Budget talks: This is getting nasty

Hey, I'm on your side on this one.

And, even though it was the right thing to do, you've got to give him credit for doing the politically courageous thing.

I'm trying to remember the signature line from the speech. It was really beautiful -- very moving.

I don't want to butcher it, so if anyone has it, please post it or post a link to the transcript of the speech if you can find it.

 

There's a decent point begging to be set free somewhere in there.

 

Yes, you are correct. I misunderstood you on that point.

 

Constitutional, equal rights for all = judicial overstepping?

That's funnier than Belushi.

 

When you refer to the will of the people, does that mean the opinion of the country regarding gay marriage or the collective opinion of military personnel regarding DADT? Because they can lead you in a different direction, regarding gay rights.

 

Threadjack to Teh Gay: printdust wins again!

 

Well, Americans in my general demographic group (41-year-old sportswriters whose savings were wiped out by a lengthy unemployment and are now clinging to a paycheck in a dying industry) and many others had better hope the "younger generation" sees it as their moral duty to care for their parents/grandparents -- because Social Security is going to be utterly worthless for any of us by the time we're old enough to start collecting what we've paid into the system.

But while everyone knows the money isn't going to be there to help me when I'm old, I'm just supposed to keep paying into the system like good little sheep as the FICA taxes that are deducted from my paycheck are being used to pay SS benefits for the program's current beneficiaries.

(A thought: Aren't Ponzi schemes illegal?)

For that reason, any discussion of possible fixes -- either means-testing or allowing younger workers the option of allocating even a small percentage of their FICA withholding into private accounts -- is immediately shot down by "scare tactics" from politicians who know they need every penny to keep the program sputtering along and pacify the powerful senior lobby.

Sadly, this is just one of the areas in which our government continues to epically fail its citizenry. And yet, there are posters on this site who seem to believe we can magically fix much of what ails us by merely increasing taxes.

Because the government has done such wonderful work with the trillions of dollars in tax revenues it has collected and spent during my 41 years on the planet?

I agree with Azrael (although likely for a different reason).

Oy.

 

Here's the thing: We are in a position where we have modest cuts in future budget projections. However, we are still working on the basis of current revenue projections which may (likely?) end up coming up short of current projections, especially given the current economic trends.

Bottom line: When the economy continues to struggle, what next? Continued, more aggressive austerity? Keynesian stimulus?

The figures show that personal income has dropped nearly six percent. Corporate income has risen nearly 9 percent. If you are a Keynesian that tells you that the ability to produce is there -- there are considerable resources available for production -- but an increasing unwillingness to consume due to drop in personal wealth: You can make more widgets, but nobody's buying, not when one of two incomes in a household is maybe an unemployment check or a minimum-wage retail job in place of a lost professional job. If you are a market liberal, how do you look at it?

In either case, how do you break this spiral that we are in?

 

Ragu's not going to agree with my answer, but to me the answer is a massive government stimulus program. The one that passed in 2009 was OK, but I agree with Krugman that it was too small, and relied too much on tax cuts. Note that state budget-cutting, which is really killing a lot of local economies, started in earnest after the stimulus money ran out.

Here is what you have out there:

-- Large unemployment, particularly in the trades and construction sector
-- An infrastructure (roads, rail, sewer, bridges, electric, water treatment, etc.) in sore, sore need of repair
-- Low interest rates
-- People still flocking to U.S. bonds (not the Gary kind) because they're still considered a safe investment

It seems to me that what you want out of a stimulus is actual investment. So having a stimulus that focuses on rebuilding and improving the infrastructure we have -- not doing boondoggles like high-speed rail (I just have trouble seeing that working in the U.S.) -- would go a long way toward employing all these unemployed tradespeople, as well as younger unemployed who could get training in the trades, while also improving our infrastructure so it's easier for the private sector to operate.

You could also put stimulus toward education, particularly in a version of the GI Bill that would expand post-secondary opportunities (college and otherwise) for a population that is increasingly being priced out of them. On the primary and secondary level, you can also assist states with funding, and perhaps finance school renovation, particularly for the use of technology.

Now, I know politics and graft are going to enter at some point. They did with the stimulus, although by my recollections the stink level was fairly low for a project of that size.

The idea is that by making this investment, in the short term you prop up the economy, and then once things get humming, you use the increased tax revenue you're bringing in to pay the bills. The important part would be to ensure that you're not handing out money hand over first because you suddenly have a lot of it.

The history of the U.S. economy has been the government providing a boost in investment that the private sector was able to run with. Otherwise, you're running a nation like Gannett -- just cutting, watching the death spiral get quicker, and cutting some more. But unlike Gannett, people are willing to buy our debt, so perhaps there is an opportunity here.

 

I agree with you but it's counter-intuitive to many voters. And you couldn't sway most of them because all they can see are evils of government and rarely see how the government has ever improved their life. At the same time, even if you could get them to listen, democrats would fudge getting the message out.

 

Infrastructure jobs are great because they employ a lot of people but eventually the projects come to an end. Then what? More government-created jobs? That doesn't solve the problem.

And what about the unemployed who aren't tradesmen? Who is helping them? I ask because I'm married to somebody who was out of a job for two-and-a-half years until a few months ago. Im pretty sure she's have a tough time landing a gig on a road crew.

The other issue that is never addressed when something like this is proposed is how difficult it is to even START an infrastructure project anywhere in this country.

Between the government red tape,d the bid processes that pols rig to steer contracts to their buddies and the CAVEmen (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) who come out of the woodwork to oppose almost anything, it's a wonder anything gets built anymore.

 

Funding for schools, infrastructure and job training is desperately needed and important. But in this anti-tax, anti-government, anti-government spending environment it seems highly unlikely that those things could be accomplished without a massive anti-Tea Party political realignment in 2012-13. Taxaphobia is really harming the country.