expressed understanding that it would not just be a substitute for income taxes. Clinton followed this, the total national debt as a % of GDP was lower when he left than when he came in. Reagan, Bush I and Bush II did not. Social Security In keeping with the convention of Bush's critics, I did not consider payroll taxes to be taxes.I did include all of the tax cuts, and their likely extensions - or rather Citizens for Tax Justice, which performed the analysis that I am citing, did all of these things. Then I am confused, one goes to that site and finds, from their analysis, quote The figures, computed by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy using the ITEP Tax Model, show that combined federal, state and local taxes on the wealthiest one percent of Americans will equal 32.8 percent of income this year. For all other income groups, combined taxes will average 29.4 percent of income. # The tax cuts enacted under President Bush have lowered the overall federal, state and local tax rate
Re: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan
I agree with Dan on all of this. Gary (top posting) Denton On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:05:37 -0600, Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: JDG [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 10:25 PM Subject: Re: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan Dan, I'm not really sure that it is accurate to describe Bill Clinton as wanting to save Social Security with the surplus, but I can't admit to being particularly interested in that debate right now either. Now, paying down the national debt would only really have benefited Social Security to the extent that the overall ratio of US debt to GDP might become so overly burdensome in the near future as to prevent the government from borrowing to cover revenue shortfalls in Social Security. After all, nothing done in the current year can affect nominal budget *deficits* in future years. The last statement is clearly false. We are fortunate that the interest on the debt is low because interest rates, overall, are low right now. But, given a T-bill rate of only 6% (which is below the 40 year average of 7.5%), every trillion in debt reflects a 60 billion/year deficit. Second, the effect borrowing to cover revenue shortfalls in the future has to depend on previous borrowing. For example, let us assume that, instead of cutting income taxes and raising deficits, Reagan Bush I and Bush II had budgets with deficits that changed the total national debt, (including that held in governmental accounts) as a % of GDP, in the same way they changed under Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Clinton. If that happened, we would have the trust fund exceeding the total national debt, (which would be in the low 20% of GDP range.) In this situation, if we funded SS with deficit spending after about 2015 or so through 2050, as intended, the national debt in 2050 would be lower than if we followed the course we did and then agreed to fund general government from the excess of SS taxes vs. outgo and then yearly cut SS benefits to match the tax rate. With the lower national debt, we could pay for many other functions of government via. T-bills and be in the exact same place in 2050 that we would be if SS benefits were cut from 2015 through 2050. Let me try to put it another way. We agree that for algebra, addition commutes, and is associative, right. In other words a + (b+c) + (d+e) = (a+e) + (d+c) + b, right? So all analysis that involve these functions are equivalent. So, by cutting income taxes at the same time the SS tax is raised above that which is needed to fund is equivalent to shifting the tax burden for general government To which I can only point out, that you can't have it both ways Dan. On one hand, the Social Security Trust Fund represent savings from which the government is borrowing. On the other hand, the Social Security Trust Fund represents taxes. You'll have to pick one or the other, Dan - its not fair to keep switching to the one or the other as need to bash Republicans. I thought about this, and I think that there is a vast difference in perspective between us concerning the nature of government. That's the only way that I can see you setting up this dichotomy. The SS Trust Fund is supposed to be saved and accumulated taxes. I was almost 30, with a job and a family at the time the plan was announced, by Greenspan et. al. The agreement was that the balance between general governmental spending and non SS taxes would stay roughly where it had been. Thus, the excess SS taxes would then represent a change in the amount of funding available later. It is true that there is no difference between a total government debt of 7 trillion with a SS trust fund of 3 trillion and a debt of 3 trillion, and just a debt of 4 trillion and no money set aside for SS. But, there is a big difference between a total debt of 4 trillion and a SS trust fund of 3 trillion and a total debt of 4 trillion and no SS trust fund. At the time payroll taxes were raised, it was with the expressed understanding that it would not just be a substitute for income taxes. Clinton followed this, the total national debt as a % of GDP was lower when he left than when he came in. Reagan, Bush I and Bush II did not. Social Security In keeping with the convention of Bush's critics, I did not consider payroll taxes to be taxes.I did include all of the tax cuts, and their likely extensions - or rather Citizens for Tax Justice, which performed the analysis that I am citing, did all of these things. Then I am confused, one goes to that site and finds, from their analysis, quote The figures, computed by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy using the ITEP Tax Model, show that combined federal, state and local taxes on the wealthiest one percent of Americans
Re: the budget
At 06:05 PM 07/02/05 -0800, David Brin wrote: snip * We can't grow our way out of these deficits. As the NY Times analysis notes: Despite strong economic growth and soaring corporate profits last year, federal tax revenues amounted to only 16.3 percent of the total economy, comparable with levels in the 1950's and far below the level of 21 percent reached during the stock market bubble in 2000. Spending is over 20% of GDP and RISING (it went down every year for 8 years under Clinton, to 18% when Bush took office). 20 minus 16 equals A BIG DEFICIT. As Robert Bixby, executive director of the bipartisan Concord Coalition notes, What's unrealistic is that they are trying to fund a government with today's demands on a 1950's stream of revenue. This last point is crucial. The whole basis for giving a trillion dollars to the top 5% in this country was that they would invest it all in ways that generate so much economic growth that new tax revenues will quickly erase the deficit. What a joke. Not really. These people expect the rapture, and that takes care of all the money problems. Of course, they might *get* the techno-rapture, nanotech/AI and the like. Keith Henson PS. I have changed my opinion re upload the lot of them and putting them all in a simulated heaven. It isn't unethical considering what they would do to us otherwise. So go for it. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan
* JDG ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Republicans pretty well kept that from happening.) Now, paying down the national debt would only really have benefited Social Security to the extent that the overall ratio of US debt to GDP might become so overly burdensome in the near future as to prevent the government from borrowing to cover revenue shortfalls in Social Security. After all, nothing done in the current year can affect nominal budget *deficits* in future years. Wrong. Amazing you can get this so wrong, being a government employee and claiming to be an economist. You have heard of interest? Fiscal 2004 the interest on the debt outstanding was more than $321 billion. (58% of the national debt is held by the public, so a rough guess would be that 58% of that interest is paid to non-government creditors). That is billions of dollars that would otherwise be available to spend on things like social security, or to, I don't know, REDUCE THE BUDGET DEFICIT IN FUTURE YEARS! http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan
