"The US spends too much"

[billvon]

This is a breakout from another thread in which Seattle pointed out that the US spends too much. This is a separate issue from how taxes work, and thus I brought it here to answer it.

If everyone were to have to foot the bill for the government it would come to [$]42,000 a tax payer. That's too much and therefore the solution is for the government to spend less and in a more responsible manner.

Agreed. We currently spend 3x more on our military than the next spendiest country, for example. Reduce that to 1.5x, and we'd cut about half a trillion from the budget.

Both parties spend too much, which is why I am registered as an independent. Republicans tend to spend too much and cut taxes, which leads to financial ruin. Democrats tend to spend too much and raise taxes, which leads to individual economic pain. Since pain is better than ruin, I tend to vote democratic. But it is the lesser of two evils; neither has a good solution.

This is, of course, because everyone wants free stuff. They know it's available, since they see it every day - coupon cutters who get $300 worth of groceries for free, people who win the lottery, people who inherit millions. Since that is part of their experience, they wish to extend this to their government - and thus both democrats and republicans promise this to garner their votes.

Like not spending another [$]3.5 trillion right now for "infrastructure".

I agree we spend too much; I also agree we should not spend [$]3.5 trillion for any infrastructure bill. The infrastructure bill being proposed now costs [$]1.2 trillion over 10 years and will eventually cost about [$]250 billion total (since most of that money will come back in increased economic output - new jobs, larger companies etc.) Important spending includes:

[$]100 billion for road transportation projects, including[$]40 billion to fix bridges. That's critical; bridge maintenance has been deferred for so long that bridges are literally at risk of falling down. This is actually less than we need. An independent study put the figure to repair both bridges and roads at [$]1 trillion, and that number will increase the longer we defer maintenance. But [$]100 billion will at least hit the most critical projects.

[$]80 billion to improve/repair railways. Railways are falling into serious disrepair. Right now there is one derailment per year per every 100 miles of track in the US, and that's getting steadily worse. This is caused by old deteriorating rails, ties, ballast and switchgear.

[$]180 billion to build out charging networks for EV's, which will be important in terms of making the move to EVs (which in turn will have both environmental and import-export ratio benefits.)

[$]100 billion in funding for American energy infrastructure, primarily going towards long distance power transmission lines, smart grid development and improvements in reliability/robustness.

[$]45 billion to replace all the lead water pipes in the US (believe it or not, there are still a lot of them - 12 million waterpipe segments in the US still contain lead.)

[$]230 billion on scientific R+D including clean energy, basic climate research, semiconductor research, electrical storage technology.

[$]137 to spend on new (and renovations of) public schools. community colleges and childcare/pre-K facilities.

That still leaves [$]328 billion, and much of that is what I consider to be unneeded - universal broadband access, creation of a "care" economy for seniors, funding for union protections. So it could be cut some. But it is not [$]3.5 trillion, and it is not unneeded.

 

[Seattle]

If we cut the military budget in half and put Social Security on a sound footing (which it should have been set up that way from the start) we wouldn't have many of these problems.

Many programs aren't necessary in the first place. It's not a matter of whether families with kids could use more money or whether education should be free, that's all great but it's nothing that government should be involved in. It would be great if the government funded my next car but that's not the best way to handle that scenario.

Health care, limited military and the basic government services that are available is most all countries (roads, courts, etc) is what the government should be limited to. When they do more it's not really to the benefit of society.

People look at how they would like for life to change and think "the government should be doing more". That's an illusion. Government should be doing less so that the individual has more flexibility to do more.

 

[scorpius]

US needs big military for its survival,not that its under atack but to dominate exploit other countries and steal their riches natural resources and technology.
Iraq rings a bell?
How about Iran,Lybia, Syria, Afganistan,Venezuela,Vietnam. Might makes right I guess,until faster gunslinger comes along Lol

Rich create jobs ( Tesla for example) so taxing them should be only absolute minimum.
If you start taxing rich too much no one will have incentive ambition to work and become rich,not if they have to give it all to poor lazy schmuks.

Now Gov could try investing in factories,,
semiconductor chips are sorely needed and lackin due to foreign countries having upper hand here. Same w EV cars n trucks. But hey w hawks runnin the show country will be broke before that happens.

 

[pjdude1219]

Rich create jobs ( Tesla for example) so taxing them should be only absolute minimum.

the rich do not create jobs. rich people create very few jobs. claiming this shows a complete lack of understanding of how economics works. demand creates jobs and rich people have an overall very small share of demand.

