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Americans Blame Wasteful Government Spending for Deficit

I watched a VP try, over a period of many months, to change our work methods. He kept saying we should work smarter, not harder, to save money in the operating budget.
Problem is, he never fired any of us for not following his plan. My supervisor said something to the effect of "we aren't here to save money, we are here to make our product".
When it became obvious that the VP was being ignored by middle management, he should have issued an ultimatum to his direct reports, either find ways to get this plan moving, or find another job. Have them pass that down the ranks to each level. Then start interviewing prospective replacements. When you see your own job on the job openings list, it should motivate you.
Give them 1 month. At the end of the month, start firing people....
Until that happens, people won't change.
It is the same with government jobs. We have small carrots and smaller sticks, neither have much influence on us. Motivation is easier to come by when the carrot is large, and the stick is huge.
I bet that the majority of govt workers know several ways to save money right off the tops of thier heads, but are afraid to speak up for fear of reprisals from their middle management bosses. Those kinds of bosses need to go first.
 
quite the opposite; we are directed to find ways to spend money, so that the money won't go away and next year's budget will be as big or bigger.

anyone who has ever worked in government should laugh uproariously at anyone else who suggests that government spending is efficient and productive.
 
UtahBill said:
No thanks, I prefer sobriety....and your koolaid is spiked.
I make less foolish decisions when sober...
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Excellent! You dismiss my opinions as foolish and being without merit because I am drunk. Nice way to argue the merits. Just wave your hands incomprehensibly and declare me irrational. Just goes to show me that you are incapable of intelligently countering my views. That makes you a bit of a hack.

sippy, sippy...NC mountain shine....
 
pzycho said:
Excellent! You dismiss my opinions as foolish and being without merit because I am drunk. Nice way to argue the merits. Just wave your hands incomprehensibly and declare me irrational. Just goes to show me that you are incapable of intelligently countering my views. That makes you a bit of a hack.

sippy, sippy...NC mountain shine....
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see, this is the stage that is the problem...you have sipped enough to become belligerent, but not enough to fall asleep....
Have another pint.....:2razz:
 
UtahBill said:
see, this is the stage that is the problem...you have sipped enough to become belligerent, but not enough to fall asleep....
Have another pint.....:2razz:
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:lol: It's Sunday, you know. Blue Laws in the Southeast - Baptist Central, or is it the Methodists? I can never keep track. Don't **** with the Methodists!

Damn evangelical Christians trying to save us from ourselves...it's almost as bad as the government doing so, except the Christians can at least point to the sinning, whereas the government has to proclaim it is for our health. What's next? No In'n'Out cheeseburgers? Jeez.
 
i'm a career public employee, and i know off the top my head how my district could instantly right its upside down daily---and that would be to cut my current 100 minutes of prep time in half (my school does block schedules) and return us to the 50:00 everyone else gets

if my union would go this way, my district would NOT have to layoff ANY of the vibrant, young talent we are currently pink slipping, so many young moms and dads passionate about education, so many in terrifyingly upside down mortgages...

i brought it up at a union meeting last year, since it was a school gathering i had to preface my remark with something like---i know this thought is gonna create a lot of animosity and i don't mean it that way, please forgive me for expressing it but it's just a thought...

now, if i'd have made my recommendation at a district wide union meeting, the room would've exploded, all the primary and middle schoolers stamping their feet

in other words, i never would have said it before such an audience

still, everyone knows what's up

longterm---without fundamental reform of teacher tenure, you will never see major improvement in the quality of our product

it really shouldn't be partisan
 
Deuce said:
Where did conservatives get the idea that liberals don't think spending should be cut at all?

Straw man, anyone?

And since when did solving this issue become one or the other?
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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's a Lib isn't he?

Leader of the nation?

Libs scream when something is to be cut, and they define a cut as not fully funding the annual increase.

.
 
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the 10,000 pennies guy is brilliant. I hope he's a highly paid Republican consultant in 2012, making oodles of money putting that stuff out everywhere.
 
The Prof said:
i'm a career public employee, and i know off the top my head how my district could instantly right its upside down daily
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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?
 
cpwill said:
it suddenly occurs to me. can you imagine what would happen if we started paying government employees extra for finding ways to save money?
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Kinda sounds like you're taking water thats leaking out of a bucket with a hole in the bottom and pouring it right back in.

I got a better idea. Fire the ones that keep running up this damn debt.
 
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dontworrybehappy said:
Kinda sounds like you're taking water thats leaking out of a bucket with a hole in the bottom and pouring it right back in.