On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 05:36:34 -0500, Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * JDG ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Republicans pretty well kept that from happening.) Now, paying down the national debt would only really have benefited Social Security to the extent that the overall ratio of US debt to GDP might become so overly burdensome in the near future as to prevent the government from borrowing to cover revenue shortfalls in Social Security. After all, nothing done in the current year can affect nominal budget *deficits* in future years. Wrong. Amazing you can get this so wrong, being a government employee and claiming to be an economist. You have heard of interest? Fiscal 2004 the interest on the debt outstanding was more than $321 billion. (58% of the national debt is held by the public, so a rough guess would be that 58% of that interest is paid to non-government creditors). That is billions of dollars that would otherwise be available to spend on things like social security, or to, I don't know, REDUCE THE BUDGET DEFICIT IN FUTURE YEARS! http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm I will add my criticisms along with Erik's. Touche' on pyramid-scheme being a pejorative term for Social Security. Of course, I would make the argument that the difference is that pyramid-scheme is an *accurate* term for Social Security, whereas trickle-down economics is purely pejorative but ehhh.. point taken. Trickle-down economics is a more accurate description - that is the rationale used for tax cuts to the wealthy. It was after focus-group testing showed the huge negatives of this term that Frank Lundz has banned this term from conservative discourse and instructed the recipients of talking-points to denounce it vigorously as pejorative. Pyramid scheme is favored by the conservatives. I dislike it because until recently it was assumed that the government would be run by fairly honorable men not out to fleece the public to support their friends and then default, at least in the crowd I run around in. If Bush succeeds in defaulting on the government debt held by the Social Security trust fund than it will have been a pyramid scheme. Lundz does a lot of testing to reframe the words used in political discourse and the GOP and conservative columnists follow in lockstep, sometimes with humorous results if you are aware of the past discourse which most of the public is not. Privatization was the preferred term by the GOP, until the directive came down that it was now focus group testing horribly. Private accounts became the preferred term for all of two months before the preferred term became personal accounts. Most conservatives use the preferred terms not because they are on the talking-points mailing list but because suddenly the language the TV and radio heads and politicians they follow change. This reframing is used less effectively by the Democrats because they are not an organized party following the 1984 model on language. Hell, they are not really an organized party, they're Democrats. One of the longest running instances of reframing is the conservative protest over the use of the term democracy for the American system of government. If democracy, associated with Democrats, is always denounced and restated that the United States is a republic, associated with Republicans, it is a point for their side. Who is right, they both are, but it doesn't matter as much as the language you use reshapes the arguments. Gary Denton Easter Lemming Liberal News Digest - I think Brin was on to something in 'Earth' in suggesting the right to vote be dependent upon subscribing to some opposing viewpoint media. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan
Dan, Touche' on pyramid-scheme being a pejorative term for Social Security. Of course, I would make the argument that the difference is that pyramid-scheme is an *accurate* term for Social Security, whereas trickle-down economics is purely pejorative but ehhh.. point taken. I'm not really sure that it is accurate to describe Bill Clinton as wanting to save Social Security with the surplus, but I can't admit to being particularly interested in that debate right now either. Basically, I think that the best argument you can make is that Bill Clinton wanted to pay down the national debt as much as possible. (Of course, what Bill Clinton really wanted to do was nationalize health care, but the Republicans pretty well kept that from happening.) Now, paying down the national debt would only really have benefited Social Security to the extent that the overall ratio of US debt to GDP might become so overly burdensome in the near future as to prevent the government from borrowing to cover revenue shortfalls in Social Security. After all, nothing done in the current year can affect nominal budget *deficits* in future years. Anyhow, even with our current deficits, and comparing our current level of overall debt to that of other OECD countries, I am not at all sure that overall US debt is nearing that point.So, while paying down the national debt would have had some marginal positive effects on our future ability to borrow to cover Social Security shortfalls, I am not at all sure that those benefits would have been worth getting all excited about. You then write: But, the recession is over and, if you include borrowing from the Social Security trust fund in the deficit, he's running a 600 billion/year deficit over 3 years after the recession ended. And the again: Bush's plan is/was to permanantly lower taxes in a manner the benefits the top 10% households, measured by family income, disporportionately. He masks this by talking about only part of the total taxes paid by people and also talking about only part of his tax cut when he makes comparisions. To which I can only point out, that you can't have it both ways Dan.On one hand, the Social Security Trust Fund represent savings from which the government is borrowing. On the other hand, the Social Security Trust Fund represents taxes. You'll have to pick one or the other, Dan - its not fair to keep switching to the one or the other as need to bash Republicans. whereas Bush's first tax cut was progressivity-neutral BTW), Are you sure. Did you include all of the tax cuts and all of the taxes. Did you include payroll taxes in your calculation, for example. In keeping with the convention of Bush's critics, I did not consider payroll taxes to be taxes.I did include all of the tax cuts, and their likely extensions - or rather Citizens for Tax Justice, which performed the analysis that I am citing, did all of these things. Lastly, I'll admit that I screwed up in describing the government's take of the economy in terms of revenues rather than expenditures. The point, however, was that increased government revenues, particularly surpluses, will over time generally allow expenditures to increase (this was particularly evident in the behavior of State Government budgets over the past decade), whereas Bush has been explicit that one of his goals has been to lower Federal Government revenues, and then use pressures to balance the budget to hopefully achieve a concomitant decrease in Federal Spending. JDG At 01:42 PM 1/29/2005 -0600, Dan M.wrote: - Original Message - From: JDG [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2005 9:16 PM Subject: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan Dan, My point is that trickle-down economics is a pejorative propoganda term. Not a term for serious discussion. Or at least, not if you want me to take you seriously. First, you weren't my audience...I was responding to Erik. Second, if the use of pejoritive descriptive terms is a sign of a non-serious discussion when I use them, why aren't they when you use them? For example, calling Social Security a pyramid scheme fits that very well. You state the supply-side economics is touted as a means of reducing the nominal federal budget deficit, namely by boosting economic growth, which should boost federal revenues. In the long term. Bush argued again and again that cutting taxes would get America going. That they would foster long term ecconomic growth. Are you seriously arguing that Republicans have not stated that cutting taxes on the wealthy benefits everyone because that's how the ecconomy is pushed forward? I find this definition of yours difficult to believe, however, as President George W. Bush has always expliticly stated that his tax cut plan would decrease revenues. Short term, yes. But, he has stated over and over that cutting taxes over
