... people do.
Wretchard the Cat made this intriguing point on Twitter a while back, referring to the Venezuelan economic collapse wherein blackouts across the country became the norm. As the socialists cut the pay for engineers to make a more equitable society, those engineers left the country. When things started to wear out and break down in the power plants, as all things do, there was no one left to repair them. They may have had the raw materials, but they didn't have the expertise any more. And thus, the lights went out.
Back at the dawn of the Internet, I found a website that was a news aggregator for stories from Africa. Probably because I thought the name of the country sounded goofy, I read all of the news coming out of Zimbabwe. When I started, Zimbabwe had a functioning economy and was an exporter of agricultural goods. They were doing pretty well.
When Robert Mugabe started to persecute the white farmers, taking their land and breaking their farms into small plots to transition to black-owned subsistence farming, everything began to collapse. The white farmers fled, mostly to England, and things spiraled downward. No longer an exporter, but still requiring foreign credit to buy fuel and machinery, the country went into debt and then defaulted. They printed ever larger denominations of money, but all they accomplished was to become a laughingstock and see their people die of malnutrition and disease.
Pondering our own, upcoming fiscal crisis and having seen how others recover from them, what strikes me is that a currency collapse wipes out savings, but it leaves you with your natural resources, physical plant and whatever human capital that doesn't flee and hasn't been debased. The first two are all well and good, but it's the third one that matters the most.
Japan became a global powerhouse without natural resources, but with tremendous human capital. Venezuela became a basket case with tremendous natural resources, but their human capital ran away. How about us?
Dig this.
We will need everyone to be their best when we finally run aground on the rocks of fiscal profligacy. Diluting our educational system in pursuit of racial idiocies is going to put us closer to the Zimbabwe / Venezuela camp. By the way, if you think this is an outlier, dig what we're doing here in San Diego.
I'm coming to the conclusion that we won't ever have the appetite for fiscal discipline because we prize compassion so much. We're going to have to get smacked in the face with a currency crisis to learn our lesson. When it happens, it sure would be nice to have a competent workforce that can dig its way out of the mess.
" we won't ever have the appetite for fiscal discipline because we prize compassion so much."
ReplyDeleteSo, is that why the Republican party, when they had the golden opportunity to actually show some fiscal discipline starting in 2017, basically just said "Nah, we don't wanna"? Because they are so very, very compassionate?
I don't think fiscal irresponsibility has nearly as much to do with "compassion" as it does with funneling money/giving tax breaks to one's supporters, regardless of which political party you are talking about.
I'm not willing to be so cynical. The lion's share of the budget are our entitlements and debt servicing. Yeah, there's a lot of skimming going on, particularly with the Wuhan Flu payoff bills. Still, it's the entitlements that have killed us, year after year.
ReplyDeleteWhenever fiscal hawks get asked, "What are you going to cut?" they stammer about waste and means testing, neither of which are enough any more. One could reasonably attribute that to political self-preservation, but at the heart of the questions and the answers is the problem of choosing which poor people to skewer with a dagger. That says "compassion" to me.
In the end, if we have a currency crisis, they'll get run through with a knight's lance, so it's a matter of small and now or huge and later, but it's still the poor getting shish ka bobbed.
K T Cat,
ReplyDeleteI'm not willing to be so cynical. The lion's share of the budget are our entitlements and debt servicing.
Defense spending is projected to be more than double debt servicing in 2021.
I also find it odd that you think a student's grade being based on mastery of the material is somehow dilution. Isn't the most important part of teaching to instill mastery of the material? Now, if you want to say that meeting a schedule of progress over time is also an important skill, I agree, but that would be the dilution that distracts from the main goal.
If Bowman assigned the commission to create some alternative version of the SAT, would you have your kids take it?
One Brow, this is why no one replies to you any more.
ReplyDeleteMe: The lion's share of the budget are our entitlements and debt servicing.
Fact: Entitlements plus SocSec plus Medicare plus debt servicing = ~$3.1T
DoD: ~$0.93T
You: Defense spending is projected to be more than double debt servicing in 2021.
That has only a tangential relationship to the statement I made. As Foxie noted a while back, talking to you is useless because you constantly shift the conversation and don't answer things directly.
I'm done with it. Others can reply, but I've quit.
K T Cat,
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, no one serious takes you seriously, either. We're all just little people looking at the world from the outside.
You don't care about military spending not because it is out of control, but because you don't care if it is out of control. You only care about reckless spending you disapprove of.
I fully acknowledge that I see no reason the conversation has to be limited to your terms and the facts you are interested in only, just as it should not be limited to the my terms and the facts I prefer. That way lies small-mindedness.
Well since you've open the discussion to the facts I (you) prefer...
ReplyDeleteKT's point that "The lion's share of the budget are our entitlements and debt servicing" is unarguably true. He could have cut off your DoD vs debt servicing twig completely by simplifying his statement to "The lion's share of the budget are our entitlements", which is still completely true. You seem to think that KT only cares about entitlement overspending. That might be true, but I know better. In any case I care about all government overspending so let's compare... But first a short digression to set the table.
