patrick.net

Actually imposing stiff import duties, while eliminating all immigration would cause nearly full employment, and that could easily balance the budget with no cuts.

zzyzzx says

Dan8267 says

Besides, aren't you conservatives for small government, getting rid of public sector employees, and for moving employment to the private sector? If you fight my proposal, you are contradicting everything you said you are for.

No. Because paying people to work is always better then paying them not to work.

Not sure I agree. Paying hitmen to go around killing innocent folks would be worse, IMO, then paying them to do nothing.

4 hour minimum response time limit has expired.
Looks like I can book this one in the win column.........yawwwn........

SoftShell says

Over the decades the majority of the time the military is keeping the peace, not war profiteering.

So with your plan, during peace keeping times, tens of millions are jobless forcing the government to borrow/tax/print their way to fund endless social net cash distribution with all the accompanying maladies.

Greece redux...

Dan8267 says

War profiteering is worse than putting everyone on Food Stamps and Section 8 housing. At least in the later case, you are just paying people to be idle.

Hitmen? Jeez...you's livin in the olden daze....

tatupu70 says

zzyzzx says

Dan8267 says

Besides, aren't you conservatives for small government, getting rid of public sector employees, and for moving employment to the private sector? If you fight my proposal, you are contradicting everything you said you are for.

No. Because paying people to work is always better then paying them not to work.

Not sure I agree. Paying hitmen to go around killing innocent folks would be worse, IMO, then paying them to do nothing.

zzyzzx says

This looks incorrect. Gov spending is less than 3600 billions against a GDP of 16,800. That's less than 22%.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s[1][id]=M318191A027NBEA

zzyzzx says

Actually imposing stiff import duties, while eliminating all immigration would cause nearly full employment, and that could easily balance the budget with no cuts.

Actually duties are a lose lose as other countries will impose tariffs as well. Smoot Hawley was an example of this.

The US is going to have a labor shortage. Since many of China's jobs are going to go to other countries like Mexico. The immigrant problem won't be a problem.

indigenous says

The US is going to have a labor shortage.

The whole problem we have now is the worldwide labor excess. This keeps inflation low. This creates huge inequalities in wages. This requires a 'permanent' stimulus to force spending in the US without revenues.

At the root of this situation is trade. At least this is one of the root.

And obviously there are those who profit from it, but that's not the US population.

Heraclitusstudent says

The whole problem we have now is the worldwide labor excess. This keeps inflation low. This creates huge inequalities in wages. This requires a 'permanent' stimulus to force spending in the US without revenues.

At the root of this situation is trade. At least this is one of the root.

And obviously there are those who profit from it, but that's not the US population.

That is not my understanding.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/emsi/2013/03/07/americas-skilled-trades-dilemma-shortages-loom-as-most-in-demand-group-of-workers-ages/

In addition to this there is going to be rebalancing in trade which will turn the US into a producer country with a trade surplus.

Deflation is caused by a decline in demand and technology that makes things cheaper.

The surplus in labor is world wide as you say which will create growth and a middle class world wide.

indigenous says

The US is going to have a labor shortage.

Doubt it. They've been saying it forever, and just used it as an excuse to fire Americans and replace them with cheaper labor overseas.

Machinery is getting a lot better, you need a lot less people to do physical labor these days. It simply makes no sense to me that there even might be a labor shortage.

FortWayne says

Machinery is getting a lot better, you need a lot less people to do physical labor these days. It simply makes no sense to me that there even might be a labor shortage.

Yea I hear you it is counter intuitive. To me the best predictor of the future (is that a tautology?) is demographics.

The baby boom predicts a lot. As they retire there are going to be shortages in the occupations they now have.

Secondly there is going to be a rebalancing, transforming the US into a surplus trade country. It has been going on so long that it seem inconceivable that this will happen.

When a country trades with other countries it cannot trade it's currency in perpetuity. China cannot invest and produce in perpetuity eventually it becomes over-invested. So it has to raise it's domestic consumption.

The dollar is being and will be devalued. How can you print 6 trillion dollars and not have this happen. This will make US products cheaper.

If you see it differently I'm listening?

Bi-model distributions can occur in nature. Think that this may be part of an evolutionary selection/discrimination.

Example: Technology creates real and percieved improvements in living standards, but at a cost. Those 4-6% of people who manufacture, those who develop can create many conveniences (Apple/Samsung engineers/techs create 1e6 ph/person).

However thus is created a bimodal distribution of wealth, now called the 1%.

