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By traditional indicators the US is broke. Debt to GDP is at historic crisis levels, debt service is eclipsing the military budget (though I didn't check if tha

by roenxi 3y ago

By traditional indicators the US is broke. Debt to GDP is at historic crisis levels, debt service is eclipsing the military budget (though I didn't check if that includes the spending for the war in Ukraine) and it is unclear where the oomph to pay for retirees will come from. The main thing optimists seems to be pinning their hope on is that the authorities can print money and it will all turn out OK. What is the conversation around science funding meant to look like? Spending money on productive investments is a great idea, but the practice of the US government is nowhere near that.

tonmoy 3y ago
Debt to GDP has no meaning as one is a balance and the other is a balance over a time. A better indicator will be Debt to GDP until the year infinity. Same goes for military budget, it’s for a year.
- roenxi 3y ago
  What measure do you want to use? Given that debt has been consistently trending up faster than GDP for a while ... I dunno, couple of decades? ... Debt:GDP until year infinity is also quite concerning (we could reasonably project a ratio of infinity unless policy changes - ie, the US is at crisis levels).
  - tonmoy 3y ago
    I wouldn’t compare my $400k debt with my monthly income. I’d compare my monthly income vs my mortgage payment and my investment incomes. Same goes for the government, divide debt by number of years needed to pay it off including interest subtract the earnings from economic activity and interest earning from giving out loan to other entities and the see if GDP is able to counter that
    - roenxi 3y ago
      I'm not sure what you're wanting to angle for here, that doesn't seem like a specific formula. If you're trying to calculate a single metric it seems to be number of years to pay off the debt? At current trend, that is infinity years. I'm not seeing how it could get worse than that, although no plans to pay back the debt is just business as usual by now. And I suspect the information in your sentence is actually contained in a Debt/GDP ratio (eg, is interest + GDP growth going up faster than debt implies Debt/GDP ratio dropping). > I wouldn’t compare my $400k debt with my monthly income. Pretty sure that is actually a fair way to assess your creditworthiness. I can see the conversation in the bank going "Yo I want $400k", "What is your income?", "$X", "Yea"/"Nay" with some basic due diligence.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    The amount of debt doesn't matter, only the cost to service the debt. They're certainly related though.
- 4death4 3y ago
  Debt-to-GDP has been (essentially) monotonically increasing since the year 2000. You’re not going to like the value each year until infinity.
henry2023 3y ago
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. It’s so clear this isn’t sustainable.
- roenxi 3y ago
  I've always assumed it is that the trends are damn scary and people don't want to think about them. Most people struggle with financial concepts like (earning >= spending -> good outcomes) and I assume at the root it is some combination of emotional responses that just don't want to tackle the uncertainty of the future. If you look far enough out, the future is scary. If nothing else eventually we get hit by a meteor. So people generally don't look forward more than a week or few - because it is unpleasant and seems a little pointless. They live with whatever seems like a good idea right now. I just wish they'd let people who are a bit more math-oriented take on budgeting decisions. We're going to be eating consequences that we didn't have to because the US public can't sit down and agree that solvency is more important than whatever distraction came up this electoral cycle.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    In point of fact the US public has literally no control over budgetary policy so perhaps pointing the finger at the culprits instead of the useful idiots that put them there would be worthwhile.
    - roenxi 3y ago
      It be not so! The US public has been surreptitiously cheering the madness on. I'm sure they'd agree with fiscal conservatism in principle - but ask them to support tax hikes? No way to win an election. Ask them to support budget cuts? Literally nothing on the table. I've been arguing the fiscal responsibility side on HN for a long time. There is nearly no government program where a strident call for fiscal conservatism won't get a comment downvoted. It is a needle-threading exercise to make any points in favour of not spending money; it takes a lot of care, practice and timing to argue without kicking one of several hornet nests. And that in on HN where the crowds are more reasonable and logically minded. > the culprits instead of the useful idiots The useful idiots are the culprits. Being an idiot doesn't absolve someone of responsibility.
sigmar 3y ago
>What is the conversation around science funding meant to look like? Spending money on productive investments is a great idea, but the practice of the US government is nowhere near that. This year's Nobel prize for chemistry went to three Americans (edit: I was mistaken, one of them was living in the USSR when his initial discovery was made, though he now lives in the US). Both the winners of the Nobel prize in medicine were American. and one of the three winners of the Nobel prize in physics was American. By what metric are we "nowhere near" productive in how we fund research?
- roenxi 3y ago
  > By what metric are we "nowhere near" productive in how we fund research? Spending as a % of budget. I feel that was obvious given the article. I suspect you're reading something that I didn't write though - I'm just pointing the US government doesn't have spare money lying around to increase their funding of science projects. It isn't a case of "oh we'll just budget a bit more for science". There are enormous cuts/tax increases needed before that conversation can even begin.