So how many of us have actually read the Constitution? I have. I hope you have. The first time I read it was back in 9th grade in my Problems of Democracy class, the second was after taking my federal government employment oath to "... support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..." (kinda figured if I swore that I should remind myself what I was swearing to...), and there have been several more since. We could have a debate about what is in it, but I always think that it helps to divide the document into three primary topical parts. I see the nine major sections dividing up as 1: The Preamble - what we want our government to do, 2-8: The Articles I-VII - Operating instructions for the government, and 9: The Amendments - Controls on government overreach and bug fixes. Given this, it behooves us to take a look at the Preamble in more detail.
The Preamble: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
So that's what the government should do. That and nothing else. I find the last clause "to ourselves and our Posterity" as particularly important when we talk about deficit spending (ANY deficit spending). Is the government fulfilling it's duty to our Posterity by burdening them with paying off the profligate spending of today? I do not believe so. Still it is interesting to ask, which parts of the spending should be cut and why?
The forth reason given in the Preamble is to "provide for the common defence". Clearly the allocation for a significant amount of funding to the Department of Defense is well within that charge. Has it grown too large? Have we ignored President Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex? Are we getting our money's worth for the spending? All good questions that we could debate. Generally I'd say that as far as government spending goes the DoD at least does provide some tangible results and generally is not purely wasteful or counterproductive (although I think it is clear that the industry part of the DoD does have far too much influence). I'd also point out that our military is feared around the world - and that's the best defense - so we are getting value for the investment, even though I believe we could do better.
Now let's talk about the so called 'mandatory' part of the spending (which, by the way, represents 60% of the total budget outlays versus ~17% for DoD) - you know those "entitlements" you chose to not defend except by changing the discussion. Has the spending grown too large? Have we ignored then Congress member Daniel Boone's warnings (see the next Comment)? Are we getting our money's worth for the spending? Also good questions that we could debate. My answers are YES, YES, and HELL, NO.
You may now assume that I would prefer to spend on those areas that produce tangible products and not the equivalent of buying an expensive meal I can't afford on a credit card.
Signing off.
For a more complete version of the story see this. A short version of Congressman Boone's remarks are:
ReplyDelete"I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. ... The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution."
Ohioan@Heart,
ReplyDeleteI know engaging in these sorts of partisan discussions does not seem to be your preference, so I will respect your time and participation as best I can. It is a treat for me. I am indeed interested in the facts that you prefer.
You seem to think that KT only cares about entitlement overspending. That might be true, but I know better.
You know the man, I only know the blogger.
I find an interesting contrast between "general defense" and "our military is feared around the world", in that people do not fear defensive measures. People fear us because of our offensive capabilities.
Now, if you want to have a serious discussion about entitlements and the debt, I think a reasonable starting point would be that you have to limit this to entitlement programs that contribute to US debt. At the very bottom level, it is impossible for Social Security and Medicare to contribute to the debt, because their payments do not go through the US general tax fund. Each has a dedicated trust fund, each trust fund is positive, and if either trust fund runs out, the only legal response is reduction in benefits. Any inclusion of Social Security or Medicare in a discussion of debt is a dishonest one, notwithstanding that this is a common right-wing talking point.
So, when discussing things that add to our debt, the principal entitlement left is Medicaid. From the numbers on this page, Medicaid is about 10% of the federal budget, and defense spending is about 16%. If you want to go after debt, you need to include your biggest expense, defense.
Has the spending grown too large? Have we ignored then Congress member Daniel Boone's warnings (see the next Comment)? Are we getting our money's worth for the spending? Also good questions that we could debate. My answers are YES, YES, and HELL, NO.
I would say DEPENDS ON YOUR GOALS, I'M NOT SURE, and DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU MEAN BY "MONEY'S WORTH". If you mean efficiency, Medicare and Medicaid are much more efficient than any other form of health insurance. If you mean personal benefit, every person who engages with the public gets benefits from increased public health. I can get much deeper in the weeds on each of those, if you are interested.
As I said above, you've been clear you are no into a back-and-forth, so I have tried to be sufficiently complete for this answer to stand on it's own. However, should you offer me the honor of further discussion, I would be happy to agree.
Ohioan, this was brilliant. Brilliance from one, in fact.
ReplyDeleteIs the government fulfilling it's duty to our Posterity by burdening them with paying off the profligate spending of today?
To answer the question you ask: "which parts of the spending should be cut and why?" and the answer would be to figure out what spending helps people who can't possibly be expected to help themselves and cover that. I'm speaking of the blind, the lame, the mentally ill and so forth. That would have to include our growing drug addict population.
If we have entitlement money left over after that, then we can move on to nice-to-haves. In any case, I am not willing to support slavery for any reason and certainly not so progressives can swank about, preening about how "compassionate" they are.