US Scientific R&D Could Face Fiscal Cliff Doom 609
The tough economic times have had a huge effect on scientific research and development funding. The looming "fiscal cliff" may be the last straw for many programs. "The American science programs that landed the first man on the moon, found cures for deadly diseases and bred crops that feed the world now face the possibility of becoming relics in the story of human progress.
American scientific research and development stands to lose thousands of jobs and face a starvation diet of reduced funding if politicians fail to compromise and halt the United States' march towards the fiscal cliff's sequestration of federal funds."
America's hand is being forced... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Insightful)
into armed conflict by private banks, who, through their monetary policy are exerting undue political influence on the White House. It matters not which party sits in power, they have very little choice but to do what they are doing.
Armed conflicts? You mean... like those toxic home loans offered to people that couldn't ever repay them?
I'd rather say this is the victory of the "basic human right to credit" over the research. If this is the American dream, I'd say "Wake up, people. It's a nightmare".
Re:And the value of those loans were what? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that the derivatives that you are speaking up consisted of mortgage-backed securities, which were created to monetize otherwise high risk loans, right? In turn these mortgages were pushed by certain loan programs to give mortgages to people who would not otherwise receive them.
Yes, actual foreclosures caused by the mortgages were a small amount of money compared to the derivatives, but those bad mortgages not only provided the basis for some of the worst of the derivatives, but foreclosures are an extremely demoralizing event, not only for the family itself, but for the whole market. When you see foreclosures, you see people losing their homes. That affects everyone, and that is why you want to keep them low, because when everyone feels poorer, everyone IS poorer. That's how the economy works these days.
Needless to say, blaming greed is always the right answer for issues like this, but having worked for one of the companies that did provide those securities, I saw that there was also another greed working as well, a greed for more popularity and votes by making people think that you were giving them something that they otherwise would not qualify for. I saw it in pretty, glossy, nearly tabloid sized literature that had company officers and various politicians shown handing keys to people. It was a nice warm fuzzy feeling, until you realized just how they were actually profiting from loans that they otherwise wouldn't be able to collect on.
If those people in those pamphlets were renting today, having never "owned" a house I can say they would have been objectively better off now than those who got to "own" a house they couldn't pay for, and then lost it. That's why you don't decree that you have to pay loans to people who can't afford them. You're not dealing with corporate greed, you're starting to fight against the smart people who use math and research to determine who is a reasonable risk for a loan. And when you stop listening to those people, corporations start turning to the sorts of people who promise they can turn straw into gold and create things like mortgage-backed securities based on garbage.
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“In 2007, the total volume of home sales in the United States was about $1.7 trillion—paltry when compared with the $40 trillion in stocks that are traded every year. But in contrast to the activity that was taking place on Main Street, Wall Street was making bets on housing at furious rates. In 2007, the total volume of trades in mortgage-backed securities was about $80 trillion. That meant that for every dollar that someone was willing to put in a mortgage, Wall Street was making almost $50 wo
Re:And the value of those loans were what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the poor people weren't the ones offering the loans how does the offering of them make it "the poor ones who did it all"?
The truth is, the poor were scammed by the rich. The banks had a win-win situation before the housing bubble burst. Talk poor Joe Sixpack who doesn't have an MBA into believing he can afford the house, and when gas prices quadruple as they did betwen 2000 and 2008 and he misses a single mortgage payment, the bank makes it nearly impossible for him to ever recover and finally forecloses, then sells the house at a tidy profit after collecting mortgage payments for a few years. And if the unthinkable happens and home prices sink, the bank has insurance to cover it. There's no possible way for the bank to lose money on a home loan under those conditions.
It was legalized theft, with the rich legally robbing the poor.
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Whereas I read that as those offering the loans doing it, since the offering is what is being mentioned not the accepting.
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why were you in Afgahnistan during the Cold War?
It was to check the Soviets, but the stupidest thing America did afterwards was pull all it's funding and foreign aid from the country, and ensure that a few decades of impoverished rule by the Taliban would eventually lead to the rise of the new terrorist cells which carried out the attacks on the twin towers.
Pretending the US can pursue isolationist policies after being highly interventionist, and expect to be left alone, is ridiculous. Doubly so when your entire economy depends on the price of oil, and which in turn depends on global supply regardless of your interest in other countries or not. Suddenly withdrawing security and support is not a consequence free action. You take a bunch of people you're making promises to, or who are depending on you, and throw them to the wolves. That breeds resentment - the next generation, their children, grow up hearing their parents lament about how you can't trust Americans, grow up seeing American drones and helicopters bombing middle eastern countries (and with no education system, are very pliable as to ideas on why that's happening), and sure enough, two decades later when they're in their 20's, you get a brand new terrorist cell filled with young people utterly convinced America needs to be taught a lesson of some sort.
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In theory yes, but realistically? I doubt they really could, even if there was a desire to. Do you honestly see any other way out of this mess other than war? The scientists would at least be offered jobs in the dubious role of finding clever and new ways of killing.
I hope it doesn't end up as open warfare, but the free ride that many people have getting from the government is going to end... not just in Greece but in America as well. Confiscating the wealth of other nations to feed bad habits in America simply needs to stop somehow, and there is going to be some real pain for a great many people simply because some prudent steps were not taken in the recent past.
Bailing out the big banks was perceived as a bad thing, and it may be seen soon how bad of a move it reall
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Social - Of or relating to society or its organization
Security - The state of being free from danger or threat
Social Security is there to ensure better living for society as a whole. That is its purpose. On paper, it looks like a money pit, but only if you
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Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:4, Informative)
Straw man. 100% of tax revenue _doesn't_ go to Social Security. A lot of tax revenue goes to paying the national debt, a significant portion of which is owed to the Social Security Trust Fund. But a lot of it goes elsewhere, like to the defense budget, which is essentially welfare for the rich. Oh, and the deficit has dropped in the past three years...
