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Amaya wrote:Only nonessential sections.

Oh, so paying our troops overseas isn't essential? That's one of the main shutdowns.

Not that soldiers are living on their paychecks, but still


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Melissia wrote:For reference for my previous statement... in 2010, the government owed (and this is directly from the treasury department's website) $413,954,825,362.17 in interest alone.

That's 400 trillion? dollars, to put that ten billion dollar cut in perspective. Yeah, it's nothing, a pittance and not some all-important thing which might stand even a remote chance of staving off the growth of our deficit and debt. Last year, our government made just over 2 trillion. Even if the interest simply stopped growing period (not going to happen) it'd take something like 200 years to pay it off if every single dollar the us government owed was dedicated solely to paying off the interest.

[edit: Meh, I dunno if I'm doing the math right. Someone here check it, I gotta go.]

Billion Twelve places is a billion,unless those decimals refer to dollars,not cents

400 billion isn't actually that much, given how valuable some of our exports are, and how much money we'll actually save from this shutdown.

Let's just say there's a million soldiers in afganistan right now. If you hold back a single paycheck from all of them, you save a billion dollars, at least. In actuality, there's a lot more soldiers than that, so we save a HUGE amount of money. Plus all the domestic things they're cutting down on. This is a good idea, as far as I can tell. I'll be interested to see what happens when it's over.

LordofHats wrote:

youbedead wrote:Actually yes it is, as that argument is supported by historical precedent, see great depression

There's a lot of debate and a lot of evidence that says Roosevelt made the Depression worse not better. Others say he didn't change it at all. Economic historians are still slapping each other over it.

post WW2 Europe, post civil war depression, 1850-1900 japan etc.

It's nice to think that the economy lives in a bubble but it doesn't work that simply. I don't know much about the Meiji Era of Japan, but post WW2 and the Reconstruction South had their economies effected more by outside sources than by their domestic governments.

A better example of what you want is Muhammed Ali's Egypt in the 1800's. I mean, sure he wasted Egypt's social order and created a new underclass with racial overtones, but he gave the economy a big kick in the ass and as far as I know it worked. It's partially his fault the Reconstruction recessions related to the Cotton bubble happened

THe post ww2 example was one were the economy was quickly rebuilt due to an influx of cash, though I do agree that the domestic governments weren't the ones to actually help it.

Meiji japan is a great example what a government can due with massive stimulus and influence over the economy. They managed to go from a pre-industrial technological level to beating the Russian navy in 50 years.

biccat wrote:
Which is a valid point. However, the President's current proposal is to increase spending in the next fiscal year, which would only exacerbate the problem.

As I understand it, that is true of the budgetary goals of both parties.

biccat wrote:
Only if you consider the federal reserve to be unimportant.

I don't consider measures aimed at altering the money supply to be stimulus in the same sense as measures that develop demand through direct spending.


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Samus_aran115 wrote:
Let's just say there's a million soldiers in afganistan right now. If you hold back a single paycheck from all of them, you save a billion dollars, at least. In actuality, there's a lot more soldiers than that, so we save a HUGE amount of money.

In actuality there are a lot less, in Afghanistan at least. The US military, including reserves, is about 3 million strong, and most of those soldiers are considered necessary for general operations; meaning that the deployable strength of the US military is only something between 500-700k.

Samus_aran115 wrote:400 billion isn't actually that much, given how valuable some of our exports are, and how much money we'll actually save from this shutdown.

It's still far, far greater than the budget cuts that the government has been making and is growing exponentially.

Unless we reform social security and medicare, we won't ever see a stop in the growth of government debt. And realistically speaking we won't ever be able to pay it off unless we raise taxes.

agnosto wrote:That's 400 billion, 400 trillion would see the US giving the Chinese land as they foreclosed on our debt.

This is a common misconception - you can't foreclose on treasury bonds or call them in or anything like that, the Chinese can't do anything with the debt but sit on it until the bills mature. Treasury bonds don't have any collateral, so there's nothing to foreclose on, and you can't just demand that a treasury bill be paid in full right now. If the US were to actually default on treasury bills, which isn't going to happen unless there is some kind of 'end of the world' catastrophe going on, China would simply be out all of the money they loaned us. No one would actually buy anymore after such an event, which would be really bad for the US, but the immediate effect is not 'Chinese now on the white house' but 'Chinese are really ticked off and broke'.

BearersOfSalvation wrote:

agnosto wrote:That's 400 billion, 400 trillion would see the US giving the Chinese land as they foreclosed on our debt.

