This is just not correct. Not agreeing/disagreeing it needs to be cut, just stating facts.
Defense for FY 2011 was $700bn at 19% of the $3.6Tn federal budget. Medicare/Medicaid were 23% and SS was 20%. Discretionary was 18% and other mandatory and interest make up 19%.
As a percentage of GDP US defense comes in at 4.7% compared with the global average of 2.0%.
The other big spenders (as a % of GDP) are Saudi Arabia (8.7%), Russia (3.9%), South Korea (2.7%), UK (2.6%). China’s is (2%).
You’re right, I thought defense had balooned past SS and M.
Although, expenditure compared to GDP is not as relevant as expenditure compared to budget.
As long as its being spent on innovations and improving our quality of life. Not saying we should borrow just to spend on the useless wars, inefficient health care system and free welfare checks.
To me spending isn’t the issue, its how we are spending. To sustain an economy this large, we will have to continue spending on infrastructure, technology and healthcare and that can only be done via gov’t spending. Expecting this from the private sector will be too expensive.
I am from the school of thought that our current political system has made ‘curbing spending’ impossible so we are better off trying to figure out how to spend on the right things (which we clearly aren’t doing right now).
Lower regulations and better reappropriation of funds is what I am looking for.
The challenge with low rates is what happens if/when the borrowings need to be refinanced, very likely at a higher rate.
Borrowing is fine if it results in investments that return amounts greater than the cost of debt. At this point, the hurdle rate on that is low, which suggests that it can be useful to use it to invest in things that make our economy more competitive - like high-end vocational retraining, or energy efficiency, transport networks, and better communications infrastructure, and support for small business.
Borrowing is also fine if it is for short-term mismatches in payments vs revenues. That’s what liquidity is about.
It’s a hard question about unexpected emergencies, or expected emergencies of unexpected magnitude. Sometimes debt is the only way to get to tomorrow, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll have the means to pay them off. The safe thing is not to do it, but what if “the safe thing” means “you die,” such as an emergency medical procedure, or a banking meltdown. It’s not optimal, but it’s also not clear that dying now is inferior to dying later.
Obviously I don’t speak for Turd, but as the other wacky Randian/Libertarian here I’ll add this…
Ryan is much more of a Tea Party candidate than a libertarian (using that as a catch all term). His fiscal policies are pretty good - even though he did vote for a few bailouts - but he’s in no way representative of libertarian social policies. He’s extremely socially conservative…a big turn off for us. But, as I mentioned above, he’s the prettiest pig at the prom.
One of the keys to Ryan’s positioning is going to have to be how the private sector can and will step up to fill the void left by the proposed cuts. When people see he wants to slash medicare by hundreds of billions, they just assume insurance is going away. Ryan has to outline how the private sector can step up, or rather, what barriers (regulations) he can eliminate to allow private companies better access to the market. It can’t just be about cuts. It has to be about the potential for even better coverage once government gets out of the way.
If he does that I think this could be a great race. If Obama is able to simply frame the republicans as guys that want to fleece the middle class, we’re in for another four years BO.
He plans to balance the budget in 30 years with income tax cuts, a zero cap gains rate, with no cuts in the military, does that sound like a viable plan?
To his credit he did lay out an honest assesment of his beliefs and policies, but when you boil it down it’s really just a right wing policy wish list. Unless someone has a plan for a gradual increase in taxes and gradual reduction in benefits until the budget is back in line (about 20% of GDP coming in as taxes and out as expenditures), they shouldn’t be pretending to be concerned about the debt.
The budget will (or won’t) be balanced by GDP growth, not accounting measures. Sure, spending cuts and raising taxes will help on paper, but it all comes down to the health of the economy. The best chance to have a balanced budget in 10-30 years is to give the economy a shot at sustainable growth. Ryan’s proposal is his attempt to stimulate the economy by getting the government out of the way. Anyone could write the next ten budgets with gradual step-ups in taxes and reductions in spending and arrive at a balanced budget…in theory. In practice, the difference between an average of 2.5% GDP growth and 4.5% GDP growth is all that matters.
as STL stated Ryan, from what I’ve gathered, does not stack up from a libertarian viewpoint. If he tries to align himself as such, I hope people will recognize that as completely fraudulent. At this point I hope Obama wins so things will get really bad in the next four years and people are forced to wake up and choose between freedom and outright statism. Nothing about the republican ticket points towards more freedom if they win. Instead of wlfare for the poor we’ll have more welfare for the crony capitalists (not that democrats aren’t just as guilty of crony capitalism). Republicans are more fraudulent than democrats when it comes to freedom. At least democrats are more transparent in their intentions.
Sweep, change the avatar back to the little afro kid.
I think I’ll read Shrugged now that Im done studying. Or would you guys recommend something else? Is she radically different than Hayek or Friedman?
That was Buckwheat. He still serves me well in other forums. I think Patrick Bateman is more appropriate here. Particularly given how many people didn’t catch the “now I can do 1000” quote I dropped a couple weeks ago. Gotta spread Bateman awareness.
^ I thought it was James Franco in Milk. Have never seen American Psycho though and am just now noticing that he’s swinging an axe.
We caught it, it’s not like American Psycho is some movie unknown to finance people.
Both parties believe in big government…they just disagree on where the money should be spent.
Which is the new normal. We have passed the point of no return. Too many minorities on welfare and too many old people on social security/medicare to please. Can’t do that with small gov’t
A strong choice…please! In jumping in bed with the extreme right Romney scuttled his chances. The diapered Tea Party House Freshman have taken over the republican party direction and it will not end well. Oh and we are to suppose this guy is a real numbers man ready to take the tough choices - please that is not true either - as he advocates for reduced individual and corporate tax rates that will be paid for by eliminating “loopholes” ask him to speciify what those loopholes are…; The GOP only dislikes deficits when there is a black man in the white house.
From David Stockman, the baddest mofo on the planet:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/opinion/paul-ryans-fairy-tale-budget-plan.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Ryan’s just another amoeba. no integirty, just conform to the mold set by the consensus. say what people want to hear to get elected:
Yeah, but what are we to do? I love being an anarcho-capitalist ideologue, but ultimately it’s a two party system and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Do we abstain from voting? I don’t want to take my ball and go home just because I don’t like the rules of the game.
And, I’d prefer a more subtle approach than the complete collapse as you mentioned earlier. Small moves towards freedom. Not sure Romney/Ryan will get us there, but there’s a better chance than under BO.
i agree w/ zerobonus’s assessment that we’re past the point of no return. unfortunately i don’t think we can change course without an extremely painful catalyst. that is probably many decades off (look at europe). in the meantime the slow creep of statism will continue and it will just seem normal to people that things like growing your own food in your back yard is illegal.
what amazes me is how accurately proponents of freedom have been able to predict the consequences of statism - conflict, genocide, hyper-inflation, general all around misery - yet they are the ones who are widely accepted to be crack pots. i fear we have to make it through a long and extremely dark period for average people to understand the source of human misery.
I recently started following WSJ, the Guardian and all major newspapper in the US. I would like to know from you guys who might have more insight about this, but I have noticed they take every single little thing they can to burn on Romney. Has anyone else noticed this?