But let's not talk about that. Let's just foam at the mouth hysterically and give the bankers our retirement savings.
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The first word of my post was 'if', though as it's a small word, I'll allow for you missing it.
Also, for context [slashdot.org].
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I read your earlier post. I was responding to the attitude of hysteria. Yes, if we do nothing, Social Security and Medicare are d00med. So let's do something about it.
And I don't think the CBO has pointed out that the _cause_ of our budget woes is Social Security and Medicaid. What they've pointed out are the facts that you gave, not the conclusion you drew from it. The _cause_ of our budget woes is that taxes are too low and that we went to war when we needn't have, at extraordinary expense. An
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Yes, our military spending is a huge jobs program. But in fact a great deal of that money does go into the pockets of wealthy people. So it's an insanely inefficient jobs program. We could just take all that money and give everybody a guaranteed minimum income, and we'd probably save money.
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Your -UK suffix is showing. In the US, Social Security is collected by the federal (central) government. That government writes contracts for approximately none of the "basic infrastructure" you describe. Yes, it subsidizes road construction by the states, but things like power generation and delivery are mostly performed by private companies with oversight by state regulators; private rail freight companies subsidize the national passenger rail company; and so forth. States (and localities such as coun
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Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Informative)
Is there no equivalent of the UK's National Grid in the US?
Not really. There are some regional power grids that are operated by quasi-public-private organizations (organized by state governments in cooperation with major utility companies), but there isn't even really a "national grid". What the federal government does for highways is mainly establish national standards.... basically a stack of books written by and for civil engineers that explain signage, pavement, dimensions, and color standards that should be followed by the various states when their highways are being built.
Federal highway taxes are also extracted from fuel purchases and redistributed to each state depending on what member of congress happens to be cutting a sweetheart deal to pass some piece of legislation, but those tend to be "block grants" where each state can pretty much spend that money however it sees fit. Each state also raises its own taxes to pay for a great many of these things.... including I might even add military expenditures as well.
Local governments (municipalities and counties... it varies from state to state on the degree) also get involved in highway construction and usually are much more heavily involved with public utilities like electricity, sewer, natural gas, garbage, and water distribution. Most things like natural gas and petroleum pipelines are almost always privately owned by some entrepreneur who sees a way to make a pile of money.
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SS and MC can be for both "better living for society as a whole" AND an obvious money pit at the same time!
Good intentions don't magically fill in the pit. I'm sure that it makes you feel good though..
The problem isnt simply that we dont currently have sustainable projections, the problem is that the projections show such an enormous shortfall when it comes to these programs that the solution cannot possibly be more taxes, that the only solution besides radical reform is
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Insightful)
every year that people like you blather on and on about "security" and "think of the old people", paving the road all the way to hell with your good intentions.
And yet, each and everyone of us will be one of those "old people" looking for some security as we age.
That is the fact that I think the progressives don't understand. They really do not realize that more taxes isn't a solution at all,
And cutting taxes has worked out real well...
I figure you for someone who's pretty well off, have a good retirement fund, maybe some kids (or the glimmer down the road) to help as you age. Life is pretty good so what is everyone else's problem? You most likely don't pay any attention to the janitor that cleans the office building you go to, limited education, limited income and certainly limited options when (or if) he/she retires. Maybe one day you might go over to the Janitor and tell them to go crawl in a hole and die, because YOU don't want to provide any safety net for him or her. YOU secretly would love to have most of the impoverished, unfit, and uneducated just some how magically disappear as you have no desire to help provide some modicum of assistance they themselves cannot provide.
In the US, when tax rates were above 70%, we had some pretty good domestic growth. Please do not try to tell me that raising taxes is the death knell of innovation and business. As one small business owner told me recently, if taxes went up he would consider hiring to (1) expand his business because (2) instead of the Government getting his money from his profits, he would rather pay a worker. A tax cut would do nothing...nothing to inspire him to expand. He would just buy more goods, mostly made outside this country.
The fact that fundamentalists like you don't get is that when you have a population of 300 million, you cannot just make them go away and if you cut to much to fast; well look at Greece to see how well that is going. If you could get the idiots out of Washington then a formula of raising taxes, raising revenue through job creation, reducing spending waste, and then cutting spending wisely may turn the financial direction of this country. First we need to change the Moral and Ethical direction and your comments sadly reflect the wrong direction.
tldr; When the population is starving and desperate, when they have nothing to lose they will look to those who put them there and it wont be pretty. When the population is comfortable, reasonably secure and hopeful for a future, they don't give a damn what the Gentry does. I prefer the latter.
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"In the US, when tax rates were above 70%, we had some pretty good domestic growth. Please do not try to tell me that raising taxes is the death knell of innovation and business. As one small business owner told me recently, if taxes went up he would consider hiring to (1) expand his business because (2) instead of the Government getting his money from his profits, he would rather pay a worker. A tax cut would do nothing...nothing to inspire him to expand. He would just buy more goods, mostly made outside t
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Insightful)
" Ronald Reagan cut income taxes, EVERY class got stronger."
Hows that work. Did a little digging, granted these are gross numbers, but in 1979, just before RR someone in the 20th percentile made @ $19,274. Halfway through RR term he then made $17,927 and by the end of RR term he was back to 19,830. Net increase of wages in 8 years, $2,000. Amazing.
Reagan's tax cuts ballooned the deficit while at the same time he was waging a spending war with the USSR. GHB may have killed his political career by raising taxes, but he was smart enough to see that cut and spend was killing this country...quickly.