Entitlemented says

Bi-model distributions can occur in nature. Think that this may be part of an evolutionary selection/discrimination.

Example: Technology creates real and percieved improvements in living standards, but at a cost. Those 4-6% of people who manufacture, those who develop can create many conveniences (Apple/Samsung engineers/techs create 1e6 ph/person).

However thus is created a bimodal distribution of wealth, now called the 1%

yea but wealth distribution is pretty constant through history. The times of punctuated equilibrium occur when the government interferes. Like right now and in the early 30s.

indigenous says

yea but wealth distribution is pretty constant through history

Are you kidding me? You are truly clueless.

tatupu70 says

indigenous says

yea but wealth distribution is pretty constant through history

Are you kidding me? You are truly clueless.

Show me otherwise

This quote from this:

In chapter 11, we see how Mises addressed the issue of the haves versus the have-nots. In particular, he distinguished between capital and consumer goods. Consumer goods largely benefit only one person at a time. A man enjoys the benefits of a particular shirt while he wears it. Capital goods yield benefits to a flood of consumers at once. Why, then, the Marxist fixation on state ownership of the power company when its customers have electricity? Mises notes that a customer does not need to own the plant to have electricity.

With this in mind, how would the conventional sense of wealth distribution change if we excluded capital goods from the issue? In the United States, 1 percent of the population owns 38 percent of the wealth (as of 2001). But how much of that 38 percent of the wealth is left to that 1 percent if capital goods are excluded? Most likely, 95 percent of their wealth is tied up in rights to capital goods. So consumer wealth distribution is far tighter than academics imagine. Everyone has access to running water, telephones, potato chips, and television. That's what counts in a standard of living.

http://mises.org/daily/4819

indigenous says

cepting date is NOT knowledge.

huh?

tatupu70 says

indigenous says

cepting date is NOT knowledge.

huh?

Exactly

indigenous says

Actually duties are a lose lose as other countries will impose tariffs as well. Smoot Hawley was an example of this.

Nope. If we simply stopped trading with other countries and made everything ourselves, we would be way ahead. Check out or trade deficit. I would exempt Canada and still keep them as the only other country in NAFTA

indigenous says

Yea I hear you it is counter intuitive. To me the best predictor of the future (is that a tautology?) is demographics.

The baby boom predicts a lot. As they retire there are going to be shortages in the occupations they now have.

Secondly there is going to be a rebalancing, transforming the US into a surplus trade country. It has been going on so long that it seem inconceivable that this will happen.

When a country trades with other countries it cannot trade it's currency in perpetuity. China cannot invest and produce in perpetuity eventually it becomes over-invested. So it has to raise it's domestic consumption.

The dollar is being and will be devalued. How can you print 6 trillion dollars and not have this happen. This will make US products cheaper.

If you see it differently I'm listening?

I know what you mean. It's hard to tell when that will take place.

zzyzzx says

indigenous says

Actually duties are a lose lose as other countries will impose tariffs as well. Smoot Hawley was an example of this.

Nope. If we simply stopped trading with other countries and made everything ourselves, we would be way ahead. Check out or trade deficit. I would exempt Canada and still keep them as the only other country in NAFTA

That is not how comparative advantage works. If we quit buying I phones from China they would cost so much that a small percentage would be able to afford them, maybe making them a nonviable product. Chinese workers and companies would not have the work that the I phones now give them. Rinse and repeat millions of times and the volume of the economy is much worst lower in both countries.

The old example of a pencil is used to illustrate this better. A pencil requires rubber from South America graphite from China and wood from Canada. Each country is the most efficient producer of the different commodities. Not buying from them would raise the price of a pencil so much that people would simply quit using them as much or completely.

This video is Well worth watching, it is brilliant, pay particular attention at 5 min into the video where he talks about David Ricardo.

http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html

SoftShell says

Over the decades the majority of the time the military is keeping the peace, not war profiteering.

Maybe in Bizarro world, but not here. America has let several genocides take place since WWII while being in a constant state of war with multiple nations and nothing we have done has provided any political stability.

It is foolish to believe that an industry that profits from war and geopolitical instability would work towards peace. It would be like Apple telling people to stop buying frivolous electronics and go outside and talk to people in actual reality. It would be like McDonald's telling people to get off their fat asses, stop eating burgers, go vegan, and eat vegetables they grow in their backyards. It would be like the local strip club telling men to take a cold shower and be faithful to their wives and girlfriends. It would be like the church telling people that the Bible was made up and there is no god or afterlife. It would be like Miley Cyrus putting on clothes in her next video. it would be like a real estate agent telling you that now is not the time to buy.