 

[iceaura]

Republicans tend to spend too much and cut taxes, which leads to financial ruin. Democrats tend to spend too much and raise taxes, which leads to individual economic pain.

That's not accurate - it's almost the direct opposite of those Party's behavior when in power.

It's been forty years or more since we last had an economy set up by Democratic Party politicians even, let alone lefties, so history may have got lost in the general corporate authoritarian media misinformation feed and Democratic Party behavior may be different now, but Republicans generally raise taxes on the bottom 2/3 of the taxpayers (leading to increased individual economic pain) and subsidize capital with borrowed money while penalizing labor with expensive imposed costs (leading to job flight and individual economic pain among the working class, while guaranteeing investment returns to the wealthy - the globally wealthy - from whom the Republicans borrowed).

So the ruin that has proven almost inevitable under incompetent Republican Party economic policies (fascists are fuckups) includes individual economic pain and lots of it, while the alleged proclivity of Democrats to spend too much money and "raise taxes" in general has yet to be demonstrated in modern times (which feature a somewhat changed Dem Party, with the more serious racial bigots having shifted their Partisan allegiance)

- the current Democratic administration has proposed spending less money, not more, and shifting the tax burden a little bit back toward the upper classes, not increasing it in general, but these proposals are unlikely to be adopted - what an actually leftwing Party that somehow got hold of power would do in the US after forty years of ruinous economic fantasy in power is not known.

It might depend on how much support it had from competent libertarians to keep it out of the pit of centralized governmental micromanagement, the classic trap of the authoritarian Left. As long as the self-described "libertarians" of the right keep protecting the Republican Party by spouting bothsides bullshit, the current trends will continue until their basis in working democracy has been destroyed. Then they will accelerate.

 

[billvon]

the current Democratic administration has proposed spending less money, not more, and shifting the tax burden a little bit back toward the upper classes, not increasing it in general

Yes. Democrats tend to spend too much (i.e. far more than we have coming in) and raise taxes. This year Biden has proposed a [$]6T budget, which is down from last year's [$]7T budget, but still far higher than expected receipts (which are estimated at [$]4.1T) Estimated incoming is up from [$]3.5T to [$]4.1T due largely to tax increases.

Had his proposed budget been 5T, and estimated receipts due to new taxation been 5T, then that would not have been too much.

 

[Seattle]

Yes. Democrats tend to spend too much (i.e. far more than we have coming in) and raise taxes. This year Biden has proposed a [$]6T budget, which is down from last year's [$]7T budget, but still far higher than expected receipts (which are estimated at [$]4.1T) Estimated incoming is up from [$]3.5T to [$]4.1T due largely to tax increases.

Had his proposed budget been 5T, and estimated receipts due to new taxation been 5T, then that would not have been too much.

It would have still been too much, the budget would have just been balanced. That's like arguing that anything the government spends money on is OK as long as they pay for it. If it hurts the economy long-term that's OK because everything is paid for? Of course it's better to pay for it than to not pay for it but that's beside the point.

It's OK if I waste a lot of money as long as I take enough of your money to pay for it?

 

[billvon]

It would have still been too much, the budget would have just been balanced.

If we don't spend more than we take in, then we're not spending too much. Even better if we start paying down the debt of course.

That's like arguing that anything the government spends money on is OK as long as they pay for it.

Of course not. They can spend money on good causes and bad causes. But if they spend more than they are taking in, they're spending too much.

If it hurts the economy long-term that's OK because everything is paid for?

Ah but there's the rub. What if it HELPS the economy short and mid term to spend more than we are taking in, and hurts it short and mid term to balance the budget? That's the argument that politicians are using. Then, when the debt becomes so crushingly large that it starts hurting the economy, why, they're out of office.

 

[Seattle]

If we don't spend more than we take in, then we're not spending too much. Even better if we start paying down the debt of course.

Of course not. They can spend money on good causes and bad causes. But if they spend more than they are taking in, they're spending too much.

Ah but there's the rub. What if it HELPS the economy short and mid term to spend more than we are taking in, and hurts it short and mid term to balance the budget? That's the argument that politicians are using. Then, when the debt becomes so crushingly large that it starts hurting the economy, why, they're out of office.