Clinton raised taxes. He also overhauled welfare and worked very hard as a world leader to keep us out of large military conflict, by using diplomacy and when needed, targeted action to contain threats to the US. He had increased revenue enough that even had there been a slight recession in 2000, the government could have smartly spent its way out by putting the surplus back into the country through stimulus and R&D.
GWB, well he cut taxes, income for our 20 percentile drops back to pre-Clintion levels (less tax revenue as well), he engages in not one but two very costly wars and not only turns a budget surplus into a major deficit, he once again balloons the national debt. Net loss to the 20th, down $2000.
Please do not state that Ronald Reagan did good by this country, because he cut taxes. Instead state that he did good by this country when he realized his mistake and began to raise taxes again. If even one Tea Party member or politician raises the specter of Reagan they need to take a long look at his whole presidency. In today's world, he would be denounced as a RINO and run out in a primary. Other then the bump that was GHB, Nixon was the last sane republican President in this country (and I can't believe I'm saying that but for what he can be compared to today).
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, Canada has a balanced budget and we have a more robust welfare system(that less people are forced to take advantage of prior to old-age because it is robust and includes education and sometimes FORCED education programs.
We also spend 10% per capita on health care of what you spend and get LONGER life expectancies. Emergency treatment isn't as good(but only for SOME things, generally rarer things/situations that a country with 10% of your population base isn't going to have a very large absolute number of people needing attention for), but preventative measures are used in every possible case where they can have a strong benefit.
Most americans are so fucking narrow minded its mind-boggling. Even some american friends who I would otherwise consider relatively intelligent just can't see the fucking forest because they get hung up on one or two trees.
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Canada does not have a balanced budget.
We did have a small surplus which was used to pay down debt or as a rainy day fund until the "conservative and fiscally responsible" government took over. Promptly, they cut taxes (GST) because a surplus obviously means taxes are too high!
Then the economy fell off the cliff and they have been running large deficits ever since. Not that I disagree with government spending during recession. It does help blunt the damage but the trick is getting back to the black aft
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not ignorant. Most Canadians I know are better informed on the US political situation than most of those living in the U.S.
It needs to be reformed, but your right-wing nut-jobs just want to cut benefits and call it done. The programs need reform that may actually increase spending in the short-term but get people OFF of social security altogether in the long term.
Also "Cheaper and more efficient" in the U.S. has become synonymous with "Privatize it" with some large segments of the population. Theres an entire cultural problem down there right now. We're not belittling the situation, we're stating outright that its totally fucked on a very grand scale.
You have no political will to actually do things correctly. It may come across as belittling but as our largest trading partner many Canadians KNOW that the health and well-being of the U.S. as a country is directly tied to our own health and well being. We are pointing at ourselves as an example of "doing it right" in an attempt to generate more attention and hopefully some additional popular support in the U.S. for properly reforming your health care and social security systems.
#1 you need to raise taxes. #2 you need to reform the programs. Health care needs to become a single-payer federal system. Part of the reason for Canadas current efficiency of health care is because there is a giant health board that all of the individual provinces work with. The provincial boards have direct control over thier own affairs but cooperate on larger issues such as emergency heart care etc.
Since things are different down there the only effective way to implement it would be as a seperate federal department for each state that then runs within a larger federal board that functions purely to liase between the various states departments and perform audits now and then to keep everyone honest. This also reduces the potential for corruption because there isn't one giant federal board. If someone wants to issue bribes to get something they'd have to bribe too many people to make it worthwhile. It may seem like a logistical nightmare, and the states may even need to be broken up into groups to make it work better, but it is doable,
Social security.... education programs need to be implemented. Workfare programs, therapy benefits... anything that can help to get these people back to being productive needs to be done. Spending an extra 30-40k on education while they're on social security for 3 years is much better than spending an additional 300+k(not to mention the tax revenue loss since they're not paying any taxes at all). over the course of another 15-20 years or more.
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Insightful)
...the primary cause of our budget woes is Medicare/Medicaid and to a lesser extent Social Security.
Yes, it would seem that way when you use Hollywood accounting methods. The CBO is not non-partisan. It is bi-partisan. It conforms to how both parties want to to steal our pensions. What they want to call entitlements is much more correctly labeled earned benefits. And that money was outright stolen from underneath our noses. Put the tax rates back to what we had in the 50s, bring our work force AND our troops back home, and watch the shortfalls evaporate. We are being robbed in broad daylight, and when mass media screams, "Hey! Look over there!", we fall for it every time.
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Hollywood accounting methods"? Are you talking about the Social Security and Medicare "trust fund" gimmick? If so, that supports Solandri's point: Because people were willing to pretend that FICA are not ordinary taxes, and that payroll taxes went into some special pool of money, it was easier to use FICA surpluses to subsidize deficits in the rest of the budget. If you're talking about something else, perhaps you should be more specific.
If you think that Social Security or Medicare are "earned benefits", that boat sailed 50 years ago; the Supreme Court disagreed with you in 1960 (Flemming v. Nestor). Recently, President (George W.) Bush wanted to give each worker a real retirement account where the worker would have ownership, but your side threw an epic fit over the proposal (for transparently bad reasons).
If you think 1950's-style tax rates would be an effective solution, you've been reading too much Paul Krugman without engaging your brain. If you think bringing one or two hundred thousand deployed servicemen and servicewomen back home -- given the general economic climate, with the likely effect of dumping either them or others into unemployment -- would solve the budget deficit, you again haven't given the matter enough thought.
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've posted this so many times on /. I feel like I'm pounding my head against a brick wall.
You are.
. I know it goes against people's political inclinations here,
Some, certainly.
but it's the truth so here it is again.