Paralithodes says

Dan8267 says

Besides, aren't you conservatives for small government, getting rid of public

sector employees, and for moving employment to the private sector? If you fight

my proposal, you are contradicting everything you said you are for.

Besides, aren't you liberals for big, benevolent government that provides a big safety net for the unemployed, etc.? If you don't address the major unemployment issue that would result from your plan (i.e., if you dismiss it the way you are currently doing), you are contradicting everything you said you are for.

Actually no. Liberalism is a social philosophy, not an economic one.

However, I am for social safety nets for people who lost their employment provide that their work was beneficial to society and not parasitic. If a person makes money by causing death, suffering, or economic collapse, I say fuck them. Fuck the war profiteers. Fuck the financial manipulators who caused the Second Great Depression. Fuck human traffickers. I see no moral or ethical reason to support such assholes when they lose their ill-gotten revenue streams.

Nonetheless, you dodge the question and in doing so have confirmed that conservatives are complete hypocrites who do not, and have never, believed in small government or individual accountability. Conservatives say they are for small government when they see a poor black boy eating because of food stamps, but conservatives have no problem with big government bombing that same poor black boy with a drone. Total hypocrisy.

I'd rather my tax dollars go to saving human lives than taking them. I guess you'd call that liberalism.

What???

Apple sells extended warranties..doesn't sound like someone promoting purchasing their newer equipment..

McDonalds sells the supreme veggie wrap with grilled chicken...skip the sauce and you have a legitimate dietary lunch.

Church of Mormon does not recognize the bible's legitimacy.

Real Estate agents will tell you now is not the time to buy when they are in the frenzied act of spending the cash they have already pilfered.

Miley has never performed nude!!

ps. I have no comeback for the stripclub analogy...

Dan8267 says

It is foolish to believe that an industry that profits from war and geopolitical instability would work towards peace. It would be like Apple telling people to stop buying frivolous electronics and go outside and talk to people in actual reality. It would be like McDonald's telling people to get off their fat asses, stop eating burgers, go vegan, and eat vegetables they grow in their backyards. It would be like the local strip club telling men to take a cold shower and be faithful to their wives and girlfriends. It would be like the church telling people that the Bible was made up and there is no god or afterlife. It would be like Miley Cyrus putting on clothes in her next video. it would be like a real estate agent telling you that now is not the time to buy.

Dan8267 says

Nonetheless, you dodge the question and in doing so have confirmed that
conservatives are complete hypocrites who do not, and have never, believed in
small government or individual accountability. Conservatives say they are for
small government when they see a poor black boy eating because of food stamps,
but conservatives have no problem with big government bombing that same poor
black boy with a drone. Total hypocrisy.

So pretty much anyone who serves in the military, either enlisted or officer, is a war profiteer or a parasitic killer who causes death?

Dan8267 says

Actually no. Liberalism is a social philosophy, not an economic one.

LOL... For such a self-proclaimed highly intelligent person, this is quite a claim from you!

zzyzzx says

Dan8267 says

Besides, aren't you conservatives for small government, getting rid of public sector employees, and for moving employment to the private sector? If you fight my proposal, you are contradicting everything you said you are for.

No. Because paying people to work is always better then paying them not to work.

Dodge. The choice wasn't between paying people to work or paying them to be idle. The choice was between paying people to work in the public sector or paying people to work in the private sector.

You conservatives and Fox "News" claim that the private sector is always the better employer and that we need to slash public sector jobs.

I guess you're only talking about teachers, fire fighters, and paramedics. Well, honey, it applies to the people making tanks the army doesn't want or need as well.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/TxodWMRgyUs
http://www.youtube.com/embed/iX4euUmtK2s
http://www.youtube.com/embed/9EqnyTDx3DA
http://www.youtube.com/embed/6ln_azcKMkU
http://www.youtube.com/embed/9LWNTUK8KtA

Oh, I could go on forever in supplying videos of conservatives arguing that we need to slash public sector jobs to the bare minimum in order to create more private sector jobs.

zzyzzx says

Actually imposing stiff import duties, while eliminating all immigration would cause nearly full employment, and that could easily balance the budget with no cuts.

Not without banning all outsourcing of tech job and H1B Visas. That's like importing workers.

SoftShell says

4 hour minimum response time limit has expired.