This is a common misconception - you can't foreclose on treasury bonds or call them in or anything like that, the Chinese can't do anything with the debt but sit on it until the bills mature. Treasury bonds don't have any collateral, so there's nothing to foreclose on, and you can't just demand that a treasury bill be paid in full right now. If the US were to actually default on treasury bills, which isn't going to happen unless there is some kind of 'end of the world' catastrophe going on, China would simply be out all of the money they loaned us. No one would actually buy anymore after such an event, which would be really bad for the US, but the immediate effect is not 'Chinese now on the white house' but 'Chinese are really ticked off and broke'.

I was thinking (not seriously) more along the lines of calling in the debt and then taking land instead of cash, since we don't have any.

Melissia wrote:Unless we reform social security and medicare, we won't ever see a stop in the growth of government debt. And realistically speaking we won't ever be able to pay it off unless we raise taxes.

Why would we want to get rid of government debt? Government debt works really differently than individual debt, since the government prints money to pay for it and doesn't actually go retire or drop dead at the end.

Heh, it's like that one episode of the West Wing.

I wonder how it'll go down though- a lot of Americans want to close the government down anyhow, so this could be popular in some parts, right?

Even if you hold that viewpoint, the levels we currently have, and will grow to in the next few decades if we hold our course (both parties increase spending, not just democrats) are untenable, as eventually they'll rather run out of people willing to loan us money (people loan money to the government because they want to be paid back with interest, not just because they can).

agnosto wrote:I was thinking (not seriously) more along the lines of calling in the debt and then taking land instead of cash, since we don't have any.

That's his point. The only collateral against the debt is the goodwill of the United States. It's unsecured credit. If the US decides not to pay China, then China gets hosed.

They can "call in" the debt, but if we don't have the means/desire/will to pay, then it's too bad China.

Melissia wrote:Non-essential to rich people at any rate, not to the poor who they often benefit.

Keep in mind that these tea party repugs aren't actually trying to solve the deficit and debt problem like they claim they are. The only way to do that is to push for higher taxes AND budget cuts. They're only focusing on half the equation.

They'd also need to be pushing for budget cuts in other places. The discretionary budget was 1.3 trillion in 2010, and the deficit was 830 billion. Unless they 're willing to cut damn near everything, or go for a *massive* tax hike, and the deficit is going to go up even with the cuts to the discretionary budget.

There are three things that *need* to be done that the GOP refuses to consider:

raise taxes
cut military spending (this is easy really, fire the mercenaries, or at least stop letting them charge obscene prices, and stop buying things we don't need like new aircraft carriers and planes that can't fly in the rain).
serious efforts to reduce the cost of healthcare (and when I say serious, I mean telling hospitals, pharmaceuticals etc "charge less or you go to jail"), or severe cuts to medicare (on the current path by the time kids today retire we'll need to take an additional 50% out of every paycheck to fund medicare, which is probably on the wrong side of the laffer curve).


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ETA: Just to be fair here, the democrats only seem serious about doing 1 of those three things.

Requia wrote:

Melissia wrote:Non-essential to rich people at any rate, not to the poor who they often benefit.

Keep in mind that these tea party repugs aren't actually trying to solve the deficit and debt problem like they claim they are. The only way to do that is to push for higher taxes AND budget cuts. They're only focusing on half the equation.

They'd also need to be pushing for budget cuts in other places. The discretionary budget was 1.3 trillion in 2010, and the deficit was 830 billion. Unless they 're willing to cut damn near everything, or go for a *massive* tax hike, and the deficit is going to go up even with the cuts to the discretionary budget.

There are three things that *need* to be done that the GOP refuses to consider:

raise taxes
cut military spending (this is easy really, fire the mercenaries, or at least stop letting them charge obscene prices, and stop buying things we don't need like new aircraft carriers and planes that can't fly in the rain).
serious efforts to reduce the cost of healthcare (and when I say serious, I mean telling hospitals, pharmaceuticals etc "charge less or you go to jail"), or severe cuts to medicare (on the current path by the time kids today retire we'll need to take an additional 50% out of every paycheck to fund medicare, which is probably on the wrong side of the laffer curve).


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ETA: Just to be fair here, the democrats only seem serious about doing 1 of those three things.

Keep in mind a balanced budget isn't inherently healthy for a growing consumer economy. Debt is good as long as it doubt severely outweigh economic growth as it's doing now.

Requia wrote:There are three things that *need* to be done that the GOP refuses to consider:

raise taxes
cut military spending (this is easy really, fire the mercenaries, or at least stop letting them charge obscene prices, and stop buying things we don't need like new aircraft carriers and planes that can't fly in the rain).
serious efforts to reduce the cost of healthcare (and when I say serious, I mean telling hospitals, pharmaceuticals etc "charge less or you go to jail"), or severe cuts to medicare (on the current path by the time kids today retire we'll need to take an additional 50% out of every paycheck to fund medicare, which is probably on the wrong side of the laffer curve).