Ah and there's the brick wall...
Did you know that on our current course, Medicare/Medicaid will grow to consume 18% of GDP some time around 2050-2070?
(xkcd alert:) Is your hobby extrapolating?
We're being driven to bankruptcy by voters wanting stuff in their old age without having to pay for (most of) it.
No, Medicare is expensive because of the insane medical system in the US, with its insane regulatory structure. Somehow most European countries manages to have a social security safety net, and a public health system without spending more than their entire tax revenues on it.
The solution isn't to slash social security, it's to stop companies creaming off most of money for themselves.
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow most European countries manages to have a social security safety net, and a public health system without spending more than their entire tax revenues on it.
The fact you are missing is that we too currently have these nets in place without spending more than our tax revenue. That does not change the fact that the population pyramid is flipping upside down here, and there,
The average EU country would need to have 434 percent its current annual gross domestic product earning interest at the EU government’s borrowing rates, in order to fund current policies indefinitely. They don't. They are net negative on these savings just like us.
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you been paying attention to what is happening in Europe over the last two years?
No, I've been keeping my eyes firmly shut, my ears closed and have been navigating the tube entirely by feel. Sarcasm aside: yes of course I have seeing I am a UK citizen.
Countries in Europe are one by one reaching the point where the cost of government services (including and mostly involving, that "social security safety net") are exceeding tax revenues to the point where no one wants to loan them money.
Last I checked the UK still had an AAA credit rating, along with Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, The Netherlands and Denmark. All of those countries have an extensive social safety net.
blah
So that fact that it's failed some places due to widespread corruption means that it's impossible to make it work elsewhere?
Re:America's hand is being forced... (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolute crap.
The problem is threefold.
- These Social programs are under-funded because the taxes and contributions which were originally put aside have been stolen by Congress.
- Medicare/Medicaid is being used as a cash-cow by big business. It needs to be community operated on a non-profit basis as it is in other countries.
- Insufficient taxes are raised to pay for these essential services and the rich are allowed to opt out.
Amen, but.. (Score:2, Insightful)
We should let congress drive over the fiscal cliff so that republicans take the blame for their intransigence on perpetuating the untenable Bush tax cuts.
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We should let congress drive over the fiscal cliff so that democrats take the blame for thier inability to see that the Bush tax cuts don't even come close to paying for the deficit, current or projected.
How about instead of killing the economy with the uncertanty of this on again - off again tax cut, why don't we simplify the tax code completey and permanently.
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missed one
BIg places like walmart just there workers on to Medicare/Medicaid at the same time upper management getting payed a lot. Now upper management can take a small pay cut so that all walmart workers can get a real Health Care Plan.
Medicare and defense (Score:5, Insightful)
For the last 12 years, they've pointed out over and over that the primary cause of our budget woes is Medicare/Medicaid and to a lesser extent Social Security.
Forgetting about a couple of unfunded wars are we? Or a military that outspends the combined budget of the next 15 largest militaries combined for no obvious reason? Medicare and Defense are the big budget problems. Social Security not so much.
Social Security is not funded like Medicare or Defense. It was only last year that expenses exceeded non-interest income and it won't be until 2021 at present funding that total expenses exceed total revenues. Social Security is fully funded and what funding problems it has are fairly easy to fix. Of the biggest government expenditures Social Security is quite literally the least of our problems. Extend the age to receive benefits and a few other simple tweaks to funding and it will be fine.
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And is that the fault of Social Security or the rest of the government? What if the surplus SS had all those years had been saved/invested, instead of being spent by other parts of the government?
And stop talking people wanting something for nothing - the people that want SS to pay them are the same people that have been paying into SS their entire lives. Why is it ok to criticize them, but not, for example, people holding government debt.
What is the difference between abolishing/cutting SS, and defaulting
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I am so fickin pissed about this kind of sentiment. As if all old people are poor.
The real fact is that the elderly are the RICHEST segment of the population.
But any time you bring up the fact that we're paying for Warren Buffet's health care and have been writing him a monthly Social Security check for a few decades, the progressives are "lalalalalal I can't hear you!". Instead they insist on raising capital gains taxes on everyone because because Buffet.
Means testing solves this problem, right now. It a
Wow, 3% = doom? (Score:2, Insightful)
From TFA: "1,082,370 U.S. citizens employed in the life sciences, such as biology and genetics, as well as physical and social sciences. Of these, approximately 31,000"
Wow, those are some massive cuts. An entire whopping 3% of the people may lose their jobs!
People just don't get it. The US government does not need to cut its budget by 3%. It needs to cut its budget by 50% or more. Many programs and federal departments need eliminated entirely. It's not even about the $16 Trillion debt. If the government ran
Re:Wow, 3% = doom? (Score:5, Insightful)
People just don't get it. The US government does not need to cut its budget by 3%. It needs to cut its budget by 50% or more.
It really isn't that simple, though. The process has to be gradual or everything will implode. Cut the budget by 50% and the economy will take such hit that US collected taxes will drop more than 50% (presumably necessitating further cuts, and so on). Not to mention how many people might starve without foodstamps while you are doing this.
Anyway, a good start would be to force our politicians to keep all wars IN the budget. Iraq and Afganistan are staying outside of the budget in "emergency appropriations" or whatever they are called.
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I think everyone understands that. They big thing the economy needs is to know what to expect. So you don't cut the budget 50% in year one, but what you do is plan 50% cuts and say in year X buget A will be...
That way everyone knows where they need to make adjustments.
Re:Wow, 3% = doom? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Austerity measures are a failure because of implementation. The percentage of the GDP spent by the federal and state governments needs to be reduced over time, as does the percentage of the GDP spent on healthcare. (Two birds with one stone.) Without that happening, we will keep ending up with a system that at best just redistributes wealth.