I am not on your schedule. You should consider it a privilege to hear my words of wisdom whenever they come.

Dan8267 says

Actually no. Liberalism is a social philosophy, not an economic one.

Ironically there is in fact such a thing as "economic liberalism" and this is the opposite of what Americans think it is: it's basically free enterprise, free markets, and MINIMUM government intervention.

If you go in Europe and talk to people about liberalism: people will understand it's the right wing, the opposite of socialism.

But in the US , liberalism became focused, as Dan says, on social liberalism: initially this was still the same kind of ideas: freedom from government interventions. Hippies were liberals. They didn't want anyone, and even less the government, to tell them how to live. By contrast, the republicans were traditionally the party of order: for law and order, against drugs, against certain things in the bedroom and all ready to regulate it.

Only recently, people who are basically socialists called themselves "liberals" (probably to escape the socialist tag) and the right wing happily conflated "liberals" with "socialists". So the two initial opposites became typical big-government left wing tags.

zzyzzx says

You're undocumented chart is contradicted by usgovernmentspending.com which has the accurate and detailed numbers. Generate a graph based on that data. The real data clearly shows the warfare spending is out of control. Are you refuting the accuracy of the data at usgovernmentspending.com? If so, where is your counter-evidence.

Heraclitusstudent says

Only recently, people who are basically socialists called themselves
"liberals" (probably to escape the socialist tag) and the right wing happily
conflated "liberals" with "socialists". So the two initial opposites became
typical big-government left wing tags.

Yep... And to claim that liberalism is a social philosophy, not an economic one, is ridiculous given that the primary method they seek to implement their social philosophies, including exactly what Dan is talking about in this thread, is through economic policy...

Heraclitusstudent says

Ironically there is in fact such a thing as "economic liberalism" and this is the opposite of what Americans think it is: it's basically free enterprise, free markets, and MINIMUM government intervention.

That's called Libertarianism. See Ron Paul.

Heraclitusstudent says

If you go in Europe and talk to people about liberalism: people will understand it's the right wing, the opposite of socialism.

Correct. The terms right and left refer to arbitrary groupings of political positions. What constitutes the right and left in America is not the same as what constitutes the right and left in other countries.

I am neither a rightist or a leftist. I am a liberal. Although there is some appeal in Libertarianism, I also find two fundamental flaws in that philosophy, so I'm not a libertarian.

So, Dan, pretty much anyone who serves in the military, either enlisted or officer, is a war profiteer or a parasitic killer who causes death?

Heraclitusstudent says

Gov spending is less than 3600 billions against a GDP of 16,800. That's less than 22%.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s[1][id]=M318191A027NBEA

Beware the Fed. That chart shows only federal "budget" spending, not total government spending. Much federal government spending occurs off budget, e.g. W administration wars were off-budget. There are federal supplemental spending bills, unfunded mandates on states, plus state and local spending, etc. Try Dan's link instead, and notice it reports total government spending is much higher than federal budget spending:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_2002_2018USr_15s1li211mcn_F0t

Even those links don't count federally mandated non-government spending, i.e. indirect taxes for example Obamacare where instead of spending money directly the federal government requires you to spend the money instead. With Fed ZIRP and QE bailing out member banks, some share of CEO bonuses and corporate jets should also be counted as a type of federal spending, and btw it could have been better spent on other things. Looking ahead, medical is the only single category where reform could eliminate the debt.

Dan8267 says

New Renter says

Dan8267 says

If they break the law, jail them. Better than having pot smokers in jail.

To do which you depend on those same thuggy cops you lambast in so many of your posts.

Fire them. Hire honest ones. Last time I checked, there's no shortage of people looking for jobs.

New Renter says

Both would immediately relocate to China and sell to anyone with enough money.

Don't like it America? Whattya gonna do about it?

If the U.S. government can cease any person's assets anywhere in the world for something as little as growing pot, it can do so for selling weapons to enemy states.

To point 1 - if it was that easy to eliminate the bad cops and hire good oenms why don;t you think that action has not ALREADY been taken, also why do you think it would be taken with a greatly reduced military?

To point two. The US government doesn't even bother prosecuting big banks that admit to having laundered money for the big drug cartels, why do you think they'd go after big arms dealers?

Paralithodes says

So, Dan, pretty much anyone who serves in the military, either enlisted or officer, is a war profiteer or a parasitic killer who causes death?

