The Congressional Budget Office has released its latest report and it contains this rather distressing fact: the federal government is now borrowing 46 cents of every dollar spent in fiscal year 2013. I have long been a critic of the fiscal policies of both parties, but it is astonishing that the American people have not thrown out the whole lot of these people — Democratic and Republican. We look like an utter ship of fools as politicians allow the country to drift toward an unprecedented financial collapse. In the meantime, the Administration is borrowing this money to simply give Israel a $100 million building complex and pour billions into corrupted governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. China of course continues to hold much of our debt and is going on a buying spree in the U.S.
The government chalked up a $172 billion deficit in November alone — part of a $300 billion deficit for the first two months of the fiscal year. While both sides talk about the need to reduce spending, they have been spending like drunken sailors for years. For those of us who are skeptical about the use of tax increases in this economy, it is unnerving to think of giving more money to these same players. We need new revenue because of their horrible record over the last eight years. We must need however a third party to break the monopoly of power in this country — a monopoly that has left the entire country captive to these self-perpetuating parties.
It is clear that neither party wants to make hard choices and continue to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to curry favor with different groups as with the $100 million gift of a building. There is also no serious accountability for the waste of billions under Bush and Obama as “stimulus” funds. I agree with the need to raise taxes but I have little faith in the Obama Administration or Congress in using such money responsibly. You do not get to a point of borrowing virtually half of every dollar spent without a complete lack of leadership and responsibility. Even if this figure falls, the point is that Congress still makes hundred million dollar gifts to wealth countries without a sound of objection or concern. Yes, all countries borrow money but we have a massive debt and continues to grow — an politicians who pledge to be more responsible in the future. The need for revenue is likely to change but not the need for responsibility in Washington.
Source: Washington Times
it is well documented that women have children to get extra income, I would imagine the same is true for disability payments.
I would like to see them pay parents for every grade over a C+ there children get.
And increase a womens welfare payments every 6 months if she doesnt get pregnant. If you are going to give people welfare and other tax payer funded subsidies, lets put some incentive to succeed in the payments.
Why not subsidize positive behavior?
I have always advocated this kind of positive social reward, if we are going to have social programs in the first place.
I remember many years ago suggesting that we give rewards to children for good grades, and I was shouted down as a mercenary nut.
You suggestion is good too, but it won’t fly, because of the outrage of the current progressive/liberal mentality – you can’t affirmatively reward people into good behavior.
It still seems acceptable though to coerce them out of bad behavior.
Who knows what is acceptable in this strange new land.
“it is well documented that women have children to get extra income, I would imagine the same is true for disability payments.”
Bron,
Sorry to say that this is the stupidest most uninformed sentence you have ever written here. Show me your evidence and I’ll match it with my 32 years work experience in Welfare. As for the disability that too is nonsensical. Do you have any idea how hard it is to obtain Disability and then maintain it. When my heart went into failure it took me six months to the point where all my savings were depleted just to live and I received it THAT quickly because my prognosis was that I might not live for another years. After I retired from the City I worked six years for on-profits dealing with people who needed to get disability to live in my programs. Sometime the Agency would have to absorb the rents for a year or more before these people who were certifiably disabled could begin receiving their checks. It makes me furious that the public discussion of so many of these issues is partaken of by people who use unfounded “common wisdom” to discuss serious matters, by blaming victims. It is known as lack of empathy and compassion in the service of ones’ own selfishness.
Most everybody, Nick Kristof included, are willing to wag their fingers. It feels so righteous. But few seem willing to address the larger problems.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/nicholas-kristof-bravely-urges-congress-to-cut-supplemental-security-for-children-with-severe-disabilities
You’ll notice the sentence “Citing anecdotal evidence from a sample of one person living there as well as the testimony of a long-standing critic of Supplemental Security who has proposed block granting it, Kristof sensationally claims that parents are “profiting from children’s illiteracy” and pulling their kids out of literacy classes in order to keep them disabled and eligible for Supplemental Security.”
h/t Atrios
DonS:
yes, I will wag my finger at parents who keep their children from learning how to read and I will wag my finger at a government which makes that possible and encourages it.
DonS:
so you condone not teaching your children to read?
Bron, your very good at wagging your finger and denigrating others. And what have you done with your sorry a– (that’s an Appalachian term) to help?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-profiting-from-a-childs-illiteracy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
“THIS is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability.”
Wow, parents purposefully disabling their children for a government check.
Slaves were forcefully prevented by their masters from learning how to read. Now people do it willingly when they are given other people’s money.
puzzling:
Krugman said that? I bet Keynes said something like “the internal combustion engine will have as much impact on the economy as the horse and buggy.”
One thing I have learned is that most people do not understand money. It is a gaping hole in American public education and what allows for the gross negligence of our elected officials in matters of finance.
“Some government policies help some people at the expense of other people. But some policies can hurt welfare recipients, the taxpayers and others, all at the same time, even though in different ways.
