The debt ceiling/budget/etc

[Don]

One thing I noticed is that people posting about money related to budget tends to have no idea what the figures involved are. Now it's not surprising people on the Internet talk about stuff they have no idea, but the magnitude we're talking about is staggering. For example you'll hear people say just freeze foreign aid (measured in low billions), or stop paying senators/representatives money (thousand of people * 6 figure = hundred of millions). However when you're talking about a debt measured in trillions, getting a million or even a billion isn't going to do much to stop it. And it's not just random online stuff. I remember when McCain ran his campaign I keep on hear him about saying he's going to go after the pork to get the money. I don't remember the exact stats but I'm pretty sure even if you eliminated every pork project that number is well below hundreds of billions and that might even be off by a (or several) order of magnitude.

As far as I know to get money that's anywhere near trillions of dollars you'd have to get them from:

1. Taxes
2. Medicare
3. Mediaid
4. Social Security

And that's why we're at an impasse since there are people strongly opposed to any of those 4 options. This isn't like the Qing dynasty in China where corruption was so bad after they busted the top official and liquidated his assets it was enough to cover the budget for several years. There isn't any easy money you can get and yet people, even some political figures, acts like it's easy.

I remember attending a lecture by Thomas Friedman and he's huge on the eco/green movement, and he was saying if the Green Revolution isn't going to be painful it'd be called the Green Party not the Green Revolution. It'd be weird if you can have a revolutionary movement like breaking away from fossil fuels and it's all somehow painless and all sunshine. He said if you're looking at '25 easy ways to save the planet' then you're not really saving the planet, because the way to save the planet is actually very hard. But it seems most people want to believe any hard problem can be solved in 10 easy steps you heard on the Internet, and it seems like even some politicans believe in that.

[Flip]

5. Severely reduce the military budget

[Zeus]

Don, the majority of people base a large chunk of their vote on the economy but no more than 10% of those people actually understand it. You politicians know that and they do nothing but grandstand about the economy to get the votes.

This whole mess is a direct result of one thing: partisan politics. Anyone who says anything else is either a) completely blind to what's really going on or b) on one of the sides trying to make you drink their Kool-Aid. This will go down to the last second when the Tea Party believes they have made Obama look sufficiently bad

[Don]

I remember seeing an article saying people have a problem grasping big numbers after they past a certain point. For example 1000-10000 is considered the same class of numbers, like if you go to a football or basketball game, if you didn't have any knowledge of how many people are supposed to be there your guess of those around you could be anywhere from thousands to tens of thousands because it all looks about the same to you. It seems like numbers at millions and greater tend to be get lumped into the same class. For example you hear about guys on Wall Street gets millions in bonus and people get outraged because it sounds (and is) a lot of money, but if Obama just round those guys up and shot them and appropriate their bonuses, that money isn't even going to make a dent on the trillions of debt the United State owes even if there is no negative repurcussion for such an act. While most of us would think 'million' is a lot of money, it's basically nothing compared to a trillion.

As for the defense, that gets into international politics (NATO more or less piggybacking on US military) and the fact that if a rogue state nuked a major US city the damage would be in the trillions too. It's hard to perform a generic economic tradeoff when you have to worry about stuff like nukes. There are definitely savings that can be found in defense but for any large scale stuff you'd have to have NATO stop piggybacking on the US. Of course you can say just forget the NATO then but that may have considerable consequences too if we just let Europe left to rot. The general consensus seems to be a significant reduction in military spending is only possible if we redefine US's military role in the world, but that doesn't look like it's happening anytime soon.

[Don]

And of course this is the result of partisan politics but it's that way because all the major source of money that can add up to trillions are well-entrenched by some faction. If there is a trillion dollar from cutting pork projects, people will probably do it by now. Sure maybe the guys funding you all this time won't exactly like it, but it's still a relatively easy thing to get support behind as it's hard to argue it's a good thing to continue supporting them. But there is no easy way out of this. Whether you add revenue or cut spending or both, it's still going to be painful because you just don't find a trillion dollar from clever accounting tricks. It's going to come from stuff that people really wanted.

