The budget battles

[blackshoe]

As I said, I knew him. Maybe he made it up, but I have no reason to believe that. And given the reactions I saw after I got back, the story is certainly credible. Nobody spit on me, but I did hear the "baby killer" epithet more than once.

 

I don't see any reason to consider Lembcke any more credible than my friend, or my own experiences.

[Winstonm]

There is a discussion in Starship Troopers (in one of Rico's classes in "History and Moral Philosophy") about why their system was set up so that only veterans got the vote. I don't remember all the details, I'll have to see if I can dig it up. IIRC, the "answer" was similar to what you quoted, Richard, about citizenship, and not because of any "psychological conditioning".

 

I just finished one of J.D. Robb's crime novels (Treachery in Death) in which one of the bad guys was ex-military, of just the type you fear. He followed orders, without question, even when the orders were to kill people (he was a cop, and he was told to kill other cops, so he did it, no questions asked). But there's that thing our Founders talked about - an informed electorate. Rico's society's emphasis on studying "History and Moral Philosophy" was supposed to provide an electorate whose members would do the morally correct thing, rather than simply following orders. Granted it's an ideal, and maybe (probably?) not achievable in the real world, but like you I keep thinking "it sure would be nice if..." B-)

 

I tend to mistrust anything with the word "Keynesian" attached to it, but I have to admit the argument that, long term, ever increasing military spending is a Bad Thing™ seems to make some sense to me.

 

I understand why an expression like Military Keynesianism is distrusted - it is similar to the reason Military Industrial Complex is shrugged off, which to me is because it was introduced to modern society in Oliver Stone's conspiracy movie, JFK, so it is "guilt by association" thinking by many to link the phrase with conspiracy ideas and fiction, when the original speech was neither.

 

But automatically rejecting the tern Military Industrial Complex is like rejecting the basis of military keynesianism, and if you go back and either listen to or read Ike's speech, put the ideas into the context of the times it was made, it sounds like a persuasive explanation for what has gone wrong in the U.S. since 1960.

 

At least, that is how I see it.

[cherdano]

*Heinlein suggested a couple of things: only "veterans" get police/fire (and possibly other) jobs; only veterans get to vote. Not sure those (particularly the latter) would work in our society, but I suppose they provide a starting point for discussion.

Wow blackshoe. As you probably know I disagree with your political posts almost always, but this is really below any reasonable level for discussion, not a starting point.

[blackshoe]

You disagree, Hrothgar disagrees. Both of you refuse to discuss it. The thread title asks "is discussion possible?" It seems your answer is "no". So be it. We aren't going to solve the country's problems here, anyway, and I have better things to do than beat my head against the wall. I'm outta here.

[cherdano]

You disagree, Hrothgar disagrees. Both of you refuse to discuss it. The thread title asks "is discussion possible?" It seems your answer is "no". So be it. We aren't going to solve the country's problems here, anyway, and I have better things to do than beat my head against the wall. I'm outta here.

If I were to suggest that veterans are not allowed to vote, I would be pretty sure you would not want to discuss that with me either.

[hrothgar]

You disagree, Hrothgar disagrees. Both of you refuse to discuss it. The thread title asks "is discussion possible?" It seems your answer is "no". So be it. We aren't going to solve the country's problems here, anyway, and I have better things to do than beat my head against the wall. I'm outta here.

 

In what way am I refusing to discuss "it"

 

Ken started a thread about the budget.

 

You suggested "Only veterans should be allowed to vote" as a thought experiment which didn't go over particularly well.

 

Later, you yourself posted

 

Heinlein's society came about, he postulated, because veterans returning from a devastating war filled the gap caused by the collapse of their home governments. They were veterans, they ran the show, they decided that anyone who wanted to help run the show had to be a veteran. We don't have that background, so to us it makes less (or no) sense.

 

Which strongly suggests that even you don't take this idea seriously.

