Austerity for the sake of austerity is not the answer. But the question needs to be whether our spending is as efficient as Europe's in the first place before taking all cuts off the table. Just like Japan in the 90s, the key is "what we do" rather than "what we cut".

I'm mostly referring to defense cuts but also referring to our bloated health care giveaway bonanza. These are both examples of bipartisanship in the wrong direction (historically).

Another thing we tend to do is make blanket statements like "corporate tax rates should be reduced" (or not reduced). Maybe they should (or should not)....or maybe corp rates need to be reduced for small business, thus encouraging more entrepreneurship, thus moving more of the GDP % to small business, thus diluting the influence/impact of any 1 corporation.

We have got to get back to being a country of diverse voices & influence. Right now, we're essentially controlled by a very small amount of entities with enormous influence. Encouraging a dilution of that influence should be our secondary goals with any economic policy.

I absolutely agree with all of this.

In my defense - I think a lot of the "cut spending" people are totally transfixed by this "indescriminate austerity" idea though, of just like say...slashing everything 25%. It's simple, it's easy to comprehend, which means it's an easy sell to an uneducated populace. So when I hear "cut spending" without anymore detail the assumption is that that is what the other person is talking about.

{shrug} Depends upon what those voices are saying; i.e. diversity for the sake of diversity is an enormous mistake if you're including batshit crazy.

Problem is, we don't even have much in the way of a coherent definition of "batshit crazy".

The lack of cohesion due to overdiversification is very like as much a cause of our eventual death as anything out there.

I see austerity more as the thing we should be trying to avoid here rather than a fiscal strategy. If our path is truly "unsustainable" then we're eventually on our way to austerity-like problems if we don't change paths.

I'm not sure we need to cre about defining batshit crazy though. We can let batshit crazy be batshit crazy, imho.

I agree that diversification makes it more difficult to implement a cohesive agenda but when we're talking federal government (not local)...I'd say thats a good thing. It means it better make sense for a majority of people rather than a majority of power.

And to be clear, I'm all for individuals being as rich & powerful as they can be. What I am finding less & less use for are corporate constructs that create artificial (my word) power & influence. Such as what we see in many industries these days where we have consolidated our way to 2-4 corporations running everything in a single industry...and if thats not viewed problematic...those same 2-4 corporations are running 4-8 other industries. To the extent that they have now been able to homogenize multiple industries into a single voice & lobbying platform. Diversification of power & influence counteracts that level of (mega) influence.

And the "batshit crazy"(i.e. Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinch, Ralph Nader) are the ones that have been talking about your last paragraph for decades. The only thing you are leaving out is how the federal government has been glad to help these mega-corporate entities get to where are they are today.

Fair enough, I suspect (in hindsight) I may not have parsed your original statement ("We have got to get back to being a country of diverse voices") as finely as I should have. My comment worked from general notion that you were proposing all of those diverse voices should have weight, leading me to try to remove some of them from the equation. In hindsight I suspect you were going for more discernment than I was giving you credit for.

Would not fishing be affected by severe storms? (honest question - I presume there must be an effect to both when they could fish but also in the aftermath to the fish population?).

They might be, but not in Alaska.

Yeah, I think the ghost of Ted Stevens is the most plausible explanation ;)

SI

Maybe distributed voices would have been the more appropriate term for what I was trying to convey & likely less ambiguous.

My take is that no lobbying is better than a handful of entities lobbying on behalf of industries & people that dont necessarily share the same belief system. Not too unlike my take on labor unions for that matter. I'm very cautious of anybody (person or corporation) that lays claim to speaking for a lot of other people without having to be accountable to those same people in any meaningful way.

Sure...thats absolutely the case. I think its sheer stupidity & general incompetence (sprinkled with some bribery here & there) though.

The amount of consolidation in different business industries is getting downright scary to me. Even if you ignore the obvious wealth disparity that occurs from it (which I don't have a major issue with personal income disparity in & of itself), the amount of power & influence to continue lobbying for squatting policy that only these handful (at best) groups want is completely counter to the entrepreneurial spirit that made this country innovative, productive, and what made people give a crap about other people. Instead, we have this society thats been beaten down by entities that are, themselves, runaway trains.

