11 ms·

The best thing this widget does is clearly illustrate that there is no easy and painless solution, and that almost all the hot debating in political campaigns t

by leelin 16y ago

The best thing this widget does is clearly illustrate that there is no easy and painless solution, and that almost all the hot debating in political campaigns today is over the very small ticket items (earmarks, getting out of Iraq, etc). The truly big ticket items are extremely unpopular among most voters: cuts in social security, Medicare, and huge tax increases on certain groups of people (the most influential folks). Also, a huge simplification is that we ignore the impact on the economy; one of the central arguments for keeping the tax cuts is that it supposedly creates more jobs, as does government workers and aid to states. Very cool find, though. Maybe it should be a required exercise before each election season, just to discourage politicians from focusing on the less important topics. One last eye-opener: this only helps plug up the year-to-year budget deficit. The actual national debt is $13.5 trillion, and should another recession hit us between now and 2030, we'll be in bigger trouble even if you managed to balance the budget in this "simulation."

noodle 16y ago
indeed. for example, the GOP has a list of the top 5 things they want to cut to save money for the government (can't find the website offhand). they're nothing more than token issues which would, in total, reduce the budget expenditure by something like 0.00001%. here's a graph of how the 2010 budget is spent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fy2010_spending_by_categor... no one on either side of the aisle wants to touch cutting anything that will actually matter
- jacoblyles 16y ago
  Have you seen Paul Ryan's "Roadmap" budget?
  - quanticle 16y ago
    I have. I also know that the "Roadmap" budget has been intentionally buried by the Republican leadership because they don't want the people to know what kind of sacrifices they'll have to make if they want to reduce the deficit without raising taxes.
    - jacoblyles 16y ago
      It's heartening for me to see a realistic plan to balance the budget that doesn't start with the assumption that current spending levels are fixed.
nkurz 16y ago
I think that the best thing is that it shows it is possible! More interestingly, it does not even seem to require all out austerity measures. For example, if you choose "Cap Medicare growth" and "Reduce the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 30,000 by 2013" you are halfway there for 2030 with only those two choices. Go on to choose "Eliminate Loopholes but keep taxes slightly higher", "Reduce Tax Break on Employer-provided Health Insurance", "Payroll tax: Subject some incomes above $106,000 to tax" and the 3 largest cut-military-spending options and you are done. Sure, these things aren't as side-effect-free as they sound, but it almost sounds feasible and does not require flour sacks and cat food.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  You don't even have to raise the taxes - all you have to do is more eligibility for social security to 70 and that alone will get you half way there, combined with ending the waste in Iraq/Afghanistan and that is all that is required.
  - eru 16y ago
    And ending farm subsidies is a good thing, in any case. Even if that would not save any single dollar. (Just getting rid of the market distortion would be good enough.)
    - raquo 16y ago
      Market distortions are unilateral evil only under a ton of economic assumptions. I don't know enough about the US agriculture foods market (let alone how exactly is it subsidized) but I would imagine it to be reasonable to provide your farmers with some kind of protectionism against foreign suppliers because the latter definitely have lower costs, with cheap labor, less legalities, whatever. You really don't want to depend on some China for your food supply.
      - marvin 16y ago
        ...and also you want to make sure that you have a fair bit of domestic food production in case war or some other geopolitical event causes imports to become expensive or unavailable. It's potentially a life-and-death question. You Americans don't have a lot of history with this, but Europeans have.
dennisgorelik 16y ago
How could you call "getting out of Iraq" a small item? Iraq's financial black-hole it quite big by itself.
dmfdmf 16y ago
> One last eye-opener: this only helps plug up the year-to-year budget deficit. The actual national debt is $13.5 trillion... This. The political reality is that people scream bloody murder when even the "small ticket items" are changed. There is no possible way the people and the politicians they elect will face and solve this budget crisis in time to avert a crisis. The NYT "game" should have had one check box at the bottom labeled "continue to borrow until the dollar is destroyed". But people dismiss this danger as just abstract theory and rationalize it on the Russian Roulette Principle (we got away with it in the past). As an aside, there are all sorts of unidentified or implicit errors and bad theories built into this game which makes it a pointless exercise and impossible to actually judge. For example, If you reduce the tax break for employer-provided health insurance it shows up as a spending cut but that is actually a tax increase on imputed income. Another example is that if you cap Medicare growth the economic implication (especially if inflation takes off) is price-fixing or rationing of services. This is Econ 101 (it won't work) but the average person probably does not have the analytic skills to see the cap for what it is.
- tmorton 16y ago
  Nothing, including capping Medicare, will "work" if you mean "provide all possible health care to seniors." Medical science is wonderful, but it's moving faster than the overall economy - the things we can do are advancing faster than our ability to pay. There will simply be too many old people, with too many health problems, to provide top-flight treatment to everyone. Someone will have to tell them "sorry, you don't get that procedure." The only remaining question is: will that decision maker be a health insurance company, a government official, or the health provider refusing to work without payment. Seniors, and their children, will loudly demand that the government pay their health bills, no matter what the economic wreckage. That's why we need to lay the political groundwork now. Pundits, economists, and anyone else who can understand the situation should be repeating loudly and repeatedly: Health care is not a right, because it can't be. All of us will die, eventually. Most of us will die even though a treatment exists that could have extended our lives a bit. We need to get used to that fact.
  - dmfdmf 16y ago
philwelch 16y ago
Iraq's actually a pretty big ticket item on the list. It's an order of magnitude above things like getting rid of earmarks. Amusingly, it saves about three times as much money as getting out of Germany and Japan!
ojbyrne 16y ago
Actually I'd argue that it's the opposite - all you have to do is take cash cows from both sides (Republican: Defense budget and wars, tax cuts, Democrat: Federal employees, medicare, social security)* and take them out in a field and shoot them in the head. Problem solved. * Both parties priorities listed in order of lobbying dollars. With enough hype, the NYT is doing a good job in taking things away from K street. It's what journalism is all about.