 

• You already concede that Heinlein's bloviating isn't comprehensible outside the cultural context of science fiction model
  
• In turn, this means that it isn't a serious suggestion for the practical problems addressing the US body politic
  

 

Now you're taking all your toys and going home because the other children are being mean...

 

As I noted in a parallel thread "Grow up". If you want to be taken more seriously in these threads you might want to start by engaging with the real world rather than science fiction novels.

[PassedOut]

To me, it's a positive thing that the Republicans and Democrats have launched the debate on how the US should deal with the deficit that has developed since Clinton left office. Jacob Weisberg offers his take on this in Slate: How Paul Ryan's flawed budget plan has improved the debate over our fiscal future.

 

Ryan's plan was also useful in part because it prompted President Obama to show some cards of his own. Obama's big deficit speech last week was a meaningful step in the direction of liberal fiscal honesty and represented a breakthrough for him in two big ways. It was the first time the president has seriously confronted our long-term fiscal problem with meaningful specifics. And it was the first time he has put forth a coherent vision of government's role. Obama matched Ryan's $4 trillion in projected deficit reduction over the next decade, relying less on implausible spending cuts and more on increased revenues.

I don't much care what taxes go up nor what spending gets cut. Well, maybe I do care some about that, but I care much more that taxes and spending are brought roughly into balance.

 

By the way, if you missed Obama's speech, you can find it here: Improving America's Fiscal Future.

[kenberg]

I think taxes have to go up. I expect that to include my taxes. I will have to be convinced that it will not be only my taxes that are rising.

 

The discussion about military service is not wholly off the mark, I think, in that it speaks to obligation. Having got my scholarship and gone off to college in 1956 I naturally took a student deferment. This wasn't to avoid going to war, there wasn't a war. It's just that college had become the plan.I was finishing my Ph.D. a decade later and of course now there was a big war. My deferment was yanked and I was re-classified 1-A. But I was older and I was not their prime choice. Anyway, I wasn't running off to Canada but neither was I running down to the recruiting station to sign up to shoot some gooks. Again, this was very much the norm. People got their summons from the draft board, they went. If they didn't get it, they didn't volunteer. Yes there were exceptions both ways, but I am describing standard practice.

 

As with military service, taxes is an obligation we accept in support of a country that really has done pretty well by me and many others. I went to the University of Minnesota when the tuition was about $225 a year, meaning maybe 150-170 working hours at prevailing wages (this is why it seemed possible I might manage even before the scholarship). Tax money kept the tuition affordable. As a graduate student I was partially supported on various grants. Later I received research grants from the National Science Foundation. I currently have a project jointly funded by NSF and NSA. As a professor I was paid from Maryland tax dollars.

 

We of course need to be prudent. But the idea that a modern nation can succeed simply by letting corporations do their thing and having government just get out of the way strikes me as totally unrealistic.

 

Deficits do matter and the books, long term, have to balance. So let's get with it. But let's not pretend we are still cowboys riding the range.

 

Just as a comment, my wife wants to see Atlas Shrugged. From everything I heard, we had better do it soon if we want to see it in the theater.

[y66]

Anyone who claims balancing the books is urgent and raising taxes is not an option speaks with forked tongue.

 

I agree with the spirit and content of kenberg's last post. I also took the earlier post about military service as speaking more to obligations of citizenship in general than membership in the armed services. But maybe I read too much into that.

[blackshoe]

No, you didn't.

[kenberg]

Good.

 

Now can we get those guys in office to earn their pay and do something useful?

[helene_t]

According to Salon.com, one of the republicans presidential candidates is especially apt at dealing with the budget crisis:

http://www.salon.com/news/donald_trump/index.html?story=%2Ftech%2Fhtww%2F2011%2F04%2F20%2Fdonald_trump_the_president_we_deserve

[kenberg]

According to Salon.com, one of the republicans presidential candidates is especially apt at dealing with the budget crisis:

http://www.salon.com/news/donald_trump/index.html?story=%2Ftech%2Fhtww%2F2011%2F04%2F20%2Fdonald_trump_the_president_we_deserve

 

Yes indeed. Richard is thinking Cost Rica, I'm partial to Norway. I was brought up with lots of snow.