the budget
For those who still hypnotoze themselves that Surplus Bill Clinton was in some way more of an out of control spendthrift than the present gang of looters Bush revealed his fiscal 2006 budget today and, not surprisingly, it is a fraud. The NY Times has an excellent analysis: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/business/07fiscal.html?oref=login READ IT! Key points: * Yet again, Bush's budget includes NOTHING for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That lets him pretend those costs don't exist for budgetary purposes. I could come up with a pretty lean budget too if I could pick and choose items to include or exclude from the budget. I thought a budget was supposed to reflect your best estimate of what you are going to spend. Guess what. We're going to spend A LOT of money in Iraq in fiscal 2006. The military know that and is planning accordingly. Heck, they have to estimate and order how much toilet paper they will need. This is downright fraudulent. * Bush is proposing big increases in the military (even apart from his wars) and entitlement spending. His proposed cuts are limited to domestic discretionary spending. * This past year domestic discretionary spending was less than the deficit. In other words, eliminating 100% of that spending would not eliminate the deficit. * Bush's proposed cuts in domestic discretionary spending (if they are enacted - which they won't) would total around $15 billion - less than half the amount by which INTEREST on the national debt is likely to INCREASE this year. (Interest on the national debt is likely to increase from around $320 billion to $350 billion.) In other words, even draconian cuts in domestic discretionary spending can't keep up with just the INCREASE in interest payments on the national debt Bush is running up. * For Bush to cut the deficit in half by 2009, as he has pledged to do, he would have to cut domestic discretionary spending IN HALF. (Even with his proposed cuts, that spending would remain essentially flat.) And most of Bush's cuts aren't likely to happen. It's an old budget trick (as many corporate warriors know): List for cuts items you KNOW are untouchable. Then you can claim credit for a responsible budget that is total fantasy and blame the ACTUAL irresponsible budget on others. * We can't grow our way out of these deficits. As the NY Times analysis notes: Despite strong economic growth and soaring corporate profits last year, federal tax revenues amounted to only 16.3 percent of the total economy, comparable with levels in the 1950's and far below the level of 21 percent reached during the stock market bubble in 2000. Spending is over 20% of GDP and RISING (it went down every year for 8 years under Clinton, to 18% when Bush took office). 20 minus 16 equals A BIG DEFICIT. As Robert Bixby, executive director of the bipartisan Concord Coalition notes, What's unrealistic is that they are trying to fund a government with today's demands on a 1950's stream of revenue. This last point is crucial. The whole basis for giving a trillion dollars to the top 5% in this country was that they would invest it all in ways that generate so much economic growth that new tax revenues will quickly erase the deficit. What a joke. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan
On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 17:56:29 -0500, Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Dan Minette ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: From: JDG [EMAIL PROTECTED] has reduced the government's take of GDP to 17%. No. It merely has changed the source of the take. In 2000, total government spending was 18.4% of GDP. In 2003, it was 19.9%. Using T-bills to finance the government doesn't reduce the take. Thus, it is not just progressivity, it is the size of the government's share in the economy that is also debated. Should the size be measured in terms of spending and future oblications? Would government have zero size if there was a total tax holiday next year and the government was totally financed by debt? You are absolutely right that the important figure is government spending. I just wanted to add that, except for those who believe in voodoo economics and the tooth fairy, a tax cut without a spending cut is not really a tax cut at all, but rather a tax shift -- to the future. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ Agreed. -- Gary Denton Easter Lemming Liberal News Digest - I think Brin was on to something in 'Earth' in suggesting the right to vote be dependent upon subscribing to some opposing viewpoint media. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan
- Original Message - From: JDG [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2005 9:16 PM Subject: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan Dan, My point is that trickle-down economics is a pejorative propoganda term. Not a term for serious discussion. Or at least, not if you want me to take you seriously. First, you weren't my audience...I was responding to Erik. Second, if the use of pejoritive descriptive terms is a sign of a non-serious discussion when I use them, why aren't they when you use them? For example, calling Social Security a pyramid scheme fits that very well. You state the supply-side economics is touted as a means of reducing the nominal federal budget deficit, namely by boosting economic growth, which should boost federal revenues. In the long term. Bush argued again and again that cutting taxes would get America going. That they would foster long term ecconomic growth. Are you seriously arguing that Republicans have not stated that cutting taxes on the wealthy benefits everyone because that's how the ecconomy is pushed forward? I find this definition of yours difficult to believe, however, as President George W. Bush has always expliticly stated that his tax cut plan would decrease revenues. Short term, yes. But, he has stated over and over that cutting taxes over the long term will increase prosperity over the long term. Put the money in the hands of the American people who better know how to use it. During his election campaign he proposed his tax cuts as a means of reducing the nominal federal budget surplus And Clinton wanted to save Social Security with the surplus... , and afterwards he was very explicit about his intent to run a nominal federal budget deficit in a time of the so-called trifecta of recession, war, and national emergency. But, the recession is over and, if you include borrowing from the Social Security trust fund in the deficit, he's running a 600 billion/year deficit over 3 years after the recession ended. And, he wants to keep the tax cuts permanantbut doesn't include them in his long term budget figures. While fiscal policy as a means of smoothing economic cycles is certainly currently in disfavor among economists, I think that it is entirely possible that the very, very, mild recession experienced by America in the wake of the popping of the stock market asset bubble may cause some rethinking of this. Bush's plan is/was to permanantly lower taxes in a manner the benefits the top 10% households, measured by family income, disporportionately. He masks this by talking about only part of the total taxes paid by people and also talking about only part of his tax cut when he makes comparisions. His tax cut can only be justified if supplied side ecconomics works. Lastly, you wrote: In general, if Republicans want to change tax structures, they think that a less progressive structure is better. Democrats think a more progressive structure is better. In part, that is because a more-progressive tax structure means higher tax rates, and presumably boosts the size of government. Indeed, this can be seen in the way that under Clinton, the government began taking around 21-22% of GDP in tax revnenues, whereas Bush's tax plan (his first tax cut was progressivity-neutral BTW), Are you sure. Did you include all of the tax cuts and all of the taxes. Did you include payroll taxes in your calculation, for example. has reduced the government's take of GDP to 17%. No. It merely has changed the source of the take. In 2000, total government spending was 18.4% of GDP. In 2003, it was 19.9%. Using T-bills to finance the government doesn't reduce the take. Thus, it is not just progressivity, it is the size of the government's share in the economy that is also debated. Should the size be measured in terms of spending and future oblications? Would government have zero size if there was a total tax holiday next year and the government was totally financed by debt? Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan
* Dan Minette ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: From: JDG [EMAIL PROTECTED] has reduced the government's take of GDP to 17%. No. It merely has changed the source of the take. In 2000, total government spending was 18.4% of GDP. In 2003, it was 19.9%. Using T-bills to finance the government doesn't reduce the take. Thus, it is not just progressivity, it is the size of the government's share in the economy that is also debated. Should the size be measured in terms of spending and future oblications? Would government have zero size if there was a total tax holiday next year and the government was totally financed by debt? You are absolutely right that the important figure is government spending. I just wanted to add that, except for those who believe in voodoo economics and the tooth fairy, a tax cut without a spending cut is not really a tax cut at all, but rather a tax shift -- to the future. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Budget Deficits and Supply-Siders Re: Kotlikoff's PSS plan
Dan, My point is that trickle-down economics is a pejorative propoganda term. Not a term for serious discussion. Or at least, not if you want me to take you seriously. You state the supply-side economics is touted as a means of reducing the nominal federal budget deficit, namely by boosting economic growth, which should boost federal revenues. I find this definition of yours difficult to believe, however, as President George W. Bush has always expliticly stated that his tax cut plan would decrease revenues.During his election campaign he proposed his tax cuts as a means of reducing the nominal federal budget surplus, and afterwards he was very explicit about his intent to run a nominal federal budget deficit in a time of the so-called trifecta of recession, war, and national emergency. While fiscal policy as a means of smoothing economic cycles is certainly currently in disfavor among economists, I think that it is entirely possible that the very, very, mild recession experienced by America in the wake of the popping of the stock market asset bubble may cause some rethinking of this. Well, actually, the real criticism is that it is hard for the government to pull the finger off the fiscal primer once the good times get rolling again.We will see what happens this time if America does indeed re-enter a boom cycle under Bush's Second term. Lastly, you wrote: In general, if Republicans want to change tax structures, they think that a less progressive structure is better. Democrats think a more progressive structure is better. In part, that is because a more-progressive tax structure means higher tax rates, and presumably boosts the size of government. Indeed, this can be seen in the way that under Clinton, the government began taking around 21-22% of GDP in tax revnenues, whereas Bush's tax plan (his first tax cut was progressivity-neutral BTW), has reduced the government's take of GDP to 17%. Thus, it is not just progressivity, it is the size of the government's share in the economy that is also debated.I would argue that supply-side economics predominantly argues that by reducing government's share of GDP that economic growth can be increased. Moreover, supply-side economics further argues that by pumping the supply end of the economy, rather than the deamdn-end of the economy, one can boost economic growth without increasing inflation.I don't think that there are many people serious arguing the view you allege - that the United States is currently on the top end of the Laffer Curve, and that government revenues can be increased through tax cuts. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
At 11:58 AM 10/22/2004 -0500 Dan Minette wrote: Clinton, on the other hand, stands out for increasing normalized revenues Presuming, of course, that you consider increasing federal revenues to 21% of GDP for the first time since World War II to be a good thing. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
At 09:57 AM 10/23/2004 -0400 JDG wrote: At 11:58 AM 10/22/2004 -0500 Dan Minette wrote: Clinton, on the other hand, stands out for increasing normalized revenues Presuming, of course, that you consider increasing federal revenues to 21% of GDP for the first time since World War II to be a good thing. I would also point out that there are limits to % GDP analysis in the short term.After all, if you have a recession, GDP goes down. This means that you would either have to cut government spending, or else let government spending rise as a percentage of GDP. Likewise, when GDP is growing quickly, even a relatively loose policy of government spending increases can be dwarfed by rises in GDP. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
At 02:16 PM 10/22/2004 -0700 David Brin wrote: --- Dan M offered interesting statistics. But the core thing is this. Clinton asked THIS generation to pay for our own expenses. W is demanding that our children pay for a trillion dollar gift to his friends... Actually, John Kerry has been campaigning all week on precisely the opposite point in particular, Kerry is arguing that Bush is planning on making this generation to pay for their own retirement expenses, rather than imposing the burden of their retirement on their children. So, which is it? JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
- Original Message - From: David Brin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 8:37 PM Subject: Re: Brin: US Budget Did you consider the tribute that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were paying after the 1st Gulf War? The incredible fact that the 91 war was run at a profit sort of helps make up (but nothing can ever make up) for the Shame of 91. See http://www.davidbrin.com/shame.html I've read your analysis of this, but I'm not really sure exactly the steps you were advocating. Yes, I know its go into Iraq and, at a minimum, establish a safe base for Shiites there, and at a maximum take out Hussein ourselves. But, I don't see some steps that are crucial to me. Here's what I see happened. 1) Iraq invades Kuwait. 2) Bush sets up Desert Shield in Saudi Arabia and negotiates with many world leaders 3) He obtains agreement to oust Hussein's army from Kuwait, but to only do that. He agrees to not invade Iraq. He thinks he can inflict enough damage on Hussein's forces and reputation to cause him to be overthrown even operating within those boundaries. 4) Desert Storm happens, following that line. 5) There are uprisings in Iraq, which find encouragement and promises of support from Bush (Does anyone have a definitive, reliable source on what was dropped/broadcast?) The support was not as strong as it needed to be and the uprisings failed. (Does anyone know if anything was done at first...I don't recall how long it took the no fly zones to be established. What I am curious about is whether you disagree with my description of the chain of events, you think we should never have promised to not invade Iraq, or we should have promised to not invade Iraq and then invaded Iraq anyways...or pick option 4 that I can't see. :-) I think Bush was wrong to promise the people of Iraq more than he was willing to actually deliver. I have no argument with you faulting him for that. But, I don't think he was wrong to agree to not invade Iraq as the price of getting a great deal of cooperation. Without permission to launch an attack from Saudi Arabia, the war would have been more difficult. And, I remember how many reasonable people thought the war was going to be much harder than it was. IIRC, Powell warned that US casualties could be 40k injured and dead. The Iraqi army was considered battle tested, and about the 5th or 6th best Army in the world. The US had not faced such a strong force since Nam, or Korea. I also don't fault him for not invading Iraq...since he gave the word of the US, government to government, that we would not do so. He overestimated the effect of the defeated army; and underestimated the importance of the basically intact Republican Guard..his elite force. (At least that is how I remembered it.) In short, I see him as being pragmatic and taking half a loaf immediately (Kuwait retaken) while having reasonable expectations for the last half loaf (Hussein overthrown). It didn't happen, so his judgment was off. But, few at the time were advocating invading Iraq while the Arabs withdrew their support. One final personal political statement. I voted against him twice, so I have no stake in reviewing him positively...I just want to call the shots as I see themeven if it goes against the grain of my political persuasions. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
