Comments on: We’ve Actually Already Cut a Bunch of Spending

By: Widgetmaker

Widgetmaker — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 09:00:54 +0000

Yes! Someone who gets it. Sounds like a person who reads a lot of Dean Baker.

By: Fred Donaldson

Fred Donaldson — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 03:14:56 +0000

Cutting funding for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schools, food stamps and college tuition loans is cutting funding for things that rich people don’t use or desperately need.

Cutting funding for defense from foreign “communist” invaders is a good investment for folks with a lot of property to protect from nationalization.

Continued funding for subsides to business and industry is a good investment because it increase the value of things that rich people own – stocks, bonds and pieces of hedge funds.

It is dangerous to simplify politics/economics as just greed and self interest, except, when it is just that.

By: Gilbert Vipraio

Gilbert Vipraio — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:01:03 +0000

While the original post does contain factual information, it is conveniently only partially factual. Yes the government is cutting spending but at the same time it is causing everyone else to spend more on the governments behalf. With the outragious growth in costly regulations, compliance costs have increased from approximately $5,000′per worker in 2007 to over $10,000 per worker today. This is equal to $1,700,000,000,000.00 (1.7 trillion) or 3.6% of our GDP. This cost disproportionately hits small businesses and IS the primary consideration when exporting jobs overseas. These numbers include federal, state and local regulatory costs and if they continue to grow at the current rate, it will colapse our economy. These costs are much higher for manufacturing and where has that gone? At the federal government increases the cost of doing business while passing greater costs to the state which result in increased costs again. Is there any questions why unemployment is >8% and will stay there until our government is friendly to business and grows,the tax base.

By: Charles

Charles — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 06:15:56 +0000

I’m “the rest of us”, and personally, I either am highly offended by your comments, or just have to laugh them off! BIG BAD CORPORATIONS vs. THE LITTLE GUY (or GAL)!!! Come on.. Really?

By: Widgetmaker

Widgetmaker — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 04:40:06 +0000

No, no, no! This is not what blogs are for. You are supposed to be scaring the sh*t out of everybody so that they will get emotionally agitated and hooked on your writing. This is too good a story and makes too much sense. How do you expect to get attention in the market place of ideas if you are not shouting dire predictions from the rooftops??? Don’t you know the world is going to end?

BTW – nice piece. Thanks.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 03:59:49 +0000

Revenue should be next as the Bush tax cuts are about 50% of the deficit according to James Fallows. After that will have to be entitlement cuts b/c they are such a large percentage of governmetn spending. But there is time as the increase in interest on the increase in debt is a slow rise because growth and inflation will decrease the defict without policy change. Deficit and debt increase is a long run problem and requires long term policy changes to address but they have to start now.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 03:24:27 +0000

Would it be more accurate to say R’s hate 47% of America? That would be consistent with the fact that they approve of government to subsidize big business and wealth accumulation.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 03:08:15 +0000

Republicans own the House and hate America.

By: bakho

bakho — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:03:01 +0000

Cutting spending leaves the Middle Class paying for more of the education and health care out of pocket and allows the wealthy to take more than their fair share of our economy which they spend on themselves, vacationing abroad, &c or investing in sweatshops in poor countries.

The wealthy special interests want to Privatize Social Security because it is a large pot of money and BigF thinks they can skim money from SS into their own pockets.
The same is true for Privatization of education. The wealthy special interests view it as a way for them to skim money from the rest of us. This is why they disrespect our schools and attack our hard working teachers.

By: readerOfTeaLeaves

readerOfTeaLeaves — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:50:30 +0000

One reason for the confusion may be that much of the media conversation tends to occur among legislators (in DC) or ‘experts’ related to finance (a la Bloomberg News).

If the media interviewed more mayors, school directors, or governors — the people who do the heavy lifting in administering budgets — the cumulative effects of budget cuts would probably be more widely understood, and more visceral.

It’s one thing to hear that ’100,000 teacher jobs have been lost…’, but another to learn that in City A, 20% of the elementary school teachers, 15% of the firefighters, and 32% of the public health funding have been lost due to a series of budget cuts…’. The first story is beyond the scale of my own life; the second story ‘hits home’.

The way that I read Figure 1, we are now funding only about half the discretionary items (in terms of percent of GDP) than we did in 1976.

Is it conceivable that in a period of 36 years, during which the top 1% began to accumulate ever-growing portions of total wealth, national discretionary spending fell by nearly half (as a percent of GDP)?!

Did I read that graph correctly…?
Because if so, that is news to me.
It appears the only two spikes are due to Katrina and the Stimulus; otherwise, it appears we are abandoning the very idea of government in the public interest, except as reactions to crises.

I’d love to see Figure 1 data overlaid with data showing key tax code changes, as well as income inequality data across that same x-axis. The graph certainly documents what happens when YOYO ideology runs the show.