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Somehow during Dem administrations, we have an improving budget deficit (even sometimes a surplus) while maintaining more of a social safety net. That should p
by softwaredoug 1y ago
Somehow during Dem administrations, we have an improving budget deficit (even sometimes a surplus) while maintaining more of a social safety net.
That should pretty much tell you everything.
- isoprophlex 1y agobut were they winning as hard as the current administration?
- cakeday 1y ago[flagged]
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoIt is a difficult balance to strike. Unless you outlaw _all_ jokes, there will be some jokes that are just on the line of “funny enough”/“not too trollish”. Personally i find this kind of joke hilarious, but people will all have different tastes
- kelnos 1y agoI don't come here for jokes, so I downvote pretty much any joke I see, regardless of whether or not I think it's funny or clever.
- davidguetta 1y agolook at me: i'm the downvoter now
- bigyabai 1y agoWhat is trollish? The "winning" is copied verbatim from White House communique.
- pjc50 1y agoWeak trollish humor is now allowed in the White House as well. What's left of it.
- jrs235 1y agoEvidenced by: Your mom.
- sethammons 1y agoSome may miss the meta meta. > White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded minutes later with: “Your mom did.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-house-wild-response-to-huffpost-question_n_68f26217e4b0ee732e24eb66/amp https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-house-wild-response-to-...
- Capricorn2481 1y agoYour account was made today.
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoSo what? Are they supposed to make an account weeks before they have something to say?
- bigyabai 1y agoIf you don't want to appear impulsive, yes.
- ajross 1y agoI'd submit if you want to make an argument about HN norms and conventions and what is "allowed" to be posted in a comment, demonstrating that you're actually a part of the community you're attempting to police is a good idea, yeah.
- krapp 1y agoIt used to be common nettiquete to expect new account to "lurk" and refrain from posting until they actually learned the norms of board culture and how to behave as expected. Hacker News would be much better if all new accounts were banned by default until they were vouched for by users and earned a minimum amount of karma. I understand why this doesn't happen, but the problem of green accounts trolling and posting toxicity seems far worse than occasional mediocre humor.
- LexiMax 1y ago> Hacker News would be much better if all new accounts were banned by default until they were vouched for by users and earned a minimum amount of karma. Personally, I prefer the model used by lobsters and Tildes where you have to be invited to the community by another member.
- krapp 1y ago
- oompydoompy74 1y agoThe joke accurately conveys that the current administration has no actual upside and won power purely on Populism, while the opposition party clearly put the country in a better place while they were in power. I think it’s funny, accurate, and informative.
- franktankbank 1y agoOften a surplus? 1 time ever more like. I think its pretty low-brow to act like a presidential administration can be the single biggest cause of a major turnaround within its own administration. One administration is facing knock-on from several previous (plus all the tech advancement, trade deals, congress, SC).
- Capricorn2481 1y agoNobody said "Often a surplus"?
- franktankbank 1y agoI believe the post was edited, but I have no proof.
- Capricorn2481 1y agoFair enough! It probably was.
- greenie_beans 1y agoalways been like that. GOP takes power then cuts taxes so they can yell about the deficit, which gives them leverage to cut spending.
- rtaylorgarlock 1y agoIt actually isn't as simple as 'always,' as military spending alone as an axis of evaluation yields interesting nuance
- greenie_beans 1y agocurious to hear more about your argument. can you expand it? "an axis of evaluation yields interesting nuance" isn't very direct language.
- darksaints 1y agoThey don't care about the spending. They yammer about it as a way of shifting funds towards things they care about, like the military or their new gestapo or buying votes from their disaffected constituents, but they've never given a shit about the deficit, and have never done anything to stop it. The closest they ever came to actually caring about government was with Musk who went in and actually started (illegally) ripping shit out. But the things he ripped out were inconsequential things that conservatives didn't like, and he didn't even make a dent in the actual budget. All of the things that Musk got rid of were congressionally appropriated and could have easily been congressionally (i.e. legally) de-appropriated accordingly and it supposedly would be easy for them to do with majority control over the house, senate, executive, and judiciary...but they didn't do it, because they don't actually want to cut the budget.
- cityofdelusion 1y ago> they don't actually want to cut the budget Eh, I would say its well-known in deficit circles that all politicians (intellectually) desire to balance the budget, but it is basically impossible. Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and debt servicing are such large pieces of the debt pie that the entirety of discretionary spending makes basically no impact in balancing the budget. These are de-facto untouchable obligations because too many people's lives depend on them and any party that enacts austerity will be swept out of office. Neither party will increase taxes on themselves (the rich) and taxing the middle/poor guarantees you lose the next election. The only path forward in the U.S. is basically kicking the can down the road until it implodes like so many other high debt-load western nations before them.
- adventured 1y ago[flagged]
- snowwrestler 1y agoThe U.S. government structurally cannot run a surplus because when they have income in excess of obligations they store it in U.S. Treasury bonds, which creates offsetting debt.
- atmavatar 1y agoEvery Republican administration in the last 50 years (save Bush Sr.) has passed a giant tax cut without cutting spending nearly enough to pay for it (and usually increasing spending). Trump himself has done this twice. Let's not pretend like the two parties are the same with regard to fiscal irresponsibility.
