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> "Do you have some kind of similar study that doesn't come out of the Republican Party? Maybe something a little more non-partisan?" Not sure what your point

> "Do you have some kind of similar study that doesn't come out of the Republican Party? Maybe something a little more non-partisan?" Not sure what your point is. I'm not sharing the article/infographic and animated budget scenarios as "this is what needs to happen" from some party's perspective. The point is a graphical display of the size of different buckets (which I take as fact) and the sliders that you can play with. The cases being presented are just examples. You can mentally slide the bars / cut line and see how much is required. > "I also find it funny how the infographic doesn't show a scenario where only defense cuts are made, because it would show us how cutting defense spending is a really simple path toward a balanced budget without changing anything else. I don't know if you have looked at it, but the defense bar is as big as each of the Medicaid, other mandatory, and "all other" spending bars each. You would have to cut the entire defense budget and still not solve the problem, and only make a fractional share of what is achieved if you implemented cuts to those other programs. > "Another example of the flaws of this argument/article is how Social Security is self-funded, and not in any financial jeopardy on its own. [1] Some of the other entitlement programs on the list also work that way." Maybe you have to redefine your definition of self-funded. Sure it is self-funded, as long as taxes increase a lot, given the demographic wave coming. If taxes don't increase, or one of these other options, it will run out of funds. If we don't agree on that, we have a problem. This is the entire debate about the problem we face. > "Regardless, my understanding is that a government's budget never has to be balanced. It doesn't operate like a family household...." Well, correct, but the question is how deep do we go into the hole. If you read the story, and the charts, you can see the projections of debt going to 200% GDP. At that point we will be paying enough interest on our debt to have funded several large programs themselves. > "You're saying our only options are for taxes to rise, benefits decreasing, increasing retirement age, or snowballing debt. But why are those our only options?" And the other options are? > "The other part would be looking at government inefficiencies and flawed policies that aren't on your list. For example, should we not talk about how suburban development and the interstate highway system is a monetary drain on wealth for the majority of the country?" Sure, talk about it, but can you change the bulk of the US to capture whatever benefit you can from that change, within 50 years to save the programs needing the money? > "I know I've spent a lot of time on this one issue as a specific example, but it's really just one of many ways in which being smart and efficient about the use of the vast wealth generated by the US would go a long way...." The talking is all good, but the bottom line is will your proposals come up with the money in time?

vkou 4y ago
> Sure, talk about it, but can you change the bulk of the US to capture whatever benefit you can from that change, within 50 years to save the programs needing the money? We can start changing it today, and save ourselves the pain of having to deal with it when we retire. It would also improve the quality of our day-to-day life on many dimensions, long before we do. What the grandparent poster is alluding to is that our culture is sick with a myopic, penny-wise-pound-foolish mentality, where people are personally spending tens of thousands of dollars for a service that could be provided collectively for thousands of dollars. While also complaining about outrageous taxes.
- supernova87a 4y ago
  I agree with this very much of course.
dangus 4y ago
Sure, the basic data about government spending is real but in this particular article it’s being leveraged for a distorted narrative, and the distortion is the idea that there’s no possible way we can pay for these things without fucking over the common person. The infographic sliders are reinforcing the idea that “the money must come from one of these things” when it really should just come from progressive taxation at a reasonable rate instead of letting the wealthy off easy. The Republican Party cut the taxes of the wealthy in 2017 and increased the deficit by doing so. They can’t be trusted to give advice about government spending because their basic party platform is that government is bad, the wealthy need tax relief, and their actual legislative track record is increasing the deficit. And yet here they are telling us through their study and this complimentary article that the only way to cut the deficit is to fuck the poor and the elderly. https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571754894/charts-see-how-much-of-gop-tax-cuts-will-go-to-the-middle-class https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571754894/charts-see-how-much...

vkou 4y ago

> Sure, talk about it, but can you change the bulk of the US to capture whatever benefit you can from that change, within 50 years to save the programs needing the money? We can start changing it today, and save ourselves the pain of having to deal with it when we retire. It would also improve the quality of our day-to-day life on many dimensions, long before we do. What the grandparent poster is alluding to is that our culture is sick with a myopic, penny-wise-pound-foolish mentality, where people are personally spending tens of thousands of dollars for a service that could be provided collectively for thousands of dollars. While also complaining about outrageous taxes.

supernova87a 4y ago
I agree with this very much of course.

dangus 4y ago

Sure, the basic data about government spending is real but in this particular article it’s being leveraged for a distorted narrative, and the distortion is the idea that there’s no possible way we can pay for these things without fucking over the common person. The infographic sliders are reinforcing the idea that “the money must come from one of these things” when it really should just come from progressive taxation at a reasonable rate instead of letting the wealthy off easy. The Republican Party cut the taxes of the wealthy in 2017 and increased the deficit by doing so. They can’t be trusted to give advice about government spending because their basic party platform is that government is bad, the wealthy need tax relief, and their actual legislative track record is increasing the deficit. And yet here they are telling us through their study and this complimentary article that the only way to cut the deficit is to fuck the poor and the elderly. https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571754894/charts-see-how-much-of-gop-tax-cuts-will-go-to-the-middle-class https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571754894/charts-see-how-much...