And I say runaway trains because I know (as I'm sure others do as well) know how corporate decisions are made. I know why companies sellout to others. And I also understand the concept of arms races between competing companies vying for leverage with each other. You can't blame these entities for advocating their own personal welfare as its in their (and their shareholders') best interests to do what they do. This is what a federal government made up of adults is supposed to intuitively just get...and we simply don't have enough that do.

In a bill that is, hypothetically, meant to restore some fiscal balance, how can anyone possibly defend all of the pork that has been added to it??

I could be wrong - but from what I understand weren't most of these items 'extensions' to existing setups rather than being brand new deals? ... they're being presented in much of the media as being additional pork and horrible because of it.

eg. the Rum Subsidy is an 'extension' rather than anything new, the electric scooter stuff is again an 'extension' of an existing policy ... etc. ...

(please note I'm not excusing everything nor pretending that some new things were undoubtably pushed through as part of the deal - however the media 'outrage' about things appears to be trying to milk things somewhat more than might be appropriate)

WSJ.com

By Ian Talley

The International Monetary Fund is revising its metrics on how fast governments should cut their budgets, with the IMF’s top economist making the case that Europe’s fiscal diets were too severe.

In a new paper published Thursday, IMF Economic Counsellor Olivier Blanchard and research-department economist Daniel Leigh show the IMF recommended slashing budgets too fast early in the euro crisis, starving many economies of much-needed growth.

In “Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers,” Messrs. Blanchard and Leigh calculate IMF and European economists underestimated the euro-for-euro effect of cutting government budgets. While economists expected that cutting a euro from the budget would cost around 50 cents in lost growth, the actual impact was more like 1.50 per euro.

It doesn't matter, as long as they continue authorize expenditures (new or extensions), then the fiscal situation can only get worse. This is why one of the reason to oppose increased taxation (regardless if they will generator new revenues or not) is to force the issue away from the "drunken sailor" mindset that is so pervasive. Reductions in spending has to start someplace but it won't start at all if they believe throw money at anything and everything.

WTF? You mean contractionary policies are contractionary?

Hey - maybe if I post enough studies and actual experiences it'll get through to reality-deniers.

Maybe...

The problem here isnt whether the scooter or fishery projects (whether they are extensions or new initiatives) are valid & worthwhile....the problem I have is that our government cannot pass ANY legislation without having all of these tangential & unrelated add-ons thrown on top of it.

Its just like in 2008 when the entire economy was tanking. We can't pass a bill called "Need money for x or the world economy will collapse" without adding in scientific testing of frog semen. And the initial bill failed getting through the House in part because of the pork.

"Pork" projects isn't (in my mind anyway) synonymous with "not worthwhile" projects...its the fact that we can't pass important legislation without adding these types of projects & trying to ram them through because the big ticket item is considered too important to vote against.

While it may not be practical to submit each of those pork projects individually, we really need a mechanism or process that allows for submission of important bills on their own, and less critical bills to be lumped together with Presidential line item veto authority. This would get accountability back into the legislative process (and to some extent the President)...but naturally nobody wants to be held accountable so it probably never changes.

This is from a friend who blogs lots of commentaries


GE had the 4th highest amount of reported lobbying dollars, contributing heavily to both presidential campaigns, as well as to 80 memers of Congress.

Ugh

The Republicans take much needed heat for often ignoring science but how can both parties be completely oblivious to exponential growth?

We need "sustainable debt reduction" policies-which means that our capping our spending growth below GDP growth, tackle real spending reforms (The big problem with SS and Medicare is that people take out more than they've paid in), built an economy for the 21st century (I believe we are just starting to experience an energy resource boom here, provided we don't continue to try to put up more and more walls) and examine our social structures as well (e.g. I don't believe that spending even more on education isn't going to change our results here),



I don't think there is anything "wrong" with it, just the fact that it's stuffed in a Sandy Aid relief bill.

I love the "Trillion Dollar Coin" idea and hope it happens. Basicallt Geithner can just mint a platinum coin of any denomination (google it)

Maybe I'm more excited about it as the plot of some heist movie though.

So it's kindof like the $100K bill?

SI

In essence, yes.

