Stabilize the US Debt (with Calculators!)
- Thread starter JerichoHill
- Start date
Integral
Can't you hear it?
Of course! Every year a CBO intern travels to Mount Sinai and receives the Budget Options engraved on stone tablets written in the hand of the LORD Himself. 
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
So, what did I do to America?
I ended up increasing it. The options were nonsense. "Single payer health insurance with strict price controls" wasn't an option. "Completely uncap the FICA tax" wasn't an option. "Raise taxes on rich people" wasn't an option.
It's a list of things that Serious People think can* be done, and the difficulty one encounters with the options that the Serious People consider possible shows that our Serious People are stupid. (Seriously, has there been a suckier class of elites in history?) Or they're trying to destroy what limited social safety net we have in America, but I'll give these guys the benefit of the doubt. We had a balanced budget in 2000 with all the social programs in place! If we go through with dismantling the welfare state to appease the budget people, the only "tough choice" we're going to have to make as a nation is whether to put the guillotine in Manhattan or Washington.
Cleo
*The idea that these options are what's "possible" is impossibly (pun intended) silly. Very Serious People in "nonpartisan" think tanks play a role in defining what's "possible" by claiming to objectively examine the possibilities and transmitting what they "perceive." Everything's impossible until it isn't. And if their determination of the possibilities was based on the fact that our government seems to be completely in the service of plutocrats and incapable of doing anything that would actually work, then we've got bigger problems than whether to increase or decrease the AMT -- see, e.g., the guillotine, supra.
It's a list of things that Serious People think can* be done, and the difficulty one encounters with the options that the Serious People consider possible shows that our Serious People are stupid. (Seriously, has there been a suckier class of elites in history?) Or they're trying to destroy what limited social safety net we have in America, but I'll give these guys the benefit of the doubt. We had a balanced budget in 2000 with all the social programs in place! If we go through with dismantling the welfare state to appease the budget people, the only "tough choice" we're going to have to make as a nation is whether to put the guillotine in Manhattan or Washington.
Cleo
*The idea that these options are what's "possible" is impossibly (pun intended) silly. Very Serious People in "nonpartisan" think tanks play a role in defining what's "possible" by claiming to objectively examine the possibilities and transmitting what they "perceive." Everything's impossible until it isn't. And if their determination of the possibilities was based on the fact that our government seems to be completely in the service of plutocrats and incapable of doing anything that would actually work, then we've got bigger problems than whether to increase or decrease the AMT -- see, e.g., the guillotine, supra.
Integral
Can't you hear it?
And yet, you have to click through a bunch of links to learn that. The first page only states (after some scary numbers) that:
It doesn't say, "these are only a few options, and there are lots more besides that which would do the job much better, but we're not including them because . . . some reason." How can it claim to take the debt seriously and not talk about the rising cost of healthcare? Therefore, "nonsense." It's like saying, "You have the first pick in the NFL draft, let's see how you'd do as GM of the St. Louis Rams!" and then presenting a list of 1-AA players who've declared for the draft.
Note also that the intro page is exactly what I described as Serious People claiming to be involved in objectively examining the situation and informing the reader as to what the options are for the "tough choices" we're going to have to make (it even says, "have to be made"), when really it's defining what those options are. Its self-stated job is to "promote a public dialogue" on the sustainable fiscal course -- but I have no choice but to note the structure of the dialogue promoted by the exercise is one that won't too adversely affect the fortunes of Pete Peterson, his obnoxious offspring, or the Blackstone Group's clients.
Cleo
Integral
Can't you hear it?
i agree that you're more right than my previous post let on. 
In particular, there ought to be more options on the revenue side, especially since you don't have to 'make the numbers up' - they're right in the CBO's report.
In particular, there ought to be more options on the revenue side, especially since you don't have to 'make the numbers up' - they're right in the CBO's report.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Not bad, really. Not happy about the lack of "total government takeover of the health care industry" option though. 
PiMan
Deity
JerichoHill
Bedrock of Knowledge
Further, if you had such an app with every option ever studied, it wouldn't be user friendly. Its a toy model and thus use it as we use toy models, for the basic intuition behind the problem.
Murky
Deity
I got it down to 53%. Minor cuts to budget, increase domestic spending and drastically improve revenues by higher taxes for the rich.
MagisterCultuum
Great Sage
This does not allow nearly enough options for the radical changes we really need. Why only allow earmarks to be reduced by half? Why not let all elected federal officials go without any pay in any year when we run a deficit? Why only let us reduce agricultural subsidies rather than eliminate them entirely? Why only allow reductions in troops in Iraq rather than withdrawing entirely to within our own national borders? Why require us to keep social security or medicare/medicaid for anyone? Why no option to eliminate income and payroll taxes, or increase estate taxes to 100%? Why limit a VAT to 5%? Why no mention of tariffs or excise taxes of any sort? Or legalizing various drugs in order to tax them? Why no option to enact federal property taxes, or tax the market caps of publicly traded companies? Many of these may sound crazy or be politically infeasible, but we need to think outside of the box if we ever want to actually reduce the debt instead of simply trying to slow its growth.
JerichoHill
Bedrock of Knowledge
It is limited to options studied by the CBO, magister. If it included every option, we'd need more studies and it would be enormously complex.
