The Deficit Commission's Recommendations for Reducing the Deficit

Using the NYT app for "fix the deficit yourself" I was able to eliminate the deficit by ending the wars, scaling back foreign occupation, and returning the taxes to the levels of the horrible 90s (remember the anguish of that decade), except that my plan had the tax loop holes closed.
 
daenku32 said:
Using the NYT app for "fix the deficit yourself" I was able to eliminate the deficit by ending the wars, scaling back foreign occupation, and returning the taxes to the levels of the horrible 90s (remember the anguish of that decade), except that my plan had the tax loop holes closed.
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Great! You've now stopped spending more than you are making. Feel free to actually pay off the debt while you are at it. There's only $13.7 trillion to go.
 
MikeMangum said:
Great! You've now stopped spending more than you are making. Feel free to actually pay off the debt while you are at it. There's only $13.7 trillion to go.
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The app dealt with the deficit, not the debt. But, as quixotecoyote noted, one leads to the other. Or are you suggesting that generating a budget surplus has nothing to do with paying off the debt?
 
SezMe said:
The app dealt with the deficit, not the debt. But, as quixotecoyote noted, one leads to the other. Or are you suggesting that generating a budget surplus has nothing to do with paying off the debt?
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Getting rid of the deficit is not the same as generating a surplus.
 
No, you're right, it is not. But it inexorably leads to it. Or maybe I don't know how you are using those terms so enlighten me.
 
Kestrel said:
If we really want to cut the deficit over the long term, we should be doing more to stimulate the economy and get Americans back to work.
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Easy, Comrade. I bet you think it would be a good idea to extend unemployment benefits so out of work people can buy food, too.

No, the only way to fix this is to randomly and unecessarily demolish entitlement programs that benefit the least well-off.
 
Beerina said:
...and government jails private individuals that attempt the same thing. They're called Ponzi schemes, and are all about paying off previous investors with intake from new investors.

They are portrayed as a savings plan for retirement, but are legally a welfare system -- a transfer of money from current taxpayers to the favored group.

Previous generations never payed enough, and current generations will never get out of it what they contribute. That inflection point was passed ten years ago, IIRC.

And the SS savings is a joke, as the government just loans it to itself and spends it. This means when it's time to start pulling out this "savings" to use it on retirees, government will have to tax or borrow it anyway to pay itself back.
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Setting aside the editorializing, Social Security is fine. It will pay out full benefits until 2037 without any changes. Modifying the income exemption limit (which is around $100,000 now, I believe) secures it for the next century.

It amazes me that there's so much hostility to SS just a few years after a stock market crash decimated portfolios. Do you realize how many people who are now too old to work would be destitute if SS funds had been privately invested?
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
So doesn't a balanced budget include payments on the debt? Or are these only interest payments that make no progress on the principle?
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Generally, a "balanced budget" refers to no net change in the national debt. Any bonds retired are replaced by new bonds sold. A balanced budget would just mean that the debt isn't getting any worse.

ETA: And, realistically, it will also mean the debt situation gets better. If you could just hold the debt equal in dollar terms, economic growth and/or inflation would make that value less of a burden on the taxpayers than it is now.
 
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I am absolutely against the commission's proposal. I think they should cut the budget in areas that don't affect me, and they should raise other people's taxes until the debt is paid off. If I don't have a job, they should spend money until I get one.
 
Meadmaker said:
I am absolutely against the commission's proposal. I think they should cut the budget in areas that don't affect me, and they should raise other people's taxes until the debt is paid off. If I don't have a job, they should spend money until I get one.
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That's the American way. The myth is that only a particular group of people are active in it.
 
Meadmaker said:
I am absolutely against the commission's proposal. I think they should cut the budget in areas that don't affect me, and they should raise other people's taxes until the debt is paid off. If I don't have a job, they should spend money until I get one.
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Excellent idea
 
Meadmaker said:
Generally, a "balanced budget" refers to no net change in the national debt. Any bonds retired are replaced by new bonds sold. A balanced budget would just mean that the debt isn't getting any worse.

ETA: And, realistically, it will also mean the debt situation gets better. If you could just hold the debt equal in dollar terms, economic growth and/or inflation would make that value less of a burden on the taxpayers than it is now.
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Thanks, I wasn't sure on that. So a balanced budget just services the debt without making any progress on the principle. My own personal budget doesn't work that way. If I'm not making progress on my debt, I consider myself to be living beyond my means. But then again, a national budget is really nothing like a personal budget.

Yes, it's rather like balancing a couple of really huge weights. If we tipped it toward a balance, chances are that we'd tip beyond that point. And a lot of the actual numbers depend on the performance of the economy. (Again, unlike my personal budget, government revenues aren't known in advance--the point I was making earlier that seems to have been lost on mhaze.)
 
SezMe said:
Evidence? Including definitions of inflation and energy costs.
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For calculating COLA the SSA considers only the 3rd Quarter CPI over the previous 3rd Quarter CPI. Remember when oil prices rose dramatically in the fall of 2008? This greatly skewed the CPI for that year, and the subsequent COLA based on it.

So basically the lack of a COLA in 2009 and 2010 is because the COLA in 2008 was so high, and far higher than the rate of actual inflation in 2008.
 
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