That is the case oftentimes (OK to spend more than we take in over the short-term in certain cases) because the government isn't just another business but politicians abuse that continually obviously.

I just think that individuals are better off the more they are allowed to keep more of their own money. When the politicians promise to give taxpayers something "free", it always costs more than if they had just kept more of their own money in the first place.

It's an odd way to look at things when some consider it "greedy" for someone wealthier than they are to keep their own money but it's not considered greedy to want someone else's income "distributed" to them.

 

[sculptor]

US Government Revenues jumped 18 percent in the fiscal year that just ended, analysts say — the biggest one-year increase since 1977.

That translates into ($)627 billion more than in 2020, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which estimates that, for the first time, total government revenues topped ($)4 trillion.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/12/tax-revenue-surge-pandemic-515792

and the debt is over 20 trillion
and the gvmt. spends 6.8 trillion/year

....................................................
a trillion here, a trillion there and pretty soon, we're talking about some serious money
(or not?)

 

[billvon]

I just think that individuals are better off the more they are allowed to keep more of their own money.

Everyone wants to keep more of their own money. Everyone wants better roads and bridges. And everyone wants someone else to pay for them. That's pretty universal.

So any politician who promises them that gets elected.

 

[Seattle]

Everyone wants to keep more of their own money. Everyone wants better roads and bridges. And everyone wants someone else to pay for them. That's pretty universal.

So any politician who promises them that gets elected.

How's that working out?

 

[iceaura]

Yes. Democrats tend to spend too much (i.e. far more than we have coming in) and raise taxes.

In abstract, without considering reality as a context, sure. But you were comparing them with Republicans, remember? You intended that as a contrast, a "bothsides" argument of a kind.

In that context that claim is deceptive bullshit - which I include in the category "false". All bothsides arguments are bullshit, and they have been bullshit for more than forty years - your entire adult political life. Do you really want to give that kind of rhetoric and deception a pass in general - or only if it's coming from the corporate rightwing propaganda feeds?

It's ubiquity and durability in the face of multiple debunkings over decades makes it misleading to the point of dishonesty, a trolling use of a Republican propaganda meme.

Compared with Republicans since the fascist ideological takeover (say: 1981) the Federal Democrats have spent less money and (consequently) raised taxes less than the Federal Republicans. You can see that in the blank check financing of the Iraq invasion (not in the budget, remember?), a Republican Party initiative, in which the cost of the War wiped out the savings (tax reductions) realized under the Democratic Party initiatives - including the large savings made possible by the election of Obama, which the Republican administration in its fraudulent bookkeeping pre-arranged to be spent on W's War and in its propaganda feeds assessed against Obama's policies (remember all the bs about "the first trillion dollar deficit?).

For the amnesiacs: it was going to last six months and definitely not include occupation, it was going to pay for itself using captured Iraqi oil but it had nothing to do with capturing Iraq's oil for US corporations, it was going to bring lots of good jobs but none of them paid for by taxpayer subsidies, etc etc -

the entire bizarre shitshow a direct precursor of Trump's Mexican-paid Wall and border concentration camps, only with dead American soldiers instead of dead Honduran and Colombian mothers and children, and the millions of desperate refugees penned up on the other side of an ocean with the torture prisons, presumably safe from the news cameras. (The Republican Party was a bit slow - even slower than the rightwing Dems - to realize what the cell phone camera was going to do to the standard cover-up and deny services the corporate rightwing news media had been performing for them).

The basic rule - Trump=Republican, Republican = Trump - holds for every political issue and the entire adult political life of everyone on this forum.

Need another obvious one? You can also see it in Reagan's sharp boosting of Social Security taxation, the largest single Federal tax increase on working class Americans in modern times, and coupled with it the deregulation of US banking both in law and practice (Reagan crippled Federal enforcement of the regulations he did not discard, and then bailed out the corporate supporters who took advantage of the police holiday to run scams while sinking the US economy

- one more method by which the Reps have spent more money than the Dems have spent, at the same time as they were boosting taxes more than the Dems were.

Need another? All of the interest expenses incurred by the accumulated Federal debt are currently chargeable to Republican Party initiatives. And almost all that money was wasted - blown up in a desert somewhere, used to finance and then fight drug smuggling into the US (another Rep money pit), used to pay bonuses to corporate executives whose bad executive decisions crashed the entire US economy, bail their failed corporations out of debt irresponsibly taken on, and ruin the middle class economy of what was once the most prosperous nation ever seen on the planet ( especially its health care component, which is still eroding under Republican governing policies still in force and still protected by "bothsides" bullshit).

