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Americans Blame Wasteful Government Spending for Deficit

Those Capitalists must have been govt politicians who passed laws to make it easier to get a loan.

I would give the correction that it's not quite capitalism in the purest form, but corporatism. And they don't need to be in Congress, they just give enough money to the coffers and they can get what they want. Congress works for these folk.
 
Decades have now passed since “We The People” decided to hand over our collective credit card to the United States Government to be used to recklessly create and accumulate debts for goods and services far beyond our credit limit and ability to repay. Sadly, we continue to allow such behaviors despite knowing that the government’s objective is to protect its own power base (including the power of special interest that fill their coffers with gold, frankincense, and myrrh) and it ongoing quest to proliferate its size.

Recently, the U.S. Government broadcasted a public notice to all citizens that, much to their shock and dismay, it has misused our credit card to the point that its standing balance has substantially gone over the limit from somewhere between $14 and X number of trillions (depending on which party is in the majority).

Subsequent to the government’s admission of the misuse of our credit card, other related facts have surfaced, which includes, but is not limited to the following (and in no specific order):

• It has become standard practice for the government to accrue massive debts without being subject to enforcement of any existing mandated boundaries, limitations, and accountability to the taxpayers. Government refuses to legislate meaningful reform to significantly force government to be openly/transparently accountable to the citizens.

• Government’s long-time fiscal abuses and exploitations has encroached on the nation’s economic well-being and security to the point of being in a state of bankruptcy, which it refuses to acknowledge.

• Government has historically displayed legislative behaviors disguised as good will efforts to be construed as preserving or enhancing our best interest when all of the evidence points to the contrary. These same legislative behaviors are often perceived by many as self-interest acts falling outside of Constitutional parameters. The government adamantly denies such allegations.

• The government has been involved in an international credit scheme in which it borrow from foreign countries to purchase, stockpile, and control resources, which allows government to influence and/or manipulate consumer prices for most any type of goods or services here and abroad for purposes of leveraging inflationary conditions, which is one of the means that covertly allows government to impose backdoor taxes.

• “We The People”, of all political persuasions, continue to observe the fleecing of our nation’s treasure by government while simultaneously choosing to ignore and/or admit our role in allowing government to commit extortion against the taxpayers. And obviously, government isn’t motivated to change its abuses and exploitations because there’s been no genuine consequences imposed by the citizens. As the saying goes, “when there are no consequences for inappropriate behaviors, then why stop?

There is inexhaustible information made accessible to the public that could easily expose quantitatively, and by what methods the government uses to abuse and exploit U.S. citizens. But the government doesn’t at all feel intimidated by the existence of such information. The government well knows that the good citizens will never attempt to search out the information and use it to bring about any effective actions to end the government’s incorrigible abuses and exploitations.

With no solutions in sight, by all logic and prudence, how can we conclude anything other than the belief that our nation’s income/debt ratio is so profound - it is impossible for taxpayers rid of ourselves the enormous national debt?

The Government Has A Solution – Which Doesn’t Alleviate Current Social Problems – However:

In order to correct the existing unsavory state of affairs created my government, the government is requesting that we all work harder, and if necessary, we should procure more than one job to pay the government more of our money, liberties, and property in order to for the government to maintain the lifestyle by which it has become accustomed.

The government will also continue to require us all to perpetually retain it to be our debt payment manager. In other words, it will be necessary to cut down our individual living standards in order to pay the government more money to be lavishly squandered while simultaneously seeking new ways to force us all to contribute more than ever before.

You can now sleep at night knowing that the U.S. Government has seen the errors of its way and now wants to attempt to redeem itself by making our lives even more miserable than what we’ve paid them to make it to be over the last 250 years...
 
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it suddenly occurs to me. can you imagine what would happen if we started paying government employees extra for finding ways to save money?

Such a program already exists in the DoD - it's called the IDEA program, if I recall correctly.

Money awards cap at 1K and your idea has to be used by leadership, so suggestions like "These contractors waste money just fire them already and hire cheaper govt employees" might save money but they won't happen.