I am all for a safety net, and because of the nature of hiring and firing in the corporate world today I think much of that needs to be fortified. At the same time, I
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Ironically the only reason your company is a certified "woman owned" business by the government(s) is so that you can do business with the government(s).
In the private sector no one gives a shit who owns your company, they just care about what and how you provide your goods/services.
Re:Wow, 3% = doom? (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is the deal: According to the Tax Policy Center, if we cap itemized deductions at $50,000 and keep tax rates as they are today, we would raise $749 billion in tax revenue over ten years.
Moreover, according to the TPC's distribution table, 96.2% of the extra revenue would come from the top quintile, with 79.9% from the top one percent.
Right idea, wrong target (Score:5, Insightful)
Does not that then suggests that the government should cut back on military spending? But no, they prefer to cut NASA's budget. After the priority is to blow people and clog the banksters with money.
Re:Right idea, wrong target (Score:5, Insightful)
Does not that then suggests that the government should cut back on military spending? But no, they prefer to cut NASA's budget. After the priority is to blow people and clog the banksters with money.
Don't forget the TSA monstrosity that has done absolutely nothing to stop a single terrorist in 11 years (and counting). That's an easy place to start cutting.
Also, much of the Iraq/Afganistan war spending was funded through "supplementary spending" bills, thus these expenses were never in the budget to begin with! Clever, n'est pas?
Re:Right idea, wrong target (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand the soviet union overspent on the military side which lead to its bankruptcy and collapse.The fact is that military spending it Keynesianism, it injects money into the economy and keep people employed and busy. Military does also not interfere with the normal market as citizens tend to buy no tanks [youtube.com].
It is also well known that entering WWII spent the US out of the Great depression, war keynesianism that is.
(*) in fact is demonstrates the lack of cohesion and ethnic union in US society that makes difficult to build the solidarity to support universal healthcare protection.
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Add to that war loans to the UK which were actually repaid in full eventually which netted you quite a pretty penny. I'm not complaining here, as I believe the US offered to write those debts off at one point but we declined the offer, and the deal was far from unfair.
Re:Right idea, wrong target (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus! That Wall Street jizz tastes mighty good, doesn't it? Those 'entitlements' were fully funded before the banks robbed them blind to finance their stock market fraud. Restore the Pre-Reagan tax rates and make the Federal Reserve stop subsidizing the derivatives markets. Eliminate the social security tax cap. Tell big business to use domestic labor, or lose their corporate charters and tax give-a-ways. Ending the wars is a gimme. Abolish prohibition. These are just some of the ways to put an end to this nonsense.
20% of budget (Score:5, Insightful)
Military spending is a red herring. Yes it can be cut. But even if we completely eliminated it we'd still be on a path to bankruptcy due to the above entitlements.
No it is most definitely NOT a red herring and your argument could apply equally to Medicare or Social Security which. Each of those three programs account for around 20% of the federal budget. You could apply your exact same argument to Medicare since it accounts for close to the same amount of cash as the Defense budget. If we accept your argument, even if we eliminated Medicare completely (ignoring the obvious devastation that would cause) it wouldn't balance the budget at current taxation levels. Some combination of cuts to Defense and Medicare are inevitable unless we significantly increase taxation. (I'm less worried about SS since it can easily be fixed and still is self funding)
Re:Right idea, wrong target (Score:5, Insightful)
Something needs to be done, surely, but I'm not sure it requires lower benefits. I live in Denmark, which has better social programs than the United States, but less debt. Why? Two things mainly: 1) The programs are run much more efficiently, with competent administration by technocrats, and some use of private-sector contracting where appropriate; and 2) taxes are set at a level sufficient to pay for the programs.
Re:Wow, 3% = doom? (Score:5, Insightful)
The US government does not need to cut its budget by 3%. It needs to cut its budget by 50% or more. Many programs and federal departments need eliminated entirely. It's not even about the $16 Trillion debt. If the government ran honest accounts, it's about the $200 Trillion debt.
Or what? The sky will fall in and the US will go bankrupt? Civilisation will cease?
You've been fed the biggest, most damaging lie of the last four years, which is government debt works the same as personal household debt. It doesn't.
Deficits aren't the issue here. They go up, they go down, they have always been with us and always will be. That is the nature of the beast. Keynes taught us that deficits are structural, and more or less look after themselves. The key is to keep growth as high as possible. That means investment and government spending during bad runs. Eventually, the ratio of deficit to GDP stabalises. This happened here in the UK post 1945, where government spending hit something like 70% of GDP. The sky didn't fall in then, and it sure as hell won't now.
The US is recovering a shedload faster than the Eurozone and the UK because so far it hasn't bought into the austerity argument. Austerity will do nothing except destroy the fragile recovery. The austerity idea that the private sector will bridge public sector spending cuts is an outright lie.
The budget cut argument is nothing more than a mechanism to transfer wealth to the rich. It is their argument and their ideas that you are parroting, for their benefit. To the rest of us it causes nothing but harm.
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If you run a deficit during growth years then you are ignoring what "Keynes taught us", you can't just grab the one bit you happen to like.
It is not inevitable that deficit to GDP stabilizes, numerous countries have collapsed in the past rather than stabilizing. With collapse meaning many things from people starving to standards of living plummeting to civil war.
And somehow the country that was probably worst affected by that financial crisis and has best fixed things up - Iceland - went the austerity route
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Only Medicare and Defense matter (Score:3, Interesting)
It needs to cut its budget by 50% or more. Many programs and federal departments need eliminated entirely.