--- Dan your attempt to paraphrase and clarify is appreciated as sincere, but it breaks down with the following: 3) He obtains agreement to oust Hussein's army from Kuwait, but to only do that. He agrees to not invade Iraq. He thinks he can inflict enough damage on Hussein's forces and reputation to cause him to be overthrown even operating within those boundaries. This is weird. H had VASTLY more legal authority to act flexibly against Saddam than W ever had. It is incredible neocon weaseling to say we never had authority to oust Saddam in 91! I will not dissect such drivel. I will scrape it off my boot. 4) Desert Storm happens, following that line. 5) There are uprisings in Iraq, which find encouragement and promises of support from Bush (Does anyone have a definitive, reliable source on what was dropped/broadcast?) The support was not as strong as it needed to be Yeow! Talk about understatement. Schwarzkopf says that the Iraqi generals stared, dumbfounded, when we said go ahead and fly your helicopter gunships all you want! What I am curious about is whether you disagree with my description of the chain of events, you think we should never have promised to not invade Iraq, SHow me the promise. Moreover, we were already in Iraq. ANd Iraqi generals and soldiers were pleading to be sent against Saddam ... exactly as many pleaded THIS time to be allowed to help establish order. Before the entire Iraqi army was dissolved -- instead of purged -- at orders from Riyadh. A decision that makes sense only if you WANT american soldiers to die establishing order themselves. or we should have promised to not invade Iraq and then invaded Iraq anyways...or pick option 4 that I can't see. :-) I think Bush was wrong to promise the people of Iraq more than he was willing to actually deliver. He probably was sincere, till his masters phoned him with the stop order. I have no argument with you faulting him for that. But, I don't think he was wrong to agree to not invade Iraq as the price of getting a great deal of cooperation. Sorry. It's crap. Nobody in Europe or Asia would have minded rescuing the people of Basra. He never promised anybody to stand by and watch them be murdered. He simply made that decision. Or rather let it be made for him. Without permission to launch an attack from Saudi Arabia, the war would have been more difficult. The saudis were pissing in their pants! Their monster Saddam had gone berserk and they were next. H made NO SUCH PROMISE. And if he did, he had no need to keep it. And, I remember how many reasonable people thought the war was going to be much harder than it was. IIRC, Powell warned that US casualties could be 40k injured and dead. The Iraqi army was considered battle tested, and about the 5th or 6th best Army in the world. The US had not faced such a strong force since Nam, or Korea. I will not argue here. The US military is awesome. Its officer corps is the best ever seen. They are the 3rd most educated clade in american society. And they are our sole hope if W is re-elected. They are heirs of George Marshall and they will not cooperate with his plans. Which is why, in today's paper, we see that Goss, the new CIA Director, has already betrayed his promise to stop being a partisan hack (as if anyone believed him). He brought in 20 veteran neocon gopper staffers to replace professionals in top positions. And one of them has been roaming the halls at the CIA bragging that over a hundred heads will roll right after the election. (According to SEVERAL leak-source paths). They have to start mass firings and house cleanings. Watch as the purges begin. They'll find they have to cut dep before they get to rotten apples who will go along with betraying us. Oh... and then there is the blatant squelching of the part of the 9/11 report that talks about Saudi Complicity. CAN NONE OF YOU SEE THAT AS WORRISOME? I also don't fault him for not invading Iraq...since he gave the word of the US, government to government, that we would not do so. SORRY, THAT IS simply nonsense. We gave our word to the Geneva Convention but have violated it several thousand times this year alone. We gave our word AS A PEOPLE AND A NATION to the Shiites to help them. We owed NOTHING of the sort to the Saudis and Kuwaitis, whose asses we had saved. That is simply sophistry. In short, I see him as being pragmatic and taking half a loaf immediately (Kuwait retaken) while having reasonable expectations for the last half loaf (Hussein overthrown). I can see you see it that way. This is less silly than the pomise crap. But it is still silly. One final personal political statement. I voted against him twice, so I have no stake in reviewing him positively...I just want to call the shots as I see themeven if it goes against the grain of my political persuasions. I respect your
Re: Brin: US Budget
David's comment on the US budget got me thinking...how has income and expenses changed (as a fraction of GDP) over the last 50 or so years. Here's some US budget numbers for % changes over 4 year intervals...corresponding to presidential terms: YearIncome Expense change change 1956 -7.9% -14.9% 1960 1.7% 7.9% 1964 -1.1% 0.0 1968 0.0% 10.8% 1972 0.0% -4.4% 1976 -2.8% 9.2% 1980 11.1% 1.4% 1984 -8.9% 1.8% 1988 4.6% -4.1% 1992 -3.3% 4.2% 1996 8.0% -8.1% 2000 10.6% -9.4% 2004 -24.9% 0.1 The income change over the last 4 years stands out. Bush Jr. has reduced governmental income from 20.9% of GDP to 15.7% of GDP. The last time it was that low was a brief span between 49-50. The one caveat is that 2004 is an estimate...so the drop may not be quite that bigbut a quick search did not yield updated numbers. Even a 3 year number 2000-2003 indicates a drop of 21.1%. Even this three year number shows more than double the previous maximum drop: during the first Reagan term. With the additional tax cuts passed today,one can expect this number to continue to drop if Bush is re-elected. Clinton, on the other hand, stands out for increasing normalized revenues while decreasing normalized expenses over 8 years. Dan M. Dan M. The source for my numbers is: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy05/hist.html Which seems like a non-partisan site to me. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
One more set of numbers...this time its a breakdown of the sources of income for the US government:..as a fraction of GDP. The income tax, as a % of receipts goes up and down. But, we see corporate taxes fall significantly, while the Social security tax rises...almost in exact opposition. In 1952, income taxes, corporate taxes, and SS provided 42%, 32%, and 10% respectively. In 2004, 43%, 9%, 41% respectively (excises and other taxes also fell during that period). Since wealth is concentrated among upper income earners, there is no SS tax on investment income, and there is an upper limit to the income taxed for SS, we see a very significant shift in taxes from upper income to lower income tax payers. This shift is significantly understated if we focus only on the income tax, which tends to provide only 40% of the governmental income. The shift in the other taxes is where we see the vast majority of the shift in the tax base. Income Corporate Social Year Tax TaxSecurity + Medicare 1952 8.0 6.1 1.8 1956 7.5 4.9 2.2 1960 7.8 4.1 2.8 1964 7.6 3.7 3.4 1968 7.9 3.3 3.9 1972 8.0 2.7 4.5 1976 7.6 2.4 5.2 1980 9.0 2.4 5.8 1984 7.8 1.5 6.2 1988 8.0 1.9 6.7 1992 7.6 1.6 6.6 1996 8.5 2.2 6.6 200010.3 2.1 6.7 2004 6.7 1.5 6.4 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