by leelin 16y ago

noodle 16y ago

indeed. for example, the GOP has a list of the top 5 things they want to cut to save money for the government (can't find the website offhand). they're nothing more than token issues which would, in total, reduce the budget expenditure by something like 0.00001%. here's a graph of how the 2010 budget is spent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fy2010_spending_by_categor... no one on either side of the aisle wants to touch cutting anything that will actually matter

jacoblyles 16y ago
Have you seen Paul Ryan's "Roadmap" budget?
- quanticle 16y ago
  I have. I also know that the "Roadmap" budget has been intentionally buried by the Republican leadership because they don't want the people to know what kind of sacrifices they'll have to make if they want to reduce the deficit without raising taxes.
  - jacoblyles 16y ago
    It's heartening for me to see a realistic plan to balance the budget that doesn't start with the assumption that current spending levels are fixed.

nkurz 16y ago

I think that the best thing is that it shows it is possible! More interestingly, it does not even seem to require all out austerity measures. For example, if you choose "Cap Medicare growth" and "Reduce the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 30,000 by 2013" you are halfway there for 2030 with only those two choices. Go on to choose "Eliminate Loopholes but keep taxes slightly higher", "Reduce Tax Break on Employer-provided Health Insurance", "Payroll tax: Subject some incomes above $106,000 to tax" and the 3 largest cut-military-spending options and you are done. Sure, these things aren't as side-effect-free as they sound, but it almost sounds feasible and does not require flour sacks and cat food.

tomjen3 16y ago
You don't even have to raise the taxes - all you have to do is more eligibility for social security to 70 and that alone will get you half way there, combined with ending the waste in Iraq/Afghanistan and that is all that is required.
- eru 16y ago
  And ending farm subsidies is a good thing, in any case. Even if that would not save any single dollar. (Just getting rid of the market distortion would be good enough.)
  - raquo 16y ago
    Market distortions are unilateral evil only under a ton of economic assumptions. I don't know enough about the US agriculture foods market (let alone how exactly is it subsidized) but I would imagine it to be reasonable to provide your farmers with some kind of protectionism against foreign suppliers because the latter definitely have lower costs, with cheap labor, less legalities, whatever. You really don't want to depend on some China for your food supply.
    - marvin 16y ago
      ...and also you want to make sure that you have a fair bit of domestic food production in case war or some other geopolitical event causes imports to become expensive or unavailable. It's potentially a life-and-death question. You Americans don't have a lot of history with this, but Europeans have.

dennisgorelik 16y ago

How could you call "getting out of Iraq" a small item? Iraq's financial black-hole it quite big by itself.

dmfdmf 16y ago

> One last eye-opener: this only helps plug up the year-to-year budget deficit. The actual national debt is $13.5 trillion... This. The political reality is that people scream bloody murder when even the "small ticket items" are changed. There is no possible way the people and the politicians they elect will face and solve this budget crisis in time to avert a crisis. The NYT "game" should have had one check box at the bottom labeled "continue to borrow until the dollar is destroyed". But people dismiss this danger as just abstract theory and rationalize it on the Russian Roulette Principle (we got away with it in the past). As an aside, there are all sorts of unidentified or implicit errors and bad theories built into this game which makes it a pointless exercise and impossible to actually judge. For example, If you reduce the tax break for employer-provided health insurance it shows up as a spending cut but that is actually a tax increase on imputed income. Another example is that if you cap Medicare growth the economic implication (especially if inflation takes off) is price-fixing or rationing of services. This is Econ 101 (it won't work) but the average person probably does not have the analytic skills to see the cap for what it is.

tmorton 16y ago
Nothing, including capping Medicare, will "work" if you mean "provide all possible health care to seniors." Medical science is wonderful, but it's moving faster than the overall economy - the things we can do are advancing faster than our ability to pay. There will simply be too many old people, with too many health problems, to provide top-flight treatment to everyone. Someone will have to tell them "sorry, you don't get that procedure." The only remaining question is: will that decision maker be a health insurance company, a government official, or the health provider refusing to work without payment. Seniors, and their children, will loudly demand that the government pay their health bills, no matter what the economic wreckage. That's why we need to lay the political groundwork now. Pundits, economists, and anyone else who can understand the situation should be repeating loudly and repeatedly: Health care is not a right, because it can't be. All of us will die, eventually. Most of us will die even though a treatment exists that could have extended our lives a bit. We need to get used to that fact.
- dmfdmf 16y ago

philwelch 16y ago

Iraq's actually a pretty big ticket item on the list. It's an order of magnitude above things like getting rid of earmarks. Amusingly, it saves about three times as much money as getting out of Germany and Japan!

ojbyrne 16y ago

Actually I'd argue that it's the opposite - all you have to do is take cash cows from both sides (Republican: Defense budget and wars, tax cuts, Democrat: Federal employees, medicare, social security)* and take them out in a field and shoot them in the head. Problem solved. * Both parties priorities listed in order of lobbying dollars. With enough hype, the NYT is doing a good job in taking things away from K street. It's what journalism is all about.