It's OK if I waste a lot of money as long as I take enough of your money to pay for it?

Reps seem to think so - "how are you going to pay for it" and "pay as you go" are Rep propaganda memes and bs, not Dem.

Meanwhile, it's true that honestly wasting money is better than if you lie about it, better than wasting boatloads of money and then lying about how you are going to pay for it - see Reagan and Bush, Social Security and banking subsidy; see W Iraq War and banking bailouts ; see Trump anything - absolutely anything - he did or proposed;

see every Republican administration since Nixon.

 

[billvon]

How's that working out?

About as well as you'd expect.

 

[Tiassa]

Both parties spend too much, which is why I am registered as an independent.

To be honest, when I see that line, there's nothing left to read.

 

[billvon]

In abstract, without considering reality as a context, sure. But you were comparing them with Republicans, remember? You intended that as a contrast, a "bothsides" argument of a kind.

Nope. The comparison is that democrats tend to try to pay for their excessive spending via increased taxation. Republicans spend more and cut taxes. Neither is ideal. One is worse than the other, as any brief perusal of the history of our deficit shows.

 

[Seattle]

Nope. The comparison is that democrats tend to try to pay for their excessive spending via increased taxation. Republicans spend more and cut taxes. Neither is ideal. One is worse than the other, as any brief perusal of the history of our deficit shows.

In a way, it's the same, although I do prefer the more direct approach of having a more balanced budget. The bigger problem though is the spending. Whether it's paid for or not, it's still a problem. It's reducing productivity.

There is no free lunch so spending either results in higher taxes, which takes money out of the more productive part of the economy (private sector) or spending without offsetting taxes results in reduced purchasing power of the dollar due to the money "printing".

Spending without understanding the consequences is the problem, IMO.

 

[billvon]

In a way, it's the same, although I do prefer the more direct approach of having a more balanced budget. The bigger problem though is the spending. Whether it's paid for or not, it's still a problem. It's reducing productivity.

Definitely agreed there. Higher taxes result in more government spending, which does stimulate the economy to an extent. But it is not efficient stimulus; there are entire industries out there now who specialize in bilking the government out of money. (I worked for one for a few years before I couldn't take it any more.) So the end result is lower productivity and lower overall economic output.

I think there is a reasonable argument for some government-spending stimulus during severe economic downturns. But that has to be countered by reduced spending when the economy is doing well, so the net result is not crushing debt.

 

[Seattle]

Definitely agreed there. Higher taxes result in more government spending, which does stimulate the economy to an extent. But it is not efficient stimulus; there are entire industries out there now who specialize in bilking the government out of money. (I worked for one for a few years before I couldn't take it any more.) So the end result is lower productivity and lower overall economic output.

I think there is a reasonable argument for some government-spending stimulus during severe economic downturns. But that has to be countered by reduced spending when the economy is doing well, so the net result is not crushing debt.

I agree. The government is not just another business with no control over the money supply so IMO it is legitimate to run deficits during recessions (or pandemics) and then try to run a surplus during good times or at least only run small deficits that you can easily grow your way out of. A debt that is 120% of GDP is not reasonable, IMO.

That's not what we do anymore however. We stimulate the economy during the pandemic and then when we are trying to recover we spend excessive amounts when we should be trying to recover fiscally from all the stimulus.

There has been no real concern for the ever growing debt for decades. No one runs for office trying to put the government on a more sound fiscal basis. It's all based on populism (emotion), we "need" something to fix some problem so we just continue to spend without regard to cost or the harm it's actually doing to the economy.

As long was someone else is supposed to be paying for it, it's OK, apparently. There is no reality to that of course.

The real problem is that you have people like Robert Reich pretending to be an economist (he has a law degree) and Bernie Sanders who has no clue regarding economic matters. Most Democrats (in particular but not exclusively) in Congress who are wealthy got that way from writing books about being a famous politician (and speaking fees) and not from starting or running a business and from investing in the economy.

Most people, in my personal experience, who agree with Reich and Sanders are those who don't work in the private sector and who are sure that "we" need more "programs" and someone else needs to pay for them. It's just not realistic nor healthy for the economic well-being in general.

 

[sculptor]

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy..."
attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler
However, he, most likely, never said these exact words
However------worth thinking about?