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2% in 45 years is a completely meaningless amount. You are technically and pedantically correct, but in the context of the actual conversation being had it is s

2% in 45 years is a completely meaningless amount. You are technically and pedantically correct, but in the context of the actual conversation being had it is so little as to be irrelevant.

starspangled 2y ago
Honest question, do expect people to actually believe you're a serious person interested in rational debate with that kind of response? What Trump / DOGE has proposed or claimed to have cut amounts to far less than $500 billion / year from the budget. Like 1/10th that amount. Yet people are seriously concerned about those cuts. Clearly it's not a reasonable amount, as you would understand if you had any idea of the context of this conversation.
- stouset 2y ago
  What DOGE has claimed to have cut is a similarly meaningless amount (and likely significantly overinflated), and what's worse, the value we were getting from those expenditures likely greatly exceeds what we were paying for them. $500bn/yr would be about 15% of the annual budget. That number doesn't even pass a basic sniff test.
  - starspangled 2y ago
    2% of US GDP is 500 billion. I don't know what you're confused about. I'm taking numbers linked from the IMF so perhaps you know better? Also it's obviously not a 2% increase over 45 years, it's a nearly 6% increase, so not sure if numbers are your strong suit here. At least you did admit I was correct though, so I don't know what you're really continuing to try argue about. What I wrote originally stands.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      I think GP misread what you were saying, and thought you were asserting that DOGE had cut $500B/yr of spending. (I sympathize; I read it that way myself at first, but realized what you actually meant during a confused re-read.)
Izkata 2y ago
On the graph they shared earlier, 2020 is 44.82%, exactly on the 1960 - 1992 trendline. The 2022 and 2009 dropoffs coincide with major disruptions (don't know about the late-90s one), which almost seems to hint that's the value we should be looking at: +10.57% in 20 years.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  2019 was 35.97, and 2022 was 36.26, but we shouldn't use those, we should use the 2020 number? Come on, the 2020 and 2021 numbers are not representative of the overall trend.
  - starspangled 2y ago
    Sure but the 1990s, after Clinton's federal worker bloodbath and other expenditure cuts, is also an outlier and by the same argument you could say it is not representative of the overall trend. You can't just pick and choose your preferred outliers and call the inconvenient ones not representative. Covid spending was an "outlier" but it is not an uncommon kind of outlier when there is some market crash or trillion dollar wars etc -- there was almost as large a spike, and a broader peak meaning more overall expenditure as a proportion of GDP only 10 years before Covid.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      > Sure but the 1990s, after Clinton's federal worker bloodbath and other expenditure cuts, is also an outlier and by the same argument you could say it is not representative of the overall trend. You can't just pick and choose your preferred outliers and call the inconvenient ones not representative. I think it is perfectly fine to say that the 90s are not representative of the overall trend. I'm not cherrypicking. I'm not saying it's actually going down. My argument is very simple, that "consistently up" is not a correct description of the situation. If you look at it a couple years at a time, it's swingy and there's no real pattern at this level. If you look a decade at a time, it went up quickly for quite a while, it went down more slowly for a while, and now it's going back up even more slowly and it's still below the peak. If you zoom out really far, then things are close to flat over the last 40 years.

2% in 45 years is a completely meaningless amount. You are technically and pedantically correct, but in the context of the actual conversation being had it is so little as to be irrelevant.

starspangled 2y ago

Honest question, do expect people to actually believe you're a serious person interested in rational debate with that kind of response? What Trump / DOGE has proposed or claimed to have cut amounts to far less than $500 billion / year from the budget. Like 1/10th that amount. Yet people are seriously concerned about those cuts. Clearly it's not a reasonable amount, as you would understand if you had any idea of the context of this conversation.

stouset 2y ago
What DOGE has claimed to have cut is a similarly meaningless amount (and likely significantly overinflated), and what's worse, the value we were getting from those expenditures likely greatly exceeds what we were paying for them. $500bn/yr would be about 15% of the annual budget. That number doesn't even pass a basic sniff test.
- starspangled 2y ago
  2% of US GDP is 500 billion. I don't know what you're confused about. I'm taking numbers linked from the IMF so perhaps you know better? Also it's obviously not a 2% increase over 45 years, it's a nearly 6% increase, so not sure if numbers are your strong suit here. At least you did admit I was correct though, so I don't know what you're really continuing to try argue about. What I wrote originally stands.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    I think GP misread what you were saying, and thought you were asserting that DOGE had cut $500B/yr of spending. (I sympathize; I read it that way myself at first, but realized what you actually meant during a confused re-read.)

Izkata 2y ago

On the graph they shared earlier, 2020 is 44.82%, exactly on the 1960 - 1992 trendline. The 2022 and 2009 dropoffs coincide with major disruptions (don't know about the late-90s one), which almost seems to hint that's the value we should be looking at: +10.57% in 20 years.

Dylan16807 2y ago
2019 was 35.97, and 2022 was 36.26, but we shouldn't use those, we should use the 2020 number? Come on, the 2020 and 2021 numbers are not representative of the overall trend.
- starspangled 2y ago
  Sure but the 1990s, after Clinton's federal worker bloodbath and other expenditure cuts, is also an outlier and by the same argument you could say it is not representative of the overall trend. You can't just pick and choose your preferred outliers and call the inconvenient ones not representative. Covid spending was an "outlier" but it is not an uncommon kind of outlier when there is some market crash or trillion dollar wars etc -- there was almost as large a spike, and a broader peak meaning more overall expenditure as a proportion of GDP only 10 years before Covid.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    > Sure but the 1990s, after Clinton's federal worker bloodbath and other expenditure cuts, is also an outlier and by the same argument you could say it is not representative of the overall trend. You can't just pick and choose your preferred outliers and call the inconvenient ones not representative. I think it is perfectly fine to say that the 90s are not representative of the overall trend. I'm not cherrypicking. I'm not saying it's actually going down. My argument is very simple, that "consistently up" is not a correct description of the situation. If you look at it a couple years at a time, it's swingy and there's no real pattern at this level. If you look a decade at a time, it went up quickly for quite a while, it went down more slowly for a while, and now it's going back up even more slowly and it's still below the peak. If you zoom out really far, then things are close to flat over the last 40 years.