The only programs that truly matter as far as the deficit is concerned are Medicare/Medicaid, Defense and Social Security. Those three together account for about two-thirds [wikipedia.org] of the US budget. Get those programs under control and the problem is solved. All other discretionary spending combined accounts for less than 20% of the budget. Either we need to raise taxes to fully fund the programs we seem to want or we need to cut those programs to a level of taxation we are willing to accept. Either way will w
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Huh, I read that blog post. It states that the debt is $200 trillion, and does some hand-waving to justify that position, but no actual details. Just fear mongering. Who knows, maybe they are right, but they made no effort at all to prove to anyone except an innumerate conspiracy theorist that they are right.
Re:Wow, 3% = doom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, the US electorate just finished voting in President Santa Claus who's mandate was "give us more free stuff" you won't see that budget cut of 50%,
Pure bullshit. Obama was chosen by the US electorate because he has promised to increase taxes to, you know, bring in more revenue. He is quite willing to cut spending, though to a lesser degree than Republicans. The budget can be balanced by either cutting spending, increasing income or, most likely by a combination of the two (one can argue where the balance lies)
Let's be realistic though. You guys are fucked, plain and simple and you're heading for a screaming doom much like Europe is unless you figure out that trying to spend your way out of debt is a bad idea.
Where are you based, anyway? How is your country managing? Got any good suggestions?
Re:Wow, 3% = doom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, there is a little detail you may have missed. The President doesn't have the AUTHORITY to change the tax structure. Congress does; yet - gee - the same electorate returned who returned Obama also returned a Republican majority in the all important House of Representatives.
Re:Wow, 3% = doom? (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, there is a little detail you may have missed. The President doesn't have the AUTHORITY to change the tax structure. Congress does;
Well, no, he does not -- but he was leading the negotiations between D and R earlier and the only reason these negotiations fell apart is because the ratio of 80% spending cuts and 20% tax increases was still not acceptable to the tea party.
I think they were seriously hoping to negotiate to 100% and 0% compromise.
yet - gee - the same electorate returned who returned Obama also returned a Republican majority in the all important House of Representatives.
Not sure what your point is. Representatives are not a single unit (like the President). There is a significant ratio of incumbent retention, mostly due to gerrymandering. Barely 5% of the races tend to be competitive or even in doubt (unless the incumbent retires). I wouldn't read into this at all.
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You said Obama was elected because he "promised to increase taxes". He can't make that promise except cynically, because he doesn't have the AUTHORITY to implement it. I rather doubt he did make that promise. I expect he promised to work toward getting tax increases approved. Fine. So far, he has expended close to zero political capital toward that end.
You really are "not sure what my point is" about the Presidential and the House results taken together? I generally disengage when somebody starts to cast a
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You said Obama was elected because he "promised to increase taxes". He can't make that promise except cynically, because he doesn't have the AUTHORITY to implement it. I rather doubt he did make that promise. I expect he promised to work toward getting tax increases approved. Fine. So far, he has expended close to zero political capital toward that end.
Yes, you are correct. Obama promised to work towards getting tax increases approved. He did block (promised to veto and stopped for the time being) Bush tax-cut extensions. So he had done _something_ towards his promise
Perhaps even more accurately, Romney promised to work really hard to cut taxes further (and I believe him on that).
You really are "not sure what my point is" about the Presidential and the House results taken together? ... The same electorate who went to the polls and gave Obama a narrow edge in the popular vote also gave Republicans a more substantial edge retained in the House. Which action constitutes a mandate? ... Yes, the Representatives are not a single unit. So? They are 435 individual units, and every single one of those units stands for re-election every two years. The races are just as competitive as the electorate wants them to be. If you think you can explain the results away by gerrymandering, I'm not buying it.
Choosing a President can be seen as a mandate (though, even here, we are talking about 58.7 million vs 56.1 million votes). With house of representatives, I think the results ar
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You keep saying that, but you are wrong. He can veto any extension of the Bush tax cuts. Taxes will automatically go up. He doesn't have the authority to _arbitrarily_ raise taxes, but he most definitely has the authority to raise taxes.
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No, as a matter of fact he actually doesn't have the authority to raise taxes. It doesn't matter how many times you claim otherwise. If the taxes do automatically go up, it will be because of a process enacted into law last term by Congress and the President. He couldn't stop that process on his own authority, and he won't be triggering that process on his own authority. Do you understand?
Actually, he doesn't need the power (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole "fiscal cliff" doom the fox network is spreading (check who owns redneck eh discovery) just means that if congress digs in its heels and does nothing the President gets his way by default because tax breaks that the repubicans want to extend and increase for the rich will END!
Obama can just sit back and relax if he has the balls, he can get far more taxes by simply waiting out the republicans then trying to bargain with them. The smarter republicans know this (both of them) and are not at all ple
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I give the President more credit than that. He wants the government to get together and implement the details of spending and taxation by intelligent policy, not by letting arbitrary automatic hammers that nobody really thinks are intelligently conceived come down. Obama definitely does not want a large middle class tax hike, but that's what the hammer stands to saddle him with.
I think the Republicans want the same thing, and of course their idea of the details of the policy to implement are widely divergen
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Do you really think that once the fiscal speed bump hits the Republicans won't try to make deals to save their precious military budget increases?
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Have I given any indication whatsoever that I might believe that? Um, that's a no, since you ask.
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Your problem is that the Democrats have been telling you that the Bush tax cuts were a "rich thing" for so long that you now believe it. The Bush tax cuts were pretty much across the board, rich, poor, middle class.. everyone got a cut.