--- Dan M offered interesting statistics. But the core thing is this. Clinton asked THIS generation to pay for our own expenses. W is demanding that our children pay for a trillion dollar gift to his friends... ...on the excuse that his frat brothers will tthen invest in jobs at home (they have not) and productivity/tools etc (they have not). Oh, this is the only time that we have gone to war in US history with the president asking for tax cuts instead of prudently asking taxpayers (especially the rich) to fork over in their own defense). ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
--- Dan M offered interesting statistics. But the core thing is this. Clinton asked THIS generation to pay for our own expenses. W is demanding that our children pay for a trillion dollar gift to his friends... ...on the excuse that his frat brothers will tthen invest in jobs at home (they have not) and productivity/tools etc (they have not). Oh, this is the only time that we have gone to war in US history with the president asking for tax cuts instead of prudently asking taxpayers (especially the rich) to fork over in their own defense). You know, if this war *really* was for our own defense, I think I could almost stomach leaving a debt that vast for my son and his children to pay. Dave Experts Agree: Everything's Just Fine Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
Dan Minette asked: Did you consider the tribute that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were paying after the 1st Gulf War? That could easily justify this difference. How much was this tribute supposed to have been? Some hundreds of billions Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
Did you consider the tribute that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were paying after the 1st Gulf War? The incredible fact that the 91 war was run at a profit sort of helps make up (but nothing can ever make up) for the Shame of 91. See http://www.davidbrin.com/shame.html ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
- Original Message - From: Alberto Monteiro [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 8:17 PM Subject: Re: Brin: US Budget Dan Minette asked: Did you consider the tribute that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were paying after the 1st Gulf War? That could easily justify this difference. How much was this tribute supposed to have been? Some hundreds of billions First of all; a number of nations did chip in for the cost of the first Gulf War. It amounted to less than 100 billion. The Saudis, the Kuwaitis and the Japanese were the biggest contributors. But, let us look at that kind of money over 9 years (assuming it started late in '91 and ended when Clinton left office.) That comes to ~11 billion/year, about 0.1% of the US GDP. That's in the noise, to first order. Plus, its hard to believe the GHB would let Clinton's budget get the credit while his took the hit. Dan M. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 11:58:12AM -0500, Dan Minette wrote: The source for my numbers is: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy05/hist.html Very interesting data, Dan. Thanks for posting the link. I graphed it here: http://erikreuter.net/econ/budget.png A couple things that jumped out at me while staring at the graph. Around both World Wars, government outlays spiked (as expected), and we ran a deficit. But government income also spiked. So taxpayers were asked to help pay for the war, as David mentioned. But in 2001-2004, outlays spiked BUT income dropped, just as David pointed out. The other thing I thought was interesting may not be apparent to people who aren't into stock market history. So, to give some very brief background, most market historians divide stock market history into secular bear and secular bull markets (secular in the sense of an age or long period of time). Generally, the last 80 or so years are classified as follows: 1921-1929 secular bull 1929-1949 secular bear 1949-1966 secular bull 1966-1982 secular bear 1982-2000 secular bull 2000- secular bear? I think it is interesting to look at the graph http://erikreuter.net/econ/budget.png and see that government outlays, as a percent of GDP, were generally: decreasing from 1919 to 1929 increasing from 1929 to 1953 slightly decreasing from 1953 to 1965 increasing from 1965 to 1982 decreasing from 1982 to 2000 increasing from 2000 to 2004 The correlation between long term trends of government spending as a percent of GDP and stock market performance looks very strong. Increasing government spending seems to go along with secular bear markets and decreasing government spending correlates with secular bull markets. I don't know what the causality is here (which one causes the other? or are they both caused by some other variable?), but I think the correlation is interesting. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: US Budget
At 08:45 PM 10/22/2004 -0500 Dan Minette wrote: First of all; a number of nations did chip in for the cost of the first Gulf War. It amounted to less than 100 billion. The Saudis, the Kuwaitis and the Japanese were the biggest contributors. But, let us look at that kind of money over 9 years (assuming it started late in '91 and ended when Clinton left office.) That comes to ~11 billion/year, about 0.1% of the US GDP. That's in the noise, to first order. The above is correct. Plus, its hard to believe the GHB would let Clinton's budget get the credit while his took the hit. That is just plain ridiculous.The Allies made their contributions when they made them. President Bush had a window of about three months between thinking he would have a second term and Clinton taking office, and he certainly made no such adjustment. JDG ___ John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. - George W. Bush 1/29/03 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: US Budget
Dan Minette wrote: First of all; a number of nations did chip in for the cost of the first Gulf War. It amounted to less than 100 billion. The Saudis, the Kuwaitis and the Japanese were the biggest contributors. But, let us look at that kind of money over 9 years (assuming it started late in '91 and ended when Clinton left office.) That comes to ~11 billion/year, about 0.1% of the US GDP. That's in the noise, to first order. If getting free oil for 10+ years is noise, then what's the point of the 2nd Gulf War? Why bother with the oil prices? Let it get to 100 dollars per (unit of volume), and let China get blown! Something must be wrong in this logic. Alberto Monteiro the monomaniac ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: US Budget
- Original Message - From: John D. Giorgis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 9:34 PM Subject: Re: Br!n: US Budget At 08:45 PM 10/22/2004 -0500 Dan Minette wrote: First of all; a number of nations did chip in for the cost of the first Gulf War. It amounted to less than 100 billion. The Saudis, the Kuwaitis and the Japanese were the biggest contributors. But, let us look at that kind of money over 9 years (assuming it started late in '91 and ended when Clinton left office.) That comes to ~11 billion/year, about 0.1% of the US GDP. That's in the noise, to first order. The above is correct. Plus, its hard to believe the GHB would let Clinton's budget get the credit while his took the hit. That is just plain ridiculous.The Allies made their contributions when they made them. President Bush had a window of about three months between thinking he would have a second term and Clinton taking office, and he certainly made no such adjustment. Well, reasonably, he was thinking he might have a second term...not that he would. Given the fact that it was only about 60-70 billion...and a number of countries contributed...I cannot imagine that the payment and the cost all fit together. I'm not accusing Bush of anything more than what I consider fairly reasonable accounting practices. Its true that the cash flow wasn't there, but the credits do belong in the same fiscal year as the costs they were covering. So, in an election year with a big deficit; why make things look worse than they really are? Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: US Budget
whoops - Original Message - From: Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 11:45 PM Subject: Re: Br!n: US Budget Well, reasonably, he was thinking he might have a second term...not that he would. Given the fact that it was only about 60-70 billion...and a number of countries contributed...I cannot imagine that the payment and the cost did not all fit within a moderately short time period. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Plan 3 From Outer Space: The Bush Budget Switch