I got a better idea. Fire the ones that keep running up this damn debt.
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Fixing the leaks will cost a little now, but save a bundle in the future...
as for the ones running up the debt, that is all of us...
 
yup. but give me a 10% cut and a system to do so with, and I can save you fella's a bundle...
 
cpwill said:
since the Republican plan does not "deny" anyone (that would be the President's brilliant lets-just-have-rationing idea) anything, and doesn't effect current seniors at all (again, in contradiction to the Presidents' plan), I would like very much to see your citation
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OK.

Speaking yesterday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said that people should get the health care they they can afford to pay for, and that Republicans are “not for everyone having the same outcome guaranteed.”

Eric Cantor comes clean
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The Republicans plan to let everyone have all the healthcare "they can afford to pay for." That's pretty much a death sentence for some seniors.
 
cpwill said:
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?

Corporatism, man, it's Corporatism.
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I think your version of reality is fiction.

The housing bubble was created Capitalism in it's purest form. Capitalists got rich, actually super rich, loaning money. That's what capitalism is all about. This time it was different only in their ability to create the conditions which made their money-lending profitable. They bought politicians who controlled regulation of the money market. Once the regulations were gone, capitalists were free to do whatever they wanted. Capitalists made borrowing so easy, almost anyone who had a job could have as much money as he wanted to buy a house with no questions asked. As long as prices were increasing, capitalists were generating huge profits.
 
cpwill said:
Ryan's plan doesn't balance the budget for several more years, this is true. It does reduce the deficit off of the current baseline. the President's plan doesn't balance the budget at all, and it increases the deficit off of the current baseline.
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That's irrelevant. Republicans are raising public concern about the dangers of the deficit to the economy in the near future. Whatever fix they have is so far in the future it can't possibly be taken seriously. It's virtually fiction.
 
Joe Steel said:
Do you realize consumer spending is responsible for around 67% of GDP? What is a better way to support prosperity than promoting consumerism?
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We don't have to promote consumerism for essential needs, that money will be spent and get into circulation.
Whether personal spending or govt spending, spending for things we don't need and using credit to do so is the problem.
A slow growing economy really is better in the long run.
Our grandchildren will not thank us for saddling them with OUR debt...
 
UtahBill said:
Whether personal spending or govt spending, spending for things we don't need and using credit to do so is the problem.
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What problem, exactly, is that?

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.
 
Joe Steel said:
What problem, exactly, is that?

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.
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When you or I do it, and our personal economy goes sour, we can file bankruptcy and our creditors take the hit. They actually PLAN for a certain percentage of their accounts going bankrupt.
When a government does it, different story. OUR Govt doesn't seem to be able to PLAN for what has been shown to happen time and time again....
 
UtahBill said:
it suddenly occurs to me. can you imagine what would happen if we started paying government employees extra for finding ways to save money?
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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.

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

cpwill said:
when we get to the 2020's, Medicare, Medicaid, and SS will suck up every single tax dollar.
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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.

cpwill said:
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.
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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.

cpwill said:
well, when you make it worth millions or billions to spend hundreds of thousands reducing your tax bill - then yeah. :)
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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?

cpwill said:
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.
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Indeed - high rates with no exemptions would be much more efficient, and would actually address our budget problems.

cpwill said:
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.
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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.

cpwill said:
: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?
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In a free market, the law is a commodity.

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

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

Joe Steel said:
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.
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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, in theory - because the money's not going to people, but tax-fat contracting companies. In practice, tax-fat contracting companies have more voice in our government than seniors at the verge of poverty kept out only by Social Security.
 
Joe Steel said:
You should check the average tax rates for OECD countries. The US is near the bottom and some countries in Western Europe are above 30%. If they can do it, we can too.
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You assume we want high taxes.
 
Joe Steel said:
I think your version of reality is fiction.

The housing bubble was created Capitalism in it's purest form. Capitalists got rich, actually super rich, loaning money. That's what capitalism is all about. This time it was different only in their ability to create the conditions which made their money-lending profitable. They bought politicians who controlled regulation of the money market. Once the regulations were gone, capitalists were free to do whatever they wanted. Capitalists made borrowing so easy, almost anyone who had a job could have as much money as he wanted to buy a house with no questions asked. As long as prices were increasing, capitalists were generating huge profits.
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Those Capitalists must have been govt politicians who passed laws to make it easier to get a loan.
 
pzycho said:
Americans Blame Wasteful Government Spending for Deficit

Well, isn't this interesting. All you ultra-liberals out there that want to raise taxes and hurt the economic recovery, take careful note. This should help make the debt ceiling debate vigorous.

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Yeah, we like to say it's wasteful spending because then it makes it seem like we're not at fault. But if you start looking at the main areas which will most affect our spending, no one wants to cut from there. So in the end, our debt is our fault and we have to come to a conclusions. Either we start restructuring things like funding for military, medicare, social security, etc. or we pay our tab. That's the choice. And it's up to us.
 
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