Actually the idea is for Obama to just point out that he can do it (which is frankly silly) and then bargin that away to the Republicans permanantly in exchange for the Republican House permanantly giving up the House's authority on the debt ceiling (which is also silly - why should they have the ability to think about not paying the bill for spending that they have authorized).

Would have loved to see the liberals reaction if they voted against the war under Bush and he printed a trillion dollar coin. Good thing we have no gold standard anymore or that would have to be like a 25,000 lb gold coin. And it's a really dumb idea but no country has ever thought of anything like this have they?

The thing with those sort of plots which a lot of people miss is that the growth there by percentage is actually probably lesser with the 'larger' jumps.

That is look at the 10 years under Reagan - its starts around '1' and grows to '4' - that is it quadruples the debt in 10 years.

In the first 4 years under Obama the debt grew from 10 to 14, that is a 40% rise .... far lesser than the percentage increase under Reagan during the same relative time period (ie. its not that the growth is 'growing' in percentage terms, its just 10% of $1m is bigger than 10% of $100k).

(not excusing anything at all - but I think its very easy to get emotive about such issues and miss the fact that just because a graph shows a larger 'raw figure' increase it doesn't mean that its growing at a faster percentage rate)

Obama will never do it because he is too cautious, but something big needs to happen to stop this debt ceiling madness. We can't run a country when the GOP threatens to stop paying the bills every couple of years.

Don't get me wrong - I agree totally that this approach to things is ludicrous ... however I also dislike what I see as partisan reporting in the media (ie. attempting to report not news, but their 'spin' on things ignoring facts if they're inconvenient).

This would be a huge improvement imho.

So how about looking at it from a point of view that hates what Reagan, Bush, and Obama did? The debt has gone 14x larger in 30 years. I would love for somebody to explain how this won't impact a guy who tries to put a little money away every month to save for his family's future. You can't possibly tell me that if I have $100,000 put away now and I retire in 30 years that I can buy a small house, or 3-4 cars, or 3 pounds of gold, or 100K hamburgers...

And it is most certainly hitting an exponential slide. (Not at a 2^x still but still about to take off to out of control numbers)

You've now gone off plot a little haven't you - you're now decrying inflation as a whole?

Inflation while 'bad' to individuals is actually 'good' to society as a whole if kept within sensible limits.

To try and explain this - if there was no inflation there would be less encouragement for people to invest money into other ventures, hence less jobs and growth in general would be created.

For an example of this look into the Japanese economy which has struggled to stimulate inflation - often consumers often hold off purchasing in the hope of a better deal later when the price of something may have dropped.

So about that whole Boehner is going to resign thing... how did that work out? ;)

Agree. And normal people pay for energy and food which the United States conveinently removed from their inflation calculation. I don't know about you but my family has been quite strapped lately to pay for those two items. (and its always some other bs excuse and nothing to do with priting large amounts of money)

Sadly, not very well.

I'm pretty sure the GOP -- in its current form -- is pretty much done.

I'm not even going to begin to waste my time pointing out how Zimbabwe /= America. You're more intelligent then that.

And the sequel - what the hell do you do once you've successfully heisted the coin?

Edit: The "dumb muscle guy" of the heist team would probably try to use it in a vending machine.

And you are intelligent enough to know if one of the solutions to avoid cutting spending at all is to print a trillion dollar coin than our country is fucked. (Democrat, republican, or independent). The great empires all collapse (economic and military reasons, check to both) seems like some future society will read and laugh about the trillion dollar coin.

(Edit: if gov Romney or gov perry would have talked about a trillion dollar coin at the debates many on here would be on the floor laughing. I am confident that you realize how stupid this idea is)

When I first started teaching fifteen years ago there was an end of year algebra III question that asked about designing a sprinkler system to maximize coverage of an irregular shaped lawn. A kid turned in a paper that said they would tie a hose to the back of a trained dog and let it run around. I thought it was clever but I said this is for a decent sized grade why don't you rethink. They ended up turning that answer in. It is like this type of avoid the real problem with a clever solution has now reached the higher levels of government. Don't understand why we can't spend five times more than we take in well look at this clever math I have done that you can't possibly understand. Nobel Prize please, nothing wrong here.

Might be worth realising that past situation is no guarentee of future situation, if you ignore a small problem long enough it can easily turn into a larger one.