- Capricorn2481 1y ago> Obama and Biden ran gigantic budget deficits If you actually look at the deficit year by year, Obama and Biden each entered office with a huge economic crisis that ballooned the deficit, and then lowered it year by year. I mean, it was highest under Trump. And if you look at Bush and Trump, they started with a lower deficit and raised it year by year. If your marker is a "budget surplus", nobody does that. The only people that get close are Democrats because they literally reduce spending. And then a Republican takes office, bangs on about the deficit so they can slash social programs, but spends even more than they slashed on military. This is not hidden information. I don't care that much about the deficit, it's not the cause of our most immediate problems. It's just something both parties bring up when convenient.
- SoftTalker 1y agoYou don't care that ~15% of federal spending is interest on the debt?
- grigri907 1y agoI don't. One of the largest holders of US debt is US citizens' investment and retirement accounts. It's a win-win situation
- cakeday 1y ago[flagged]
- Steven420 1y ago[flagged]
- krapp 1y agoI've made plenty of left leaning comments that got flagged. Try arguing against the literal truth of the Bible or the necessity of religion to morality or society, for instance. Or that vaccines work. Or that free market capitalism has flaws and socialism has merits. Or that transgender identity is valid. Or that DEI is valid. Or that feminism is valid. Or that immigration and multiculturalism are valid. Or that gun control is valid. There are tons of left leaning views that get flagged on HN. What matters isn't political polarity but the specific zeitgeist of the thread and whether you go with it or against it, and who happens to show up first with the most downvotes.
- jandrewrogers 1y agoMore specifically, Congress, which doesn't always align with the Executive. Congress largely sets the spending (or not) agenda. The Executive can ask nicely but Congress mostly does what it does. Outside of retirees, much of the social safety net is funded at the State level. There is a wide variance in the benefits and quality of the social safety net across States.
- woooooo 1y agoMedicaid is administered at the state level but funded federally, as a number of people might discover next month.
- asacrowflies 1y ago"The Executive can ask nicely but Congress mostly does what it does." Oof
- somenameforme 1y agoAnd this is why politics is broken in the US, and in most of the Western world for that matter. What you just said is completely false, but it's being rewarded because people want it to be true. Here [1] is data on the annual deficit. [1] We've only run a "surplus" four times since 1970. Twice under George W Bush, twice under Clinton. Since then it's been going mostly into loony land. The reason for the quotes is because that's an incomplete picture since various things can affect the debt without being noted in the annual deficit. For instance some programs are considered off-budget, there's various accounting restructuring, and so on. If you simply look at the total debt it has increased every year (again since at least 1970) with the only exception being 1999 to 2000 depending on when you measure it. If you look end of year vs end of year (as opposed to fiscal year), it decreased by a few billion dollars, and that was the only time. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD
- Capricorn2481 1y agoHow are you reading this graph? There is a surplus and it's not "twice under Bush." https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio... And the graph clearly shows we trend towards less spending under Democrats and then Republicans spend more again.
- somenameforme 1y agoThe years of a nominal surplus were 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001. In reality, the only "real" surplus (in other words the public debt decreased) was in 2000, and it was negligible. I don't find the partisan arguments interesting. Bush had a lower deficit (each and every year) invading and occupying two different countries than any president has ever achieved since then. That is not to praise Bush, but to emphasize that we're comparing horrible vs terrible and trying to argue over which is which. They're all miserable failures, and not just in regards to spending.
- piva00 1y agoAre there any things you are leaving out in 2008 and 2020-2021 in this analysis though? One self-inflicted from deregulating the finance industry, another a black swan event. Running wars is a choice, a pandemic hitting not so much.
- Hilift 1y agoAre you serious? California has an $180 billion annual obligation just for Medicaid (Cal-Aid). Los Angeles borrowed $1 billion to fund DWP operations this year, and borrowed $3 billion to borrow another $3 billion to fund a $6 billion renovation for the LA convention center that no one wants. Denver wants to borrow $1 billion to basically fund operations. Neither party has any intention of repaying any of the $38 trillion, or care what it is spent on. https://www.torched.la/why-this-convention-center-expert-is-calling-las-expansion-plan-a-disaster/ https://www.torched.la/why-this-convention-center-expert-is-...
- ajross 1y ago> Neither party has any intention of repaying any of the $38 trillion What are you talking about here? Federal debt is repaid on bond schedules fixed by statute. You can look it all up. You can argue about whether the debt load is too high, too low, whatever. But you can't just pretend they ran away with the money like a thief. People loaned the government that money because they know the government is good for it.
- JoeAltmaier 1y agoI think the point was, it doesn't look like it will ever be paid off entirely. It just grows, as do the payments. That 38 trillion is 76 thousand dollars per person in the USA for instance. Pay that off? Really?
- ajross 1y agoUh... yes? That $76k is right about median household income, and a little under per capita GDP. Apply that logic to other sorts of finance: mortgage leverage is routinely five times that big, and no one freaks out about how you'll never be able to pay off your home. Federal budget argumentation is just exhausting. Fight about balancing the budget, sure. Fight about unsustainable deficits, sure. But to claim that very manageable federal debt payments can't be made is just ridiculous. Yes, the US government is going to pay off that debt. Which is why they were able to borrow it in the first place.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoSo what actually happened is that Clinton said we had to get serious about the deficit, and then passed a budget that pushed the real cuts until after the end of Clinton's second term (that is, more than six years down the road). Then Republicans took over the House in the midterms. They passed the budget (and Clinton signed it) that actually led to surplus for the first time since Andrew Jackson. So, yes, it happened under a Democratic president. It only happened because of a Republican House, though. (But let the president also be a Republican, and Republicans in Congress lose all fiscal discipline.)
- ethbr1 1y agoA strong argument in favor of divided government.