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> Medicaid and Social Security benefits are not affected That's disappointing, I wonder why those aren't getting paused? If you want to get spending under cont
by hypeatei 2y ago
> Medicaid and Social Security benefits are not affected
That's disappointing, I wonder why those aren't getting paused? If you want to get spending under control and you're already breaking the law then you might as well stop everything.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoBecause no Republican would ever be elected to national office ever again?
- rbanffy 2y agoI don't think societies have such long attention spans, or the rationality, to follow through that.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoEvery single democracy in the world is facing the same problem of gerontocracy. The old people (or about to be old) vote the most, they have the most numbers, and they cannot enact any policies that will help the young by cutting old people entitlements.
- rbanffy 2y agoLuckily, this is a problem that solves itself. Medical science, of course, is delaying it somehow.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoHow does it solve itself if successive generations are smaller and smaller?
- rbanffy 2y agoThe current ones will eventually retire from public life.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoBut that’s not the problem. The problem is disproportionate share of society’s resources going to old people.
- rbanffy 2y agoHopefully they leave their inheritance to a number greater than 1.
- throw0101c 2y ago> Because no Republican would ever be elected to national office ever again? People regularly vote against their own interest out of spite: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness
- hypeatei 2y agoSorry if it wasn't clear, but that was a rhetorical question. We all know why they don't do it: because a significant percentage of their voter base are boomers who rely on that stuff.
- anonymousab 2y agoYou severely underestimate Trump, the GOP and a tamed media and tech industry's ability to spin things as the Democrats' fault. They can also trivially rig elections by just organizing things to criminalize the majority of your opponents, but that's overkill. At the end of the day, their win was total and permanent. There are no realistic fears of reelection issues to ever worry about.
- rbanffy 2y agoAll that is a rounding error next to military spending. You want the deficit under control, cut military spending.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoThis is completely wrong: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... Military spend is less than 20% (combination of “Defense” and “Veterans Benefits and Services”). Some of the Vererans benefits and services are old age healthcare and defined benefit pension, so that can get subtracted from military spend and moved over to social security and Medicare (since it would happen anyway regardless of military spend). Social security, Medicare, Medicaid m, and other healthcare subsidies are 21% + 14% + 13% = 47%. Income security is another 9%, like food stamps, social security supplemental income, earned income tax credits, all stuff for lower income/wealth households. So 60% of US federal government spend is welfare. Less than 20% is military. 13% is interest costs. And the remaining ~7% is for everything else.
- rbanffy 2y agoYou are right. I never suspected this would be the case. Still, social/income security and healthcare (and education) should be the last places one should cut budgets. Also, the US spends more in their military as a percentage of their GDP than any other developed nation. This sounds like an excellent place to cut. The US government subsidizes a lot of weapons research as well, for companies that'll later sell the tech the government helped them develop to foreign countries at a profit. I don't think it's fair to subsidize a private enterprise this way.
- dutchbookmaker 2y agoIt is still worse than this. The largest amount of the money is in the unfunded liabilities for social security and healthcare over the next 50 years. It is hard to even know what it is, 60, 70, 80 trillion? Younger people will end up both paying for this while getting old from higher interest rates and inflation and then when actually old? The money has all been spent. Sorry, no services. If you think the price of things are bad now try some fiscal dominance and debt monetization. I suspect it is already too late to avoid fiscal dominance. At 50, maybe I won't see it though. At 20? A 20 year old probably has a good chance of fiscal dominance, debit monetization and maybe even USD losing reserve currency status.