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That’s unpossible!
You forgot to speak about fueling economic growth...
You forgot to speak about selling govt assets...
Perhaps even renegotiate govt employee pay and benefits/pensions...
Restructuring while your still around is always an option.
And what’s worse, we now have the baby boom turning 65! Gahhh! USA’s baby boom is MASSIVE, lasting 15+ years from 1946-1962, and we’re going to see medicare beneficiaries rise from the 50M today to 80M in 2030.
when the baby boomers graduated from high school, the facilities were shut down and land sold. The teachers unions of course were pissed and many blamed prop 13, but it made alot of sense. As such you need plans to contract govt as the boom draws its end by 2030. Of course govt doesnt do a good job planning when it comes to spending.. Too much self interest.
Bellingham Bill
2012 Nov 13, 2:30pm
>You forgot to speak about fueling economic growth...
I don't see why private enterprise can't do that on their own, actually.
>You forgot to speak about selling govt assets...
That'd be just a further excursion on our road to hell. Haven't we given enough of the nation's natural wealth away these past 150+ years?
We should be nationalizing that, not giving it away more.
http://www.landgrant.org/platt.htm
>when the baby boomers graduated from high school, the facilities were shut down and land sold
wat
Nationally, boomer high school population peaked ~1978 at 17.3M, and this age cohort fell to 13.8M in 1992. While I'm sure some highschools closed in California, I am personally not aware of any in the several cities I lived in during this time -- the state was still growing with immigration, too.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CAPOP
>As such you need plans to contract govt as the boom draws its end by 2030
Alas, Gen X will be arriving into their retirement right then so we can't shrink shit.
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/hal_lm_USProj04age_87545_7.pdf
The dreams of small-government conservatives are going to crash on the rocks of demographic reality this decade. This ain't the 19th century, pardner.
curious2
2012 Nov 13, 2:38pm
But you can see how this Medicare especially is just a massive budget-busting bomb -- that was the impetus behind the House’s proposal to cut the elderly loose with $15,000/yr vouchers....
The impetus behind vouchers is to get "donations" from insurance lobbyists while maintaining the support of PhRMA, AMA, and AHA. The actual beneficiaries of these programs are the revenue recipients. Instead of artificially inflating medical demand with fee-for-service Medicare, and instead of wasting $ on vouchers, a better solution would be to pay some actual $ to actual people, and let them decide for themselves what to do with it. Some would spend it on pills, others on presents for the grandchildren, others on getting themselves frozen, others on one last party and a gun. Whatever, there is no need to bankrupt the country.
That'd be just a further excursion on our road to hell. Haven't we given enough of the nation's natural wealth away these past 150+ years?
We should be nationalizing that, not giving it away more.
you have been nationalizing land and property, pushing federal spending down to city and county level. Time to sell these assets and send back to federal govt.
Count the number of golf courses managed by the local govt. Not what I would call natural wealth ! Hell we have way way too much govt run golf courses in Santa Clara.
More land and more homes can be built.. well that would add jobs as well.
Bellingham Bill
2012 Nov 13, 2:59pm
Whatever, there is no need to bankrupt the country.
higher taxes aren't going to BK us, quite the opposite. A lot is going to have to change between now and 2030, though.
This is why the conservatives are in a funk that their dream of rolling back the country to the 19th century died last week. By 2016 a lot is going to be clearer about this current economy, or lack thereof.
But I don't know what's going to happen next month or next year. What I'm pretty sure about is that we're not going to make it to CBO's projection of a $20T real GDP by 2020. And without that, all talk of per-GDP percentages ("SSA will be x% in 2025, Medicare will be y%") is bunk.
Our costs will be what they be and we will all pay them. What is more important than the continued health of the nation? Why are we here if not to live?
Nationally, boomer high school population peaked ~1978 at 17.3M, and this age cohort fell to 13.8M in 1992. While I'm sure some highschools closed in California, I am personally not aware of any in the several cities I lived in during this time -- the state was still growing with immigration, too.
Campbell High School, although the namesake school of the district, was closed in 1982, because of declining enrollment in the area and in the district. Westmont and Del Mar's attendance boundaries subsequently expanded to pick up the slack. In 1985, after some negotiating, the City of Campbell purchased the campus, including the historic Heritage Theater, (built in 1938), and it became the Campbell Community Center. [5]
Branham High School was closed in 1990 and leased to Valley Christian until 1999, when the district decided it should be reopened
Blackford as a comprehensive high school closed in 1990, and became a continuation high school.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_Union_High_School_District
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunnyvale_High_School_%28California%29
Sunnyvale High School was the second public high school in the city of Sunnyvale, California. Opened in 1955 as part of the Fremont Union High School District, it served the community until being closed in 1981. In a nod to the nearby NAS Moffett Field, SHS adopted the Jets as its school mascot, predating the American Football League's New York Jets by eight years. Since 1991, the former SHS campus at 562 N. Britton Ave. has been home to The King's Academy, a parochial Christian middle/high school.