Soldiers get paid shit. The vast majority of the war industry's profits go to parasitic scumbags like defense contractors, lobbyists, and mercenaries. The 10% of the defense budget I keep in my plan above is enough to pay for soldiers in peace time.

Nice attempt at bait-n-switch though.

In any case, we shouldn't be sending our young men and women to get their limbs blown off by IEDs planted by people who were made into our enemies by the warfare industry. You want to keep soldiers safe? Turn them into engineers, construction workers, teachers, scientists and other professionals we desperately need in this country. The scientist who finds a cure for even one cancer will save more lives than all the soldiers in all of history.

curious2 says

Try Dan's link instead, and notice it reports total government spending is much higher than federal budget spending

Yep. USGovernmentSpending is a great, non-partisan, no-b.s. site. It has very detailed and clearly laid out spending data. So far, it's the best damn source of information on government spending at the federal, state, and local level I've found anywhere on or off the Web.

I find it interesting that conservatives are so much more adverse to using data from this site than liberals, socialists, leftists, or Democrats. To me that suggests that conservatives don't like accurate, truthful data as it doesn't support their crazy perceptions of reality. It's hard to make the case that welfare costs us 3 times what the warfare industry does when hard data shows the exact opposite.

New Renter says

if it was that easy to eliminate the bad cops and hire good oenms why don;t you think that action has not ALREADY been taken

Currently, who hires cops? Cops do. If even 10% of cops were honest, the systematic crime in police force would be exposed and prosecuted, thus we can conclude that at least 90% of cops are complacent in police crime. Why would such criminal cops hire honest cops? They'd prefer cops who stick up for other cops no matter what.

Firing and hiring must be done by people outside the police force.

New Renter says

why do you think it would be taken with a greatly reduced military

I do not know what you are asking here.

New Renter says

The US government doesn't even bother prosecuting big banks that admit to having laundered money for the big drug cartels, why do you think they'd go after big arms dealers?

Politicians are in bed with the big banks. I doubt these politicians would be OK with Boeing selling U.S. military secrets and products to the Russians, the Chinese, and North Korea. If they are, kick them out of office.

I can only provide solutions, not the fiat or the political will to implement them.

Dan8267 says

To me that suggests that conservatives don't like accurate, truthful data as it doesn't support their crazy perceptions of reality.

Most people are instinctively tribal, and substitute tribal loyalty for the hard work of analyzing data. The question, "What do the data say?" requires much effort to answer, and there is a risk of error. The question, "What do my tribal leaders say?" is much easier, and the brain tends to substitute easier questions for harder ones. Sadly, people don't notice the substitution, and believe they've answered the harder question when they haven't. Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow is fascinating on intellectual substitution.

It is a peeve of mine that the discrete words "conservative" and "liberal" have both been hijacked as tribal labels for policies that are neither conservative nor liberal. Even more bizarre, self-styled "Christian conservatives" hijack the phrase "natural law," substituting (of all things) Biblical law instead. When the founders of the republic, enlightenment thinkers who considered themselves liberal and conservative and who tended to believe in natural law, wanted somebody to write the Declaration of Independence, they turned to Thomas Jefferson (a lawyer), who would never have mixed up words like that. Alas, in their name, lesser lights stir these words into such mud that the concepts get lost; George Orwell warned about misuse of language rendering proscribed thoughts impossible. As he wrote, try to imagine a "not ungreen" field, and you'll see what sloppy language can do to the thought process.

Dan8267 says

Why would such criminal cops hire honest cops? They'd prefer cops who stick up for other cops no matter what.

Police departments tend to have a culture of loyalty; though I don't know what % are criminal, cultures of loyalty can enable that. The same can be said of politicians though, which is why I remain skeptical of campaign finance reform: if you ask incumbent politicians to write the rules by which challengers can unseat them, you'll tend to get rules favoring incumbency and the same type of patronage networks that put the incumbents in office.

Dan8267 says

I can only provide solutions, not the fiat or the political will to implement them.

And this is where the comment returns to the OP. Solutions are comparatively easy; probably most people of reasonable intelligence and education can draw up a balanced budget that would eliminate the debt. The issue is, the budget is written by politicians whose patronage networks receive the spending and depend on it, and those politicians are elected by people who don't want to pay taxes. So, you get more spending and lower taxes. To eliminate the debt, one would need to reform the process that produced it. Figuring out how to do that is a hard question; balanced budget amendments can help, but there can be ways around those, e.g. pensions and other unfunded commitments (loan guarantees, etc.), and so an amendment would require careful drafting to prevent circumvention.