With all the talk about taxing the rich, we hear very little talk about taxing the poor. Yet the marginal tax rate on someone living in poverty can sometimes be higher than the marginal tax rate on millionaires.
While it is true that nearly half the households in the country pay no income tax at all, the apparently simple word “tax” has many complications that can be a challenge for even professional economists to untangle.
If you define a tax as only those things that the government chooses to call a tax, you get a radically different picture from what you get when you say, “If it looks like a tax, acts like a tax and takes away your resources like a tax, then it’s a tax.”
One of the biggest, and one of the oldest, taxes in this latter sense is inflation. Governments have stolen their people’s resources this way, not just for centuries, but for thousands of years.
Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life’s savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all. The Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1920s had thousands of printing presses turning out vast amounts of money, which the government could then spend to pay for whatever it wanted to pay for.
Of course, prices skyrocketed with vastly more money in circulation. Many people’s life savings would not buy a loaf of bread. For all practical purposes, they had been robbed, big time.
A rising demagogue coined the phrase “starving billionaires,” because even a billion Deutsche marks was not enough to feed your family. That demagogue was Adolf Hitler, and the public’s loss of faith in their irresponsible government may well have contributed toward his Nazi movement’s growth.
Most inflation does not reach that level, but the government can quietly steal a lot of your wealth with much lower rates of inflation. For example, a $100 bill at the end of the 20th century would buy less than a $20 bill would buy in 1960.
If you put $1,000 in your piggy bank in 1960 and took it out to spend in 2000, you would discover that your money had, over time, lost 80% of its value.”
Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-on-the-right/121012-636517-governments-steal-through-inflation.htm#ixzz2EkOvvVbD
When I read a comments section like this it boggles the mind to think about how far away the discourse is from economic realities.
I’m glad to know that the collapse of the dollar “wouldn’t be a terrible thing and might actually help the economy”, or that “The USA will never default on its debt, ever”, or that “at our current borrowing rate of 2%, the worst it can do is cause 2% inflation on top of the normal 3%” . . . and on top of all this debt “more fiscal stimulus is needed.”
No doubt that folks really believe all of that. After all, we have prize-winning economist not part of the “far right wing” who tell us it’s all fine. Any talk to the contrary is “deficit panic” designed to “destroy SSI”.
Next stop, $25 trillion, $100 trillion… hyperinflation is for third world countries. These are investments for our grandchildren (which they don’t have to repay, after all), please just keep telling yourselves that.
The total valuation of all companies on the stock market is $50 trillion. You could seize all of them, and all the stock owned by the 1% and the 99% and the teacher’s pension fund or whatever, and by selling every share to China and Japan you could fund our rate of spending all the way to 2025 and call it even. Nothing to see here – move on – we’ll grow our way out, just like Krugman predicted when he said “By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
As far as I’ve seen, Keynes has been about right, over time.
Good question Elaine!
Michigan model in America:
Elaine:
caring and results are 2 different things.
Krugman is not right, Keynes is not right. They may be the best 2 guyz that ever wuz but so what?
Yeh, you know, Krugman and Stiglitz–who would want to listen two top economists with a conscience who care about working people, the middle class, the poor and elderly?
To further my comment above, Syria and Iran have a mutual defense pact:
(Guardian). China takes a dim view of it, having just vetoed a U.S. move in the U.N. to sanction Syria (their 7th veto since 1971), and have said:
(China Daily). When one invades their bank and guns are pointing at the banker and friends, one’s debt with that bank seems the least of the worries.
Off topic but funny to me.
I delivered mail for 34 years. Occasionally yet too frequently, someone would stop me on my rounds and say, “do you have any mail for me” Now that sounds fine until it is considered that I would not have a clue who the person was! Nor did the person have a clue that for some reason I couldn’t answer their question. Well in my more youthful years I has snark. My response would be to finger through my mail in search of theirs. Then after a sufficient time I would respond “No, no mail for the name me”. I received varied reactions. ……. Till one day, I did exactly this and the guys last name was ME. I almost fell down, I was guffawing, my face beaming, I think Mr. Me thought I was looney. He wasn’t even curious about my explanation, he just wanted his mail. I gave it to him, and my cheeks hurt the rest of the day.
Absolutely true story. Who da thunk it.
Since Ray Gun made peace with Russia, and since China is our banker, we would not do anything to disturb them:
(Turkish Weekly). I mean seriously, Russia was only kidding when it:
(RT).
Besides, Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize doodes and doodettes.
Move along, only debts to worry about folks.
Kudos Idealist, my vintage is 1954. optimistically doing my best to avoid Vinegarizling. ….. is there two Ls in vinegarizling 🙂 …. my spell check doesn’t seem to accept either spelling. LOL
Me:
is that you?
You sound like me, dont take Krugman seriously on issues economic. I am still trying to figure out how he got a Nobel Prize. Although the prez got one so I guess I answered my own question. Although I thought they gave them in economics for serious work.
Me,
if it is a choice between Krugman or Stiglitz or you on economic issues, I choose Krugman and Stiglitz. No contest.