by roenxi 3y ago

tonmoy 3y ago

Debt to GDP has no meaning as one is a balance and the other is a balance over a time. A better indicator will be Debt to GDP until the year infinity. Same goes for military budget, it’s for a year.

roenxi 3y ago
What measure do you want to use? Given that debt has been consistently trending up faster than GDP for a while ... I dunno, couple of decades? ... Debt:GDP until year infinity is also quite concerning (we could reasonably project a ratio of infinity unless policy changes - ie, the US is at crisis levels).
- tonmoy 3y ago
  I wouldn’t compare my $400k debt with my monthly income. I’d compare my monthly income vs my mortgage payment and my investment incomes. Same goes for the government, divide debt by number of years needed to pay it off including interest subtract the earnings from economic activity and interest earning from giving out loan to other entities and the see if GDP is able to counter that
  - roenxi 3y ago
    I'm not sure what you're wanting to angle for here, that doesn't seem like a specific formula. If you're trying to calculate a single metric it seems to be number of years to pay off the debt? At current trend, that is infinity years. I'm not seeing how it could get worse than that, although no plans to pay back the debt is just business as usual by now. And I suspect the information in your sentence is actually contained in a Debt/GDP ratio (eg, is interest + GDP growth going up faster than debt implies Debt/GDP ratio dropping). > I wouldn’t compare my $400k debt with my monthly income. Pretty sure that is actually a fair way to assess your creditworthiness. I can see the conversation in the bank going "Yo I want $400k", "What is your income?", "$X", "Yea"/"Nay" with some basic due diligence.
- thfuran 3y ago
  The amount of debt doesn't matter, only the cost to service the debt. They're certainly related though.
4death4 3y ago
Debt-to-GDP has been (essentially) monotonically increasing since the year 2000. You’re not going to like the value each year until infinity.

henry2023 3y ago

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. It’s so clear this isn’t sustainable.

roenxi 3y ago
I've always assumed it is that the trends are damn scary and people don't want to think about them. Most people struggle with financial concepts like (earning >= spending -> good outcomes) and I assume at the root it is some combination of emotional responses that just don't want to tackle the uncertainty of the future. If you look far enough out, the future is scary. If nothing else eventually we get hit by a meteor. So people generally don't look forward more than a week or few - because it is unpleasant and seems a little pointless. They live with whatever seems like a good idea right now. I just wish they'd let people who are a bit more math-oriented take on budgeting decisions. We're going to be eating consequences that we didn't have to because the US public can't sit down and agree that solvency is more important than whatever distraction came up this electoral cycle.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  In point of fact the US public has literally no control over budgetary policy so perhaps pointing the finger at the culprits instead of the useful idiots that put them there would be worthwhile.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    It be not so! The US public has been surreptitiously cheering the madness on. I'm sure they'd agree with fiscal conservatism in principle - but ask them to support tax hikes? No way to win an election. Ask them to support budget cuts? Literally nothing on the table. I've been arguing the fiscal responsibility side on HN for a long time. There is nearly no government program where a strident call for fiscal conservatism won't get a comment downvoted. It is a needle-threading exercise to make any points in favour of not spending money; it takes a lot of care, practice and timing to argue without kicking one of several hornet nests. And that in on HN where the crowds are more reasonable and logically minded. > the culprits instead of the useful idiots The useful idiots are the culprits. Being an idiot doesn't absolve someone of responsibility.

sigmar 3y ago

>What is the conversation around science funding meant to look like? Spending money on productive investments is a great idea, but the practice of the US government is nowhere near that. This year's Nobel prize for chemistry went to three Americans (edit: I was mistaken, one of them was living in the USSR when his initial discovery was made, though he now lives in the US). Both the winners of the Nobel prize in medicine were American. and one of the three winners of the Nobel prize in physics was American. By what metric are we "nowhere near" productive in how we fund research?

roenxi 3y ago
> By what metric are we "nowhere near" productive in how we fund research? Spending as a % of budget. I feel that was obvious given the article. I suspect you're reading something that I didn't write though - I'm just pointing the US government doesn't have spare money lying around to increase their funding of science projects. It isn't a case of "oh we'll just budget a bit more for science". There are enormous cuts/tax increases needed before that conversation can even begin.