Idealogues are Wrong

[garyd]

The US Budget. Go read it but be prepared to send a lot of time. 20% more or less of the Budget is military, 10% of it is pork. What do you think the rest of it is?

 

[tigerbob]

The US Budget. Go read it but be prepared to send a lot of time. 20% more or less of the Budget is military, 10% of it is pork. What do you think the rest of it is?

I have absolutely no intention or desire to read the whole budget. I was hoping you had a link to something that summarized it.

If your contention is that if 10% is pork and 20% is military then the rest must therefore be poverty programs, I think that's a rather facile way of looking at it.

As far as I am aware, there are about 2 dozen functional categories in the federal budget. Off the top of my head, included in this list are things like transportation, energy, international affairs, agriculture, education and justice. These appear to fit into your "where do you think the rest of it is" bracket, but they're sure as hell not "poverty programs", at least not in my book.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

How did the free market fail when it was not in use?

Actually that's true.

However, one would be making nearly as much sense if one posted

How can a the unicorn fail when it never existed?​

Doubt me?

Which came first ... government or capital?

This is relevant because without government, capital cannot exist, and without capital, the concept of a free market is meaningless.

A barter economy is a kind of market of course, and a barter economy CAN exist sans capital, hence sans government.

But honestly, there will be very little use for a Tech Lawyers or internet publishers in that universe.

You and I, my friend, are captive creatures of a civil society.

And as much as I HATE government (and I know you probably cannot believe this, but I hate authority far more than you do) I see no alternatives to crappy governments that aren't actually worse than crappy goverments.

So my proposal is extrmely radical.

I think we should try to improve governments.

What a concept, huh? Why hasn't anyoine else EVER come up with such simply solution?

Yeah, I know... I'm a genius.

It's a gift.

Well, as we've discussed before, capital does not require government. You could have private competing currencies.

As to improving governments, it's not possible.

 

[garyd]

Sorry but energy and transportation are mostly dealt with under pork by the U.S congress. One man's desperately needed highway is another man's pork. I doubt if the state department spends much more than 5% per annum if that. Make it 12 if you count the roughly 7% of the budget spent on bribing our allies to behave themselves. And a good chunk of that is attributed to the Pentagon as is the Corps of Engineers which deals with various maritime construction.

 

[Old Rocks]

No spending isn't more stimulative than tax cuts. The only thing spending stimulates is inflation. Especially so with poverty progams which now make up about 70% of the federal budget and about to increase further under Obama.

Before one says that the ideologues are wrong one should at least look into what the ieologies they represent have to offer. There is currently a war within the Republican party between the Country clubers and the conservatives. If the country clubers win then I become - against my better judgement -a libertarian and I suspect I'll have a hell of a lot of company. If the conservatives -they aren't actually conservative in the dictionary sense of the word - win then I suspect they will pull in a lot of libertarians.

Really? We had a tax increase under Clinton, and had the longest sustained economic boom in the nation's history. Deep cuts in taxes for the very wealthy under Bush, and we are damned near in the Second Great Republican Depression.

Most of you fellows always state that Roosevelt had nothing to do with ending the First Great Republican Depression. You state that WW2 did that. Yet, what did we do during WW2? Only the greatest government spending program ever. And a 99% income tax on income above $300,000. Kind of blows all your silly theories concerning the efficacy of tax cuts all to hell.

 

[Old Rocks]

The US Budget. Go read it but be prepared to send a lot of time. 20% more or less of the Budget is military, 10% of it is pork. What do you think the rest of it is?

One hell of a lot of it is interest. And a lot is welfare for corperations and the very rich.

 

[Old Rocks]

Sorry but energy and transportation are mostly dealt with under pork by the U.S congress. One man's desperately needed highway is another man's pork. I doubt if the state department spends much more than 5% per annum if that. Make it 12 if you count the roughly 7% of the budget spent on bribing our allies to behave themselves. And a good chunk of that is attributed to the Pentagon as is the Corps of Engineers which deals with various maritime construction.

I see. The Interstate System is just pork? You are a silly ideologue.

 

[garyd]

1st rocky my boy, you calling anyone else a silly ideologue is akin to the pot calling the white porcelain mug black.

2nd the interstate highway system is essentially complete and has been for the better part of 30 years all we are doing now is maintaining it (in a rather limited fashion to be sure) and sometimes improving it. Most such spending gets called pork barrel spending by those congressmen in whose states such spending does not occur.

3rd After the Dem tax increases in 1993 the economy remained flat until 1995 when the reps gained control of the house and senate. Then when the Reps convinced most Americans that they were serious about the contract with America by essentilly shutting down the federal government for a month after Clinton vetoed congress's budget Bill - a move no other President since Gerald Ford has even considered doing let alone done - The economy took off grant half the fuel was the dot come bubble and the other half was the crooks at Enron and another Clinton crony and heavy Democratic campaingn contributor who also may well have cooked the books but never got called on it.

3rd Why do you think a 3% cut in the top tax bracket is a deep cut? The biggest cuts went to the bottom 1/3 of tax payers.

4th interest is 10 or 11% of the total budget.

5th and welfare for corporations is social spending as well.

 

[editec]

The US Budget. Go read it but be prepared to send a lot of time. 20% more or less of the Budget is military, 10% of it is pork. What do you think the rest of it is?

GaryD. I'd love to see those numbers too.

The social welfare programs that most of you folks object to are, I am informed, about 4% of the budget.

Interest on the national debt consumes about 30% of the revenue.

The military gets about 25%.

Why do we even care about budgets anymore?

Everything we do now is "off budge" The Iraq war wasn't counted as part of the budget!

Government accounting is a joke... except nobody's laughing.

 

[editec]

How did the free market fail when it was not in use?

Actually that's true.

However, one would be making nearly as much sense if one posted

How can a the unicorn fail when it never existed?​

Doubt me?

Which came first ... government or capital?

This is relevant because without government, capital cannot exist, and without capital, the concept of a free market is meaningless.

A barter economy is a kind of market of course, and a barter economy CAN exist sans capital, hence sans government.

But honestly, there will be very little use for a Tech Lawyers or internet publishers in that universe.

You and I, my friend, are captive creatures of a civil society.

And as much as I HATE government (and I know you probably cannot believe this, but I hate authority far more than you do) I see no alternatives to crappy governments that aren't actually worse than crappy goverments.

So my proposal is extrmely radical.

I think we should try to improve governments.

What a concept, huh? Why hasn't anyoine else EVER come up with such simply solution?

Yeah, I know... I'm a genius.

It's a gift.

Well, as we've discussed before, capital does not require government. You could have private competing currencies.

As to improving governments, it's not possible.

We HAD private competing currencies...when we were a confederation of states, in that period before we wrote the US Consitution.

It was disasterous for business, and that's exactly why we got rid of that goofy system. It was UNWORKABLE, people got ripped off, most currency wasn't worth a continental!

The problem of the FED and a single currency is that the insider gangsters rip us off.

The problem with multiple currencies is everybody can rip us off.

Ron Paul ought to read some US history, for Christ's sakes.

The inefficiencies of multiple currencies are well know and well understood.