Corruption in the DoD is at the level of leadership, not the lower levels of the bureaucracy. Sometimes that's 'middle management', but generally it's at the level of Congress dealing with high-ranking officers. I can't speak for other major federal bureaucracies.

And yet as wasteful as the system is, compared to most private firms, it's not substantially worse in comparison. The government pulls ahead substantially on executive salary alone.

and how much of the stimulus ramp up in government spending was in wage hikes that otherwise wouldn't have been? :roll:
Since a good deal of it was corporate tax cuts, there's quite a bit of CEO salary there.

when we get to the 2020's, Medicare, Medicaid, and SS will suck up every single tax dollar.
I don't believe you. Citation or you're making things up. And please make it a better 'citation' than that obviously wrong military spending by GDP chart.

that's nice. what you didn't do was demonstrate any point in US history where we have even come close to generating 24% of our GDP in tax revenues - even under tax rates far higher than they are today.
Your point is a non-sequitur and not necessary. We aren't even close to 20% of our GDP right now. It's clear our tax rates are exceedingly low. But if I had to demonstrate that, I'd point out all the tax evasion and loopholes.

well, when you make it worth millions or billions to spend hundreds of thousands reducing your tax bill - then yeah. :)
A problem solvable by making it no longer possible to buy laws through campaign contributions and lobbying. Other wealthy nations manage it, why can't we?

the cost of compliance with our tax code is around $431 Billion due to our idiotic decision to have a regime of high rates with high exemptions. squeeze out those hundreds of billions into productive uses by lowering both rates and exemptions to achieve revenue neutrality, and you will see some impressive growth. that's why the Presidents' Bi-Partisan debt reduction commission proposed exactly that.
Indeed - high rates with no exemptions would be much more efficient, and would actually address our budget problems.

1. you are correct that military spending has risen over the past 10 years.
2. this in no way alters the fact that we are below our historical average.
Since military spending growth has vastly outpaced GDP growth (I Demand Answers From the Aggregate Demanders ), your previous chart where Military spending as a percentage of GDP doesn't skyrocket is false. It is bad data.

Your charts are demonstrably wrong. Get a better source.

:lamo you think that the government interfering in the housing market and then delaying a recovery through massive expansion funded by the withdrawal of liquidity from the private market is capitalism?
In a free market, the law is a commodity.

Capitalism is corporatism. An unrestrained market is a corrupt market.

Check out the first debate with McCain, and I am trying to find an interview where he is asked what he would cut... Obama couldn't come up with anything.

He since tried to cut wasteful DoD spending. Republicans resisted him, but I think he still managed to drop the ABL.

I can see a problem of personal finance. No individual can borrow increasing amounts indefinitely. Governments aren't like that, though. They can borrow as much as they want and raise taxes to pay the debt. If they've spent wisely, GDP will have grown enough to support higher taxes. It's a win-win.

Strictly speaking, so can people, if the debt in each case constitutes wise decisions and the individual doesn't get fired or the like. In practice, nobody who isn't already rich can count on a steady job, so credit is pretty much a bad idea for everything that isn't college tuition (in which case it's only probably a bad idea).

But that's irrelevant because that's not what the US government is doing with most of its' spending. Most of the government's budget is measured spending for specific results, which is why most spending is so hard to cut - most federal dollars can be tied directly to someone who actually does need it.

That's also what makes the DoD by far the easiest place to cut - because the money's not going to people, but tax-fat contracting companies.
 
US military spending as a percentage of GDP, 1940--2003

military-relative-size-graph.php


woops?

US military spending as a percentage of discretionary spending, 1962--2003

military-relative-size-graph.php


as a percent of GDP and as a percent of discretionary spending current Military Spending is below historical norms. The entitlements are exploding, yes. But an explosion in military spending? please.

Your graph backs up my point. Since the Bush administration, military spending has gone up. And remember, Iraq and Afghanistan are NOT included in the defense budget. Those wars are estimated at over a trillion.
 
Why? Who will invest when consumers can't buy anything?

when consumers have savings, they can afford what they buy, and don't have to hope that the economy always magically continues to climb at a high enough rate to cover their risk.

imagine a last three years in which (for example) everyone had put a 20% down payment on their house.
 
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