Technically true, and misleading: If you look at the numbers [cbpp.org], Bush tax cuts were about 2.5% for poor and middle-class people, and over 6% for upper-class people. Those in the richest 1% got approximately 85% of the value of the tax cut. So yes, it is mostly a "rich thing", because their $60K annual savings were much bigger, even as a percentage, than the average family's $1K cut (or the poor family's $100 cut).
Re:Wow, 3% = doom? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm happy if we tax the rich more, but our real problems are :
(1) Spending money on wasteful harmful shit, i.e. warfare (DoD, CIA, etc.), police state (FBI, NSA, etc.), drug war (DEA, etc.), etc.
(2) Permitting the financial industry to extract such insane rents on everything by not regulating them.
(3) Subsidizing established industries, especially oil, nuclear, and agricultural subsidies.
We could cut taxes by massive amounts if we halted all that waste, corruption, and exploitation.
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Everything does need to be on the table (Score:3)
Vital, down-and-dirty national spending and revenue decisions have been put off for GENERATIONS. We are staring doom in the face. Can salvation be found solely in science spending? Of course not. But does every single budget item and all tax policies and rates need to be on the table and without any sacred cows? HELL YES. And then the specific choices should be wise ones.
Without firm specifics at hand, I still feel very confident that there is 3% of utterly useless fat that could be trimmed from science funding. That's all we're talking about here.
P.S. - I admit that I see no sign whatsoever that seriously addressing the general situation is anywhere near the radar of the fools leading the nation - fools that WE installed. Profound differences over what needs to be done exist. FINE. OF COURSE they exist. But these losers won't even engage. That represents the most disgusting, reprehensible behavior which is possible to imagine.
Re:Everything does need to be on the table (Score:4, Insightful)
But does every single budget item and all tax policies and rates need to be on the table and without any sacred cows? HELL YES. And then the specific choices should be wise ones.
Without firm specifics at hand, I still feel very confident that there is 3% of utterly useless fat that could be trimmed from science funding. That's all we're talking about here.
Well, if you are so confident on year after year budgets, please compute what percentage the US research budget will be after 10 years of 3%/pa "fat reduction".
Then see how long 'til China overtakes US, given that 2011 saw China's R&D budget increasing 9.2% [china.org.cn] on a year-to-year basis.
Isn't it ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
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You add the productive folks in with the working poor who do all the distasteful, oftentimes dangerous jobs and you start to wonder why exactly we keep the "managerial class" around
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you start to wonder why exactly we keep the "managerial class" around
Managing us, what else? =P
Keep in mind, *we* made the managers the same way *we* made the politicians. They're not extra terrestrials invading our business, but people like us that managed to get results from us.
They're the right tool to do the right job. Blame your colleagues every time you boss screws you without consequences. He does it because this is the way that works with your team.
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... and you start to wonder why exactly we keep the "managerial class" around
Put them on the B-ark!
Correction (Score:3, Informative)
"The German science programs that landed the first man on the moon" - Corrected
Big difference between US and Europe (Score:2)
A huge percentage of our spending is in maintaining the empire. Bring all of the troops home and cu all payments to foreign governments would solve this problem overnight.
If we could give up the $1T+ empire we would be fine.
If you then default in the debt we would be in great shape. You could even pass a law to make those bond losses count as earned income over the next 10 years to minimize the harm to citizens. Plus nobody would lend us money and we would automatically balance the budget.
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We just kicked the president of Egypt in the teeth by threatening his pipeline of money via "Foreign Aid" into doing the right thing in this war between Israel and the Palestinians, resulting in the continued existence of our only really friendly country in the middle east, and in our not having to get involved militarily ourselves to achieve that. Without "foreign aid", we'd either have to abandon Israel to annihilation by the Muslim Hordes, or come to their aid with troops.
IOW, we're getting a lot of ban
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> resulting in the continued existence of our only really friendly country in the middle east, and in our not having to
> get involved militarily ourselves to achieve that. Without "foreign aid", we'd either have to abandon Israel to
> annihilation by the Muslim Hordes, or come to their aid with troops.
So lets cut them loose. Honestly, Isreal has done nearly everything they reasonably could to deserve it. They build settlements in areas that are internationally recognized as Palestinian, then, in the
Re:Big difference between US and Europe (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it would help if you looked at the budget. Of about $3.5 trillion for 2012, approximately 2/3 is for social programs and entitlements. The other 1/3 is discretionary. The military is in the discretionary side. So "maintaining the empire" isn't the problem, it never was (and given how the rest of the world effects the U.S., having a strong military is likely worth the expense). Oh, and only about $700 billion is military, and much of that is spent in the U.S., so cutting it means less industry, less employed people, etc.
Re:Big difference between US and Europe (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and only about $700 billion is military, and much of that is spent in the U.S., so cutting it means less industry, less employed people, etc.
The GP is right. You must be blinded by "imperialism syndrome" to address 700 BILLIONS of Dollars with the adverb "just".
A lot of the problems USA faces today is the result of the very same policy you're defending as if means "more industries, more employed people, etc".
We must talking about efficiency. USA took 10 years and 2 TRILLION Dollars and something just to kill a single man [yahoo.com]. USA is clearly holding, I mean, doing something very wrong.
Granted, I'm not saying everything is wrong, neither that all the military expenses are unnecessary...
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How does military spending on making weapons in the US help US citizens? The contractors bid up prices on all materials and capital that could be put to use building things people want is instead going to build weapons to blow up things an kill people overseas. We would be much better off with all of those employed in the MIC working in other industries.
Lets be real for a moment (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if it's even possible for most people to be rational on this issue but I'll make a stab at it.
Is it scientific spending that is bankrupting the US government?
No it is not.
This is NOT where the cut should come. The cut should be everything else.