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ETA: Just to be fair here, the democrats only seem serious about doing 1 of those three things.

You should also note that the GOP is open to serious efforts to reduce the cost of government sponsored healthcare by attempting to repeal Obamacare (HRRA? HIRA? Whatever the heck it's called.)

Could someone tell me, would pulling out of both wars negatively impact the US financially? Does it really constitute such a huge security risk?

biccat wrote:

Requia wrote:There are three things that *need* to be done that the GOP refuses to consider:

raise taxes
cut military spending (this is easy really, fire the mercenaries, or at least stop letting them charge obscene prices, and stop buying things we don't need like new aircraft carriers and planes that can't fly in the rain).
serious efforts to reduce the cost of healthcare (and when I say serious, I mean telling hospitals, pharmaceuticals etc "charge less or you go to jail"), or severe cuts to medicare (on the current path by the time kids today retire we'll need to take an additional 50% out of every paycheck to fund medicare, which is probably on the wrong side of the laffer curve).


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ETA: Just to be fair here, the democrats only seem serious about doing 1 of those three things.

You should also note that the GOP is open to serious efforts to reduce the cost of government sponsored healthcare by attempting to repeal Obamacare (HRRA? HIRA? Whatever the heck it's called.)

I don't expect Obamacare to have an effect on the cost of healthcare, government sponsored or otherwise. Some people may pay more and others less, but in terms of what the nation as a whole pays it'll accomplish jack. The whole thing is a red herring in terms of the larger problems we face healthcare wise. It *definitely* won't do anything to change the cost of medicare. So I wouldn't really consider the GOP serious on that issue at all.

Samus_aran115 wrote:400 billion isn't actually that much, given how valuable some of our exports are, and how much money we'll actually save from this shutdown.

Let's just say there's a million soldiers in afganistan right now. If you hold back a single paycheck from all of them, you save a billion dollars, at least. In actuality, there's a lot more soldiers than that, so we save a HUGE amount of money. Plus all the domestic things they're cutting down on. This is a good idea, as far as I can tell. I'll be interested to see what happens when it's over.

Aren't soldiers guaranteed retroactive pay after the shutdown ends?

biccat wrote:

agnosto wrote:I was thinking (not seriously) more along the lines of calling in the debt and then taking land instead of cash, since we don't have any.

That's his point. The only collateral against the debt is the goodwill of the United States. It's unsecured credit. If the US decides not to pay China, then China gets hosed.

They can "call in" the debt, but if we don't have the means/desire/will to pay, then it's too bad China.

All China has to do to destroy the US is ban exports to us, we're rather dependent on them at this point.

You have it the wrong way round actually. China bans exports and their economy goes under, revolution starts, happy days. The US would just start that whole manufacturing here thing is historically was viewed as a good thing.

They go under anyway if we refuse to pay our debts to them. It's a rather mutual arrangement.

And we can't make a factory without parts from china anymore. Modern production is all computer based, and nobody has chip production lines (there are still factories, but the labor intensive steps are offshored) that don't involve China. There are probably other tools we just don't have the facilities for anymore. Even if we did manage to make do we don't have the expertise anymore, believe it or not it takes real skills to work in a factory, not to mention keep the machines in the factory running.

biccat wrote:

agnosto wrote:I was thinking (not seriously) more along the lines of calling in the debt and then taking land instead of cash, since we don't have any.

That's his point. The only collateral against the debt is the goodwill of the United States. It's unsecured credit. If the US decides not to pay China, then China gets hosed.

They can "call in" the debt, but if we don't have the means/desire/will to pay, then it's too bad China.

So basically, no jokes around either of you.... gotcha.

NM, context.

The stuff they are bickering about is totally inconsequential to the overall budget.

The tea party is going to shut down the government over planned parenthood and NPR (among others), which is likely about .01% of the budget.

If that much.

A few thoughts in response to some of yours:

Taxing the rich isn't the answer. Rich people own factories and businesses - and are the *engines of the economy*. Welfare recipients are not the engines of the economy. Ditto burger flippers and suchlike (though they are a vast improvement over those on assistance that *could* work).

The rich should be taxed fairly, which they already are. Having money isn't a crime, and if you earn it - you should keep most of it.