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nasa-04c.html There is a lot to like in President Bush's new space initiative. Most of the technical and programmatic changes to the current hopeless NASA plan are steps that various critics have been suggesting for some time: early phase-out of Shuttle, dumping the decaying corpse of the Space Station onto the shoulders of the International Partners, scrapping the winged Orbital Space Plane in favor of a ballistic Apollo Mark II vehicle with Moon-return and Mars-return capability. But hidden in the President's speech and the supporting documents is clear evidence that the funding plan for the New Space Order underwent major surgery, probably in the last 2 days before the speech. There are artifacts of three different plans for obtaining the billions of dollars needed over the next five years to develop the Crew(ed) Exploration Vehicle: The first plan, leaked to the news media several days ago, was for a ~%5 annual increase in the NASA budget each year for the period FY05-FY09. Given a current budget of $15.4B, this works out to ~$12B of new money over the remainder of the decade. This is about in the middle of the cost range estimated for the old OSP program by independent analysts. For the post-2009 era, senior officials spoke of massive savings from the termination of Shuttle and Station -- and also making hard choices between manned and unmanned programs in the future. A second funding plan appears as one of the talking points in the White House press release: # From the current 2004 level of $15.4 billion, the President's proposal will increase NASA's budget by an average of 5 percent per year over the next three years, and at approximately 1 percent or less per year for the two years after those. This implies a major reduction in new money from the leaked plan of continous %5 increases. Yet a third funding plan is given in the President's actual speech: NASA's current five-year budget is $86 billion. Most of the funding we need for the new endeavors will come from reallocating $11 billion within that budget. We need some new resources, however. I will call upon Congress to increase NASA's budget by roughly a billion dollars, spread out over the next five years. This dramatically different funding plan is confirmed in two more bullets in the press release: # The funding added for exploration will total $12 billion over the next five years. Most of this added funding for new exploration will come from reallocation of $11 billion that is currently within the five-year total NASA budget of $86 billion. # In the Fiscal Year (FY) 2005 budget, the President will request an additional $1 billion to NASA's existing five-year plan, or an average of $200 million per year. So in only four days, the amount of new money the Bush Administration plans to spend on its Crewed Exploration Initiative has dropped by $11B, and this missing money is now to be obtained from existing NASA programs at the rate of ~$2B/yr. Someday we may learn of the last-minute political logrolling that produced this astonishing change (and the staff bungling that left two wildly contradictory bullets on the same page of a White House press release). But right now let's look at the possible impact of Plan 3 on NASA. The first question to ask is: Will this massive redistribution of funds come from other elements of the manned program, or from the rest of NASA? There is essentially no possibility of squeezing this kind of money out of the existing manned programs. There can't be any significant scale back in Shuttle or Station in the FY05-09 time frame, because we will still be assembling the Station. Possibly there will be some small reduction in the Shuttle flight rate from the former 5/yr. But as NASA never tires of mentioning, cutting back the flight rate of Shuttle doesn't save a lot because the marching army of support people have to be kept on salary anyway. Implementing the CAIB reccomendations will increase cost and staffing levels, not reduce them. Maybe they can save some money by letting VAB and the rest of LC-39 decay away, but not very much. So there is really no alternative to cutting over $2B/yr out of the non-manned-space half of NASA's budget. That's a ~%35 cut if you assume it is equally distributed over the five years 2005-2009!! If it is ramped in like most big budget cuts, the final cut by 2009 would be much larger. Goodbye aeronautical research, goodbye Webb Space Telescope, goodbye planetary probes to boring places like asteroids. Do we really want to trade all this in for Apollo Mark II? A lot of people will say no. Even a lot of Space Cadets will say no. We lost ten years of solar system exploration to pay for the Shuttle and it left a bloody wound that still drips. A lot of influential people will fight this proposal to the last round, and then fix bayonets and keep on fighting until it is defeated. I could go on for pages with minute analysis of the Bush space plan
US Budget Re: 3 weeks
At 09:41 PM 4/9/2003 -0500 Dan Minette wrote: 28% of the Texas state budget is spent on K-12 and 21% is spent on higher education. On the whole, state and local budgets average about 4% of the GDP of the US, and the federal budget averages about 20% or so. *Averages* 20%? Over what time period? JDG ___ John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. - George W. Bush 1/29/03 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Who Lost the U.S. Budget?
http://archive.nytimes.com/2003/03/21/opinion/21KRUG.html Who Lost the U.S. Budget? By PAUL KRUGMAN The Onion describes itself as America's finest news source, and it's not an idle boast. On Jan. 18, 2001, the satirical weekly bore the headline Bush: Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over, followed by this mock quotation: We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it. Whatever our qualms about how we got here, all Americans now hope that the foreign front proceeds according to plan. Meanwhile, let's talk about the fiscal front. The latest official projections acknowledge (if you read them carefully) that the long-term finances of the U.S. government are in much worse shape than the administration admitted a year ago. But many commentators are reluctant to blame George W. Bush for that grim outlook, preferring instead to say something like this: Sure, you can criticize those tax cuts, but the real problem is the long-run deficits of Social Security and Medicare, and the unwillingness of either party to reform those programs. Why is this line appealing? It seems more reasonable to blame longstanding problems for our fiscal troubles than to attribute them to just two years of bad policy decisions. Also, many pundits like to sound balanced, pronouncing a plague on both parties' houses. To accuse the current administration of wrecking the federal budget sounds, well, shrill and we don't want to sound shrill, do we? There's only one problem with this reasonable, balanced, non-shrill position: it's completely wrong. The Bush tax cuts, not the retirement programs, are the main reason why our fiscal future suddenly looks so bleak. I base that statement on a new study that compares the size of the Bush tax cuts with that of the prospective deficits of Social Security and Medicare. The results are startling. Accountants estimate the actuarial balance of Social Security and Medicare the same way a private insurance company would: they calculate the present value of projected revenues and outlays, and find the difference. (The present value of a future expense is the amount you would have to invest today to have the money when the bill comes due. For example, if $1 invested in U.S. government bonds would be worth $2 by the year 2020, then the present value of $2 in 2020 is $1 today.) And both programs face shortfalls: the estimated actuarial deficit of Social Security over the next 75 years is $3.5 trillion, and that of Medicare is $6.2 trillion. But how do these shortfalls compare with the fiscal effects of recent and probable future tax cuts? The new study, carried out by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, estimates the present value of the revenue that will be lost because of the Bush tax cuts those that have already taken place, together with