I won't state what should be cut because things are so ideological and people are so irrational on the subject that their eyes will roll back into their heads and start foaming at the mouth. But I think we can all agree that it isn't scientific spending that is generating the US debt.
Very well. Cut what is driving spending up.
Stop giving tax benefits to religion. (Score:4, Interesting)
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which would cause this tax scheme to run afoul of the constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state.
I'm not seeing how taxes would stop anyone from worshiping any god. But maybe if I claim to be a believer of the flying spaghetti monster and that the flying spaghetti monster says it is a sin to pay taxes, I'll be able to avoid paying taxes...
Also, organized religious communities provide a great many benefits to their members and to the community at large, including help for the poor, food kitchens, etc.
Then the church a way to acquire the necessary money to pay the taxes. If everyone else has to, I don't see why they shouldn't.
No pay for Congress = fixed by morning (Score:2, Insightful)
Whoever makes the budget gets paid last.
It's just that simple.
If there's no money left, then Congress should get no pay until the situation is fixed.
Sounds bad but... (Score:2)
Good programs can always be rebuilt, if not by us, then by someone else. At least the fiscal cliff will cut military programs...and cutting them is far more important to me than any science program. Other countries can have science programs and educate their people....we need to stop being such warmongers first.
Duke Nukem Run-on-the banks (Score:2)
Personally, I'd rather see Financial Crisis Quake.
Human progress (Score:2)
Wow, human progress is becoming a relic of human progress. Those humans must be a bunch of oxymorons!
Isn't this what we wanted? (Score:2)
I mean, we're the electorate, and we consistently vote for representatives who are short-sighted, self-interested, and frankly, stupid.
I don't care WHICH side of the political fence you're on. Both parties have full rosters of idiots, and we seem to be listening more and more to the histrionic extremists and punishing the moderate centrists.
BOTH parties seem entirely focused on maintaining their own partisan grip on power and enriching their supporters, rather than actually doing their jobs.
Instead of havi
Re:Isn't this what we wanted? (Score:4, Insightful)
BTW, the first mistake is assuming you are in the center.
We - and by this I mean everyone, including myself - need to depart from this simplistic, Ptolemaic political universe where we assume we each are at the middle, and everything swirls around us. The first point in figuring out where you're going is understanding where you are to start with.
Don't be Pauline Kael.
Try to understand that there is a broad spectrum of political opinion - even our idiom tends to betray us here as it's rarely as simple as a spectrum, although we tend to distill political issues down to (at best) a collection of 1-dimensional lines. You are somewhere on that spectrum and probably NOT in the center.
(Further, politically indecisive also is not ipso facto 'centrist'.)
This is incredibly difficult, because we naturally tend to circulate with friends of common opinion. It's very easy to say "I'm moderate" when in fact making such a statement is meaningless in any broader objective sense as it rarely means more than the implied "...among my friends."
Of course, all of this takes thought, personal candor, intellectual integrity, and hard thinking. Usually, one will find that at least a few of our gut-derived political positions turn out to be logically inconsistent and it requires courage to take those ideas apart and reassemble them. You might even change your mind.
We already fell off (Score:3, Interesting)
Suicide Pacts (Score:4, Insightful)
That's great as a motivator, except that one party is motivated by an ideology that actually wants that kind of austerity. In short: it's not a very good suicide pact if one side already has a death wish.
Also, don't worry about it being a mutual self-immolation: the Republicans will demand that only social spending (and not military) gets cut, and the Democrats will cave at the last minute in the name of compromise.
There is no cut in spending coming (Score:5, Informative)
Most people think that when they talk about cutting spending by 10% it means that if they spent $3 million this year on a program, next year they are going to spend $2.7 million. It doesn't. It means that they are going to spend $3.6 million rather than $4 million next year (numbers chosen for ease of calculation).
Re:Decline of western civilisation (Score:5, Insightful)
The financial problems of the US (and consequently the rest of the World) were caused by greed and stupidity - banks lending too much money to people who had no realistic prospect of paying off the loans, which in turn became 'toxic' debts.
The US has also got itself into the ridiculous situation of pissing-off half the World and as a result is now commited to spending un-sustainable ammounts of money on the Military.
As for science and science spending (which this thread is supposed to be about), well what do you expect. In a Nation where it seems half the population don't believe in Global Warming and the other half don't believe in Evolution, and science/technology is based on patenting curved corners then profiting from the resultant litigation, what chance does 'real' science stand?
Re: (Score:2)
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What rate would you set this Fair Tax at so that you would raise enough money to fund all the programmes you need to fund?
Would you have different rates for different classes of goods? E.g., gas/electricity, baby clothes, food, luxury goods, cars, ...
What about the problem that rich people simply don't spend all their money, therefore a fair tax could actually just mean they pay even less money than they do now on their earnings (tax avoidance notwithstanding). There's only so many sports cars you can buy.
T
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The Fair Tax is described in detail at www.fairtax.org, and I support that. The tax rate, effectively, is 30% as most people calculate taxes, although the Fair Tax info describes it as 23%, which is the amount of tax on the total price+tax amount.
The Fair Tax is designed to replace the amount of revenue raised by the current income tax, although the happy situation is that the income tax revenues have fallen lately, so the Fair Tax would actually generate more revenue than the income taxes do now.
The Fair
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Stop declaring war and sending money overseas. You'd get back about $500-750bn a year instantly.
It's because there has been this perception that money on wars boosts economies. That may have been true when the countries were building production capacity and put every scrap of resources into doing so but now the production capacity exists governments take loans our to operate that capacity for political purposes.
Science and innovation is not as sexy to uninformed populations so even though it creates jobs by building industry all that science stuff is just confusing so people don't support it. It kin