So...where can we save some money? How about going back to the time-honored "If you get, you work" system? I know some of the Democratic party's constituents don't like that idea, but tough. You want things? Work. Let social programs be for the truly needy, as intended. Reduce the able-but-non-working population by 15%. Someone estimate for us what that would do.

Stop illegal immigration. Those folks DO work (mostly) - but don't pay taxes, contribute to unemployment among citizens, and consume resources (medical care, etc.). You have a job? Here's your W2. We'll figure out how to get you naturalized. You don't? Get in the van.

Both parties are more self interested than anything else. They need to be fired. VOIDNOW.ORG has the right idea.

The idea of "saving money" by not paying the noble service people in Afghanistan is *physically revolting*. This made me sick to my stomach, and you should be ashamed. We should be saving them AND money by bringing them home, or - at worst - redeploying them to Iraq. Why? Afghanistan is a lost cause. There are no hearts or minds to win there. Iraq - is working. I know it's a foreign concept to the Bush-hating-it-was-all-for-oil-there-were-no-WMDs crowd, but the real aim was and is to create a working, prosperous, secure Muslim democracy centrally located in the Middle East. We knew the people and the lay of the land, and Saddam needed to go - it was perfect. But, it's a 25 year plan. HOWEVER - things are moving along faster in some ways than planned. The current chaos could have lead to the domino effect the free world was looking to set up ("Hey, look at them! They're free, and prosperous, and still MUSLIMS! The Americans didn't try to convert them! Hey...waitaminute...maybe we could have that too...?") - but we are currently mucking it up in Libya by *participating*. For this to work, it has to be a Muslim idea, executed for and by Muslims. We need to get the hell out of there.

I have little sympathy for China. Their currency manipulation lead to some portions of the situation; and taking a shot in the nuts for it would serve them right.

Lastly, in the words of Sir Winston Churchill:

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."

daedalus-templarius wrote:

The stuff they are bickering about is totally inconsequential to the overall budget.

The tea party is going to shut down the government over planned parenthood and NPR (among others), which is likely about .01% of the budget.

The real question. Cherry. Or Blueberry? EDIT: RUBARB!

dogma wrote:In actuality there are a lot less, in Afghanistan at least. The US military, including reserves, is about 3 million strong, and most of those soldiers are considered necessary for general operations; meaning that the deployable strength of the US military is only something between 500-700k.

Huh. I always assumed it was more than that. That's about a one in one hundred ratio of serving to non-serving citizens then?

But I see what you're saying


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Melissia wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:400 billion isn't actually that much, given how valuable some of our exports are, and how much money we'll actually save from this shutdown.

It's still far, far greater than the budget cuts that the government has been making and is growing exponentially.

Unless we reform social security and medicare, we won't ever see a stop in the growth of government debt. And realistically speaking we won't ever be able to pay it off unless we raise taxes.

I agree completely. The system is great for 'us', but not so good for the government, as a whole. There's other ways to assist retired persons, for sure. We just have to figure it out.

And to whoever replied.. Yes, they do get paid after the thing's over. A nice little excuse to go out drinking, I'd say

VoidAngel wrote:Taxing the rich isn't the answer. Rich people own factories and businesses - and are the *engines of the economy*. Welfare recipients are not the engines of the economy. Ditto burger flippers and suchlike (though they are a vast improvement over those on assistance that *could* work).

And yet, the trickle down economic "theory" has been proven, time and again, to be a baseless load of crap. Giving rich people more money won't give the country more jobs, it's been proven so many times that it's painful to think someone still believes in that theory. The trickle down economic "theory" is a load of gak.

Interestingly enough, In my world history class we're studying the effects of WW1, most notably the numerous depressions that occurred around the world... Interesting stuff. I read through all the various solution nations came up with to fix their problems, and I couldn't help but feel like doing similar things would benefit us...

As far as I know, taxes are more or less around where they were before this 'depression', right?

Requia wrote:

biccat wrote:

agnosto wrote:I was thinking (not seriously) more along the lines of calling in the debt and then taking land instead of cash, since we don't have any.

That's his point. The only collateral against the debt is the goodwill of the United States. It's unsecured credit. If the US decides not to pay China, then China gets hosed.

They can "call in" the debt, but if we don't have the means/desire/will to pay, then it's too bad China.

All China has to do to destroy the US is ban exports to us, we're rather dependent on them at this point.

Only for cheap crap.

The USA is one of the most fortunate countries in the world for natural resources of many kinds. You would end up paying more for a lot of things, but you have massive agriculture and industry of your own. There wouldn't be a famine or a collapse of society or something.

Seriously, we have practically a continent to our own (What with our trade agreements iwth Mexico and Canada), and all of its many, many natural resources.