 

As to "the president we deserve", I may have mentioned before that one Christmas my wife's ex-husband sent us a card wishing us everything we deserved.

[kenberg]

This is not deep but I found it amusing:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-shining--national-debt-edition/2011/04/20/AFnfSICE_story.html

[Winstonm]

Today's must-read: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/opinion/24stockman.html?_r=1

 

In attacking the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent of taxpayers, the president is only incidentally addressing the deficit. The larger purpose is to assure the vast bulk of Americans left behind that they will be spared higher taxes — even though entitlements make a tax increase unavoidable. Mr. Obama is thus playing the class-war card more aggressively than any Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt...

 

 

Trapped between the religion of low taxes and the reality of huge deficits, the Ryan plan appears to be an attack on the poor in order to coddle the rich. To the Democrats’ invitation to class war, the Republicans have seemingly sent an R.S.V.P.

[y66]

That Stockman piece was pretty good. I agree with his criticism of Obama's position on extending tax cuts for the middle class and I enjoyed his literary flair in sentences like these

 

Such fiscal jabberwocky ignores the fact that we have experienced a recession every five years or so for the last six decades ... the United States does not have a divine right to issue any amount of interim debt that suits the ideological convenience of the two parties ... the Democrats are immobilized because Keynesians insist on kicking the budgetary can down the road until cyclical “demand” has in their estimation fully recovered, while Republicans sit on their hands because supply-siders insist on letting the deficit fester until tax cuts work their alleged revenue magic .

It will be interesting to hear what Mr. Bernanke says Wednesday about post QE2 policy. Hard to imagine him even hinting that more expansion is needed, even if he believes it.

[Winstonm]

This is the 800 lb. gorilla that no one is talking about:

 

With the central banks no longer ready to buy, the Treasury market will once again be driven by real investors — many of them likely to demand higher interest rates owing to the heightened fiscal risks recently highlighted by Standard & Poor’s. Ominously, the biggest and baddest of these real investors, the quarter-trillion-dollar Pimco Total Return Fund, has already thrown down the gauntlet by selling Uncle Sam’s paper short.

 

Hell hath no fury like a bond market scorned.

[kenberg]

I distrust literary flair. Anyway, I didn't think that one sends an R.S.V.P. in response to an invitation. You send the R don't you?

 

Nonetheless I liked

 

A quasi-bankrupt nation saddled with rampant casino capitalism on Wall Street and a disemboweled, offshored economy on Main Street requires practical and equitable ways to pay its bills.

[/Quote]

 

Fundamentally, the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership are attempting to outdo each other in slinging bull. Stockman says as much, I agree. "rampant casino capitalism" seems like a pretty good description of what's going on. There is this guy who comes around with a truck, accompanied by his English speaking wife, and does some tree work for us. That's free enterprise that I understand. I get my trees taken care of, he makes a probably pretty good living. What the guys on Wall Street do is something different. They make a very good living, but it does not get my trees cut. I think that there might be some across party line support for telling these folks that the jig is up.

[cherdano]

What the guys on Wall Street do is something different. They make a very good living, but it does not get my trees cut. I think that there might be some across party line support for telling these folks that the jig is up.

You didn't follow the legislative process around financial regulation, did you?

[JLOGIC]

You didn't follow the legislative process around financial regulation, did you?

 

lol

[cherdano]

Spence Bachus, Republican House member from Alabama, and the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, defines his role as follows:

In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.

The article goes on to note that "He later clarified his comment to say that regulators should set the parameters in which banks operate but not micromanage them." Glad he cleared that up.

 

(There is some ground for bipartisanship, though. Just like his Democratic predecessor, he is receiving substantial campaign donations from the financial services industry.)