[Flip]

GOP takes their ball and goes home.

http://news.yahoo.com/debt-ceiling-boeh ... 10825.html

[Don]

I saw this article saying that what the GOP did is unbiblical and unchristian because in the Bible it says do not pledge in God's name since you're not that great of a person to be able to say you're doing something in God's name. From what I gather the GOP swore a pledge to Grover Norquist (?) and apparently that guy is more important than God so they can't go back on their word. I think it's pretty funny that if the Bible tells you to not swear a pledge in God's name but apparently you can pledge the future of a nation to some guy.

[Eric]

Our country is so broken heh.

[Julius Seeker]

5. Severely reduce the military budget

I am just going to guess that the vast amount of money poured into military is not being put to very good use, and it might be that there is indeed some sort of corruption going on here. Ask who is pocketing all of this money?

[Zeus]

GOP takes their ball and goes home.

http://news.yahoo.com/debt-ceiling-boeh ... 10825.html

Obama needs to finally "sink down to their level" and, publicly, put the Tea Party in their place. He's tried, in his mind, taking the high road and negotiating but there's absolutely no desire by them to even consider compromising.

What's that old saying? Extreme times call for extreme measures? I personally don't think even those right-wing nut jobs are willing to let the entire world's economy go down the tubes. But they certainly need to be placed on the front burner for their tactics.

[Shrinweck]

The Tea Party doesn't have as much to do with this as much as just plain old Republicans who are willing to let the country go to shit before they would consider making a compromise that would even remotely look like a win for the Democrats.

Anyone who thinks millionaires can't afford higher taxes is fucking high out of their fucking mind on stupidity.Furthermore, a lot of average Americans who barely pull a meaningful fraction of what the higher tax brackets would get taxed think that some how they'll be that rich some day and higher taxes would screw them over. Taxes on the rich are at a low in this country's history and it CERTAINLY isn't helping. Trickle down is such bullshit. Boehner himself in that letter cites how he was a small business owner and has seen how higher taxes kills job creation but higher taxes on the rich wouldn't really effect small business owners. What's a small business to a Republican, any way? It's just language to frighten the working class. Which proportionately works out to EVERYONE when compared to the higher tax brackets.

[Eric]

We need more Republicans on this board imo. ;p

[Don]

The US generates half of the world's military spenditures even though US only generates a quarter of the world's wealth.

That said the priorities are not quite the same across countries. For example US actually wants to figure out how to defend against limited nuclear strikes, whereas other nuclear powers are so far off from even contemplating missile defense they don't have to worry about that. Since US is pretty much the most wealthy nation in the world (US has highest per capita out of all nations that don't count countries like Luxembourg that might as well be a city) so that means you got to pay your army the most to get them to participate. European countries way underspend on defense. If the US didn't participate in the Libya campaign, NATO might not have been able to attack Libya effectively because it lacks the equipment. There's no doubt there's a lot of waste in the military (personnel costs are way too high) but you really can't just say 'pay people less' unless you start conscripting people.

[Zeus]

We need more Republicans on this board imo. ;p

Hey, some of us hate all politicians.....

The only one we had ran away....I believe he even stopped lurking. Too bad, it was nice to have a more conservative opinion here.

[Kupek]

Before Defense Secretary Gates left, he was basically saying whatever he wanted. He brought up a good point about our military spending, which is that the rest of NATO is basically getting a free ride: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/world ... gates.html

[Shrinweck]

That's disappointing but not all that surprising.

[Don]

Most of the NATO countries spend well below the 2% of their GDP that they're supposed to obliged to under the treaty since they can always count on the US to bail them out. During the Libya conflict the NATO was sorely lacking in a lot of basic stuff like reconnaissance or even just ammunition. Also NATO seems to spend their money very ineffectively so even for the money they do spend it's not going into very useful stuff. I guess you can just say ditch the NATO but there's going to be problems if NATO has a problem even successfully invading a country like Libya so it's not something you can just cutoff overnight.

[Imakeholesinu]

I think Obama's appeal to the American people last night showed that he has negotiated in good faith with the whiny, obnoxious children in the house who stamp their feet and cry when they don't get their way. Jon Stewart had a great segment last night where he showed both sides have caved but no one wants to actually do anything about it.

The House, the Senate, and the previous administration are the ones who have done nothing but squander chances to have this issue resolved. Also, I'd like to point out to the tea party that republicans have raised the debt ceiling more than democrats have in the last 3 decades. Apples, how do you like them?

[Eric]

We have a deal, and now we wait for the vote, then watch the vote fail, to much stun and awe.