The dreams of small-government conservatives are going to crash on the rocks of demographic reality this decade. This ain't the 19th century, pardner.
Growth.. you need to enhance and promote industries.. which supply jobs and in turn increase income tax revenue. No you dont need more government for that.
Our costs will be what they be and we will all pay them. What is more important than the continued health of the nation? Why are we here if not to live?
we work !
Bellingham Bill
2012 Nov 13, 3:40pm
>you need to enhance and promote industries.
whatever happened to 'government not picking winners and losers'
What industries does government need to 'enhance and promote'? Why are they so crippled now that they can't get their act together when trillions of dollars of global capital is looking for yield?
"enhance and promote industries." Corps have done an excellent job overseas. Govt. should not interfere with Private Enterprise. If someone needs a job,move overseas.LOL
I wrote another long-winded post somewhere and thought I'd repost it here. Enjoy?
The people who are on the hook for paying the $5T+ government annual spending bill [outside of social security and some of medicare, which are funded by payroll taxes] are, to use a loaded term, the “successfulâ€. People in the top 10% basically.
Mid-upper middle class to the obscenely wealthy like Romney (and the disgustingly wealthy billionaires that are far above him).
The top 10% — people making $110,000 and above — make 40% of the income and pay 70% of the income taxes (an 18% tax rate).
http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0
Last year was a $1.1T fiscal deficit. How are we going to close that? (arguendo that it is in our economic best interest to reduce the deficit so we don’t end up like Japan.)
The top 5% pay $500B in taxes, so if we double taxes on them that’s $500B. Corporations pay $300B, so that’s another $300B if we double taxes on them. We can double taxes on the 5-10% crowd to get another $100B. $200B away, maybe that’s close enough, who knows.
But we’ve just DOUBLED taxes on the top decile of the economy! That’s unpossible!
So how the heck are we ever going to stop this deficit spending? Government cuts? If we do that, that will kill the middle class that is reliant on government spending for survival.
This nation is in fact totally screwed! We just hid it from ourselves by going massively into debt, 2000-now:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=cOa
is the total systemic debt leverage — all the debt / GDP.
And what’s worse, we now have the baby boom turning 65! Gahhh! USA’s baby boom is MASSIVE, lasting 15+ years from 1946-1962, and we’re going to see medicare beneficiaries rise from the 50M today to 80M in 2030.
At $10,000 per beneficiary, if we’re lucky (the older the baby boom gets the more expensive it’s going to be to keep them healthy)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/W824RC1
is the medicare spending curve.
Here’s ALL the social benefits to persons in blue:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=cOj
Red is ALL government tax receipts, showing that at the worst of the crash ALL of government income was going out as social benefits!
adding defense spending to the blue line:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=cOk
(which we should since defense is the nation’s best make-work program we got)
shows we need to raise taxes $600B to just pay for these two parts of spending, social welfare and defense.
But after we do that (which we’re not because we can’t) we STILL have to find the taxes to pay for the baby boom retirement wave, which isn’t going to peak until 2022.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=cOp
is social spending (blue) vs social insurance contributions (red)
Here’s the components of the blue line (spending) by program:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=cOr
showing the big movers are SSA and Medicare.
One thing I do think is that this social spending will be very stimulative, in that SSA checks get spent right back into the economy, creating jobs, and Medicare also creates tons of jobs and this will continue as we’ll have 30 million more seniors to take care of next decade!
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES6562000101
is health care workers in the US.
But you can see how this Medicare especially is just a massive budget-busting bomb -- that was the impetus behind the House’s proposal to cut the elderly loose with $15,000/yr vouchers instead of actual uncapped coverage on 80 million people like how the law is now — 80 million people consuming $20,000 a year is $1.6T. That’s a lot of the national weal being diverted into senior health care — twice the current defense budget!
The current negotiating position in DC is $100B/yr in tax raises on the top 5% of earners (ie. the return of Clinton tax rates on $250,000+ incomes) and $300B/yr in spending cuts. This is almost nothing and will be eaten up in a couple of years in rising Medicare costs alone.
Some people say we should forget about the deficit and just spend away while money is cheap to borrow. But the main problem I see with that is that the very structure of the economy has become completely imbalanced — the top 5% enjoy massive predatory positions on the 95%, raking in so much of the national income directly from working America.
To paraphrase George Carlin (and Clint Eastwood!) they own this country. The only way we can fix that, short of bloody revolution, is to tax it back from them.
But the conservatives’ guns are loud and numerous in this battle. Their whole constellation of propaganda mills created since the Powell Memo in the 1970s, Fox of course, plus more than half the print media, the neocon magazines, and talk radio on top of it.
Sweden, Denmark, Norway etc. have 40-50% tax to GDP ratios. That’s what we need, but to get there, we basically have to double the tax burden on most everyone.
That’s a difficult road.