[kenberg]

The public relations office of Ken Berg has just released the following clarification of his remark about across party line support:

 

The remark was not intended to apply to those bozos in Washington. It was to refer to the little people, the salt of the Earth, the backbone of America. Me, in other words.

 

Joking aside (yes, the above was meant to be joking) it seems to me that a distinction should be made between government interference in tree cutting and government interference with the banking industry's goal of ripping off the entire country. It also seems like my Republican neighbors might appreciate this distinction. I don't need to take a year of study to see if my trees have been cut well. If the job is done badly, we can all settle that on our own. I don't understand banking and I hope to not have to learn it.

[Winstonm]

I'm squirreling money away. Long term, Costa Rica is sounding nice...

 

Simply put, the US is *****ed.

The populace no longer has the maturity necessary to deal with the issues confronting the country.

I'm expecting things to get real ugly...

 

As a practical example, look at the current debate over the budget.

 

I suspect that everyone knows what real long term budget reform looks like:

 

1. Single payer health care

2. Health care rationing for end of life care

3. Dramatically scale back defense spending

4. Simplifying the tax codes

4. Slash agricultural subsidies

 

Unfortunately, the country doesn't seem capable of even discussing these issues let alone implementing them

 

Add in a host of addition challenges related to the education system and climate change and we screwed.

 

I'm sure I'm not that uncommon in that there are a couple other discussion forums to which I contribute, and I - from my limited personal experience on those - have to side with Richard on this one - the amount of willful ignorance in the U.S. seems to be growing exponentially - and to me, it has a faith-like feel to it, as the party line is treated as if it were inerrant gospel, and controversies like global warming, wars, taxes, and healthcare reform are explained away with an almost apologetic-like disdain for reasoned dialogue.

[kenberg]

To take Richard's points one at a time:

 

1. Single payer: Probably, but I don't really know. I have this 90 page booklet around somewhere that I am supposed to read to decide on my health care choices. Maybe my wife will do it. I think we stick with the plan we have. I don't understand it but it seems to work. I mentioned that a friend just finished a forty day stay at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. That costs some bucks no matter who pays for it or how many payers there are. We can do some wonderful things in medicine that we could not do twenty or even ten years ago. Most of them cost a lot. Still, the complexity is baffling to everyone and must be a drain on cash.

 

2. End of Life etc. Ever since my father died thirty some years ago it has been crystal clear to me that life is finite. I do not expect my wife, my family or my country to invest large sums of money prolonging it all for a month or two.

 

3. Defense spending: I recognize the need for military preparedness and also the need for military action. I would hope it could be scaled way back. This would be, I think, a good way to advance the interests of our country.

 

4. Simplifying the tax code: A life as simple as mine should not lead to tax complexity but it seems that it does.

 

5. Agricultural subsides: These things have a life and a logic of their own. Very few have any justification as far as I know. My favorite: Apparently we subsidize cotton farming and exports to an extent that Brazilian farmers successfully brought a claim against us in international court for unfair practices. The solution is that we now also subsidize Brazilian cotton farmers.

 

 

But here, I think, is the problem in a nutshell: It's my view that as long as everyone shares in the burden, I expect that part of a reasonable solution will be that my own taxes will go up. A more common view is for people to believe that the solution is for someone else's taxes to go up, and/or we should cut programs that benefit someone else. We are desperately in need of honest discussion and negotiation.

[Winstonm]

Ken,

 

As for healthcare, I really do not think the question is one of economics so much as a philosophical one: is healthcare a business or a right of all citizens? If it is a right, then it should be provided - and the costs would have to be tackled by the new system and the government. We could eliminate 95% of our total defense spending (not just DoD budget but all types of defense spending) and completely provide quality healthcare for everyone.

 

I think healthcare should be considered a right - not a benefit and not a profit-making business model.

 

I am of the opinion that dismantling the present system in itself would contribute mightily to reducing future costs. Would this lead to some type of limits to care - sure it would - who cares? A universal good system better serves humanity than a elusive great system that only wealth can afford.