How many people here realise that England got itself into a large enough mess in the 1967 that it literally DEVALUED its currency to try and devalue its debts and make it more competitive.

Devaluation of the pound

I could easily foresee a similar thing happening with the US Dollar at some point in the future if things aren't controlled ...

But Scott Caan is busy exercising his thespian muscle on (Golden Globe Nominated!) Hawaii Five-O!

SI

Ding ding ding. I believe you've stumbled upon the real elephant in the room.

Back away slowly, draw no attention to it or yourself. Then double up on your meds for a few days & you should feel better in no time.

As riveting a concept that the trillion dollar coin is, the more likely scenario is that Obama could just issue an executive order around it, using the public debt section of the 14th amendment. It'd be a pretty aggressive use of executive power from a guy who campaigned against such things, but a lot of people have endorsed the idea (including Bill Clinton).

I was talking to my wife yesterday and was trying to figure out what kind of massive botch that Congress would have to do to feel it was so hopeless they might as well just say "screw it all, let's accomplish something and damn the electoral consequences". And the only thing I could come up with was miss with the missile fired to blow up an asteroid coming towards earth

But let's pretend there are actually citizen-centric rather than voting-centric incentives somehow magically in place so that good things are rewarded even if they are "3rd rails". What would/should happen?

*Publicly finance elections and ban outside money
*Ban lobbying for 5 years after public service with stiff penalties for violators
*Phase in Social security changes up to 70 years of age
*Switch to the metric system
*Vigorously apply Sherman Anti-Trust across our economy
*Either switch our health care to single payer or strip out the parts where it privatizes the profits and socializes the losses (like Medicare Part D) and just make it a mandate


SI

The smart political thing would be to float the idea and then use it to cut some stuff that is third rail-y in his own party that he knows needs to be cut. However, there are many in the GOP who wouldn't take the inch and would instead want a yard and that's why it can't necessarily be done.

SI

fixed that for ya

(Adding to your list)
* Put some money behind fraud prevention / detection in these large programs. Maybe rather than individual offices for each program that are individually funded and thus easy to underfund so Congress looks like they are doing something without annoying their handlers, we hand the whole thing over to the Secret Service and expand its budget? I'd be a bit leery of handing it over to the FBI, but expanding detection and penalties for securities, medicare, social security, banking, and similar white-collar government bilking would help. Let's work on making sure we are helping people who actually NEED the help, that would make it much easier to eliminate arguments against programs like this from people like me :D
* Include Congressional Ethics. They are already looking to kill Pelosi's board that looks into Congressional scandals, move it to the Secret Service or FBI and let 'em loose.
* Reasonable defense cuts. Of course if you do #1 then it might take care of itself.
* In addition to limits on lobbyists, we need limits on regulators going into private business for the folks they are regulating. #1 may be a huge step forward here.
* I like restricting the ability to add unrelated riders to bills. Let's also go back to "fillibuster requires you to actually get up and talk" and other reforms in how bills get handled / dealt with.
* Loosen the 2-party stranglehold. This is probably more at the local level, but we need more than Dems/Repubs in debates at all levels. No debates without at least 3 separate parties represented. And if this means more runoff elections, so be it. I'd love to see someone stand up to the parties and organize debates along more reasonable lines, and tell the candidates to show up or not, their choice. If we ended up with a Libertarian, Green Party, and maybe one or two others with no Repub or Dem because they didn't like the rules debate, I think that would be awesome. Stop letting the Dem/Repub campaigns set the rules for the debates.

... then you'd have a debate involving the worst of our nation's nut jobs, with rarely a decent idea between, so marginal that it's a very legitimate question whether they're sane enough to even be allowed to walk the streets.

On the bright side, at least it would gather the least useful members of the political class all in one place.

Ideally, if any other parties could get over that hump of relevance, maybe they'd attract more talent. There has to be talented Republicans and Democrats, maybe blocked from career advancement because of internal politics, because they're too sincere in their views, because they abhor playing the game, etc., who would consider jumping ship if another outfit offered them some kind of access.

It's not like we're getting any decent ideas from the folks currently in office. But the main point is to get some different ideas up there and force the folks who get into power to address some of the questions brought up by the other parties. Instead of the watered down talking points we get now.