those that have been proposed using the same economic assumptions that underlie those Medicare and Social Security projections. The total comes to $12 trillion to $14 trillion more than the Social Security and Medicare shortfalls combined. What this means is that the revenue that will be sacrificed because of those tax cuts is not a minor concern. On the contrary, that revenue would have been more than enough to top up Social Security and Medicare, allowing them to operate without benefit cuts for the next 75 years. The administration has tried to deny this conclusion, inventing strange new principles of accounting in the process. But the simple truth is that the Bush tax cuts have utterly transformed our fiscal outlook, for the worse. Without those tax cuts, the problems of an aging population might well have been manageable; with them, nothing short of an economic miracle can save us from a fiscal crisis. And there's a lesson here that goes beyond fiscal policies. On almost every front the outlook for the United States now seems far bleaker than it did two years ago. Has everything gone wrong because of evildoers and external forces? In the case of the budget and the economy and, yes, foreign policy the answer is no. The world has turned out to be a tougher place than we thought a few years ago, but things didn't have to be nearly this bad. The fault lies not in our stars, but in our leadership. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: NASA Historical budget
At 11:57 PM 2/2/2003 -0600, you wrote: - Original Message - From: Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 11:51 PM Subject: NASA Historical budget I did a bit of research, and have come up with the following numbers for NASA's budget decade by decade. For the '60s, I had to do a bit of estimation for '60 and 61, but the number shouldn't be too far off, because that was before the NASA budget really took off. In constant 2002 dollars the budget was 60s 187 billion 70s 127 billion 80s 122 billion 90s 163 billion Think of what was accomplished in the '60s compared to the '80s and '90s put together. It isn't just the money. Now divide it by the number of missions per decade. That would change things a bit. (Of course you have to subtract all the non-manned mission cost centers to get an accurate reading.) As a percentage of GDP is also interesting. I wish I had those figures handy too. rob I'm a few days behind in case someone else says this in a message I have not read yet. I agree with Rob and think Westerbrokkes column (the Time Mag story) was playing fast and lose with the facts. Maybe someone has actually said this at NASA, that there is no reason for the space station/shuttle other than to support each other. I have not heard a reply to this, but there has to be more than that. After the moon landings, what is the most successful space venture? The two spacecraft that are farthest from us, Vikings? Galileo? Pathfinder? What have they really done for us in terms of science? No matter what they discovered, there is nothing than can be gained, application wise, from these missions. Hasn't the shuttle done anything? There has to be something that had a direct impact on some field that produced money. Even worthless missions, money wise, like the one that discovered ancient trade routes in the desert, I doubt that could be done using planes in the same amount of time. Yes it could be done cheaper, if you hang the whole cost of the launch on the neck of this one experiment. But there are other experiments always being done on each launch. I know the teaching hospital nearby had rats on this shuttle, for some test. AFAIK they were just being sent up and back, nothing was being done with them in space so no data was gathered at all. I doubt they were looking for a cure for cancer, but whatever it was it wouldn't be done without the shuttle. Scrapping the space plane was stupid, but every single government program has costs overruns and NASA had to reign in costs, to get refocused. I'm rambling, stupid cold. Kevin T. I don't want to go to work ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
NASA Historical budget
I did a bit of research, and have come up with the following numbers for NASA's budget decade by decade. For the '60s, I had to do a bit of estimation for '60 and 61, but the number shouldn't be too far off, because that was before the NASA budget really took off. In constant 2002 dollars the budget was 60s 187 billion 70s 127 billion 80s 122 billion 90s 163 billion Think of what was accomplished in the '60s compared to the '80s and '90s put together. It isn't just the money. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: NASA Historical budget
- Original Message - From: Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 11:51 PM Subject: NASA Historical budget I did a bit of research, and have come up with the following numbers for NASA's budget decade by decade. For the '60s, I had to do a bit of estimation for '60 and 61, but the number shouldn't be too far off, because that was before the NASA budget really took off. In constant 2002 dollars the budget was 60s 187 billion 70s 127 billion 80s 122 billion 90s 163 billion Think of what was accomplished in the '60s compared to the '80s and '90s put together. It isn't just the money. Now divide it by the number of missions per decade. That would change things a bit. (Of course you have to subtract all the non-manned mission cost centers to get an accurate reading.) As a percentage of GDP is also interesting. I wish I had those figures handy too. rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: NASA Historical budget
Have allocations changed? I can see the 1960's budgets going to Cold War theatre. There are (at least) three big parts to the NASA budget: 1) Manned space flight. 2) Unmanned solar-system exploration. 3) Basic Research (my favorite). Eg: fluid-dynamics, propulsion for civil aviation, and unmanned ground-traversing vehicles. (Still, I say we rape NASAs budget and put it all ... er, a couple of billion into the sexy and exciting humanities and social sciences! [Psychohistory: the ultimate clandestine weapon.]) On Sunday 2003-02-02 22:51, Dan Minette wrote: I did a bit of research, and have come up with the following numbers for NASA's budget decade by decade. For the '60s, I had to do a bit of estimation for '60 and 61, but the number shouldn't be too far off, because that was before the NASA budget really took off. In constant 2002 dollars the budget was 60s 187 billion 70s 127 billion 80s 122 billion 90s 163 billion Think of what was accomplished in the '60s compared to the '80s and '90s put together. It isn't just the money. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: NASA Historical budget
- Original Message - From: Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 11:57 PM Subject: Re: NASA Historical budget - Original Message - From: Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 11:51 PM Subject: NASA Historical budget I did a bit of research, and have come up with the following numbers for NASA's budget decade by decade. For the '60s, I had to do a bit of estimation for '60 and 61, but the number shouldn't be too far off, because that was before the NASA budget really took off. In constant 2002 dollars the budget was 60s 187 billion 70s 127 billion 80s 122 billion 90s 163 billion Think of what was accomplished in the '60s compared to the '80s and '90s put together. It isn't just the money. Now divide it by the number of missions per decade. Why? Are you aruging that we are running too many missions? Look at where space flight was in 1960 vs. 1970. Then compare 1970 and today. Could you really say more was done in 2002 than in 1970? That would change things a bit. (Of course you have to subtract all the non-manned mission cost centers to get an accurate reading.) You would, but the manned missions get the lions share of the money: no bucks without Buck Rogers is a NASA motto. They even hide a lot of the shuttle money as microgravity experiments and biology experiments. As a percentage of GDP is also interesting. I wish I had those figures handy too. That has certainly gone down. But, to first order, romantic feelings are the results of the manned spaced program. Look, its romantic to me too, but I can also do the hard numbers at the same time. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
