An interesting look at national debit

[Ketchup]

With all this talk about the deficit, I thought it would be interesting to see where our money is being spent. Let's just say I was quite surprised. For example, look at the NASA budget compared to, say, the Social Security Administration. I remember hearing about the NASA budget being cut. Seeing something like this makes one ask, 'What was the point?'.

http://www.federalbudget.com/

 

[SandEagle]

how can i take you seriously when you can't tell the difference between debt and debit?

 

[Ketchup]

how can i take you seriously when you can't tell the difference between debt and debit?

No debit love? Do you take credit?

Seriously though, they are related. Just because I used debit and deficit words within the same post, doesn't mean I am implying they are the same.

The only way we are going to start lowering the deficit is to lower national debt.

 

[Craig234]

It's good to get informed. There are issues which are good for politicians to make a lot of noise about to get botes that are trivial in cost.

The whole federal budget that does huge amounts of good things, outside of Healthcare, SS, Defense and interest, adds up to a relatively small amount.

Yet that 'discretionary spending' is where they want to squeeze a lot.

Bottom line: we're poor largely because the rich have kept a lot more.

That causes in cuts in things that gorw the economy, like raw reserch, like education spending, like infrastructure, etc.

I just watched a documentary on the 'Grand Coulee Dam' project. It was proposed in the 1920's, and Republicans in Congress said 'there aren't enough people who will benefit and the government shouldn't be spending money on something like that'. There were privte power companied who lobbied against it because they didn't want competition.

Then FDR came into office and decided to spend on it; it was then 'the largest thing man had ever built'. A great success - and people moved to the region to enjoy it.

It's amazing how when the country was a disaster economically, the government was able to do so many projects that benefited the country and often do even now; that dam was completed right after the Hoover Dam, in the 1930's, as was the Golden Gate Bridge, the Teneessee Valley Authority, and so much more - even sidewalks.

Economic disaster but we did great things for the country. Lesson there somewhere.

For that matter, the next time the Democrats had dominance - had a war on poverty that dropped the Americans in poverty from 20% (where they had been for decades) to 12% (it's remained about a third lower ever since), at the same time spending up to 5% of the budget on the moon landing, at the same time education was a lot more paid for by the government, and by the way we had the expensive Vietnam War as well (bad, but shows the money was there). What were the tax rates? Yet the economy was good.

We didn't have, though, the financial sector taking 40% of all the economy's profits with so many activities that extracted instead of growing wealth - it was more 10-15%.

With Reagan, though, we stopped a 'fair' economy and started on with a shift to the top and more and more debt - for both citizens and the government.

As a result of that - the economic recovery since the 2008 crash has been large - but 93% of the recovery has gone to the top 1%.

The Republicans' plan: we need to shift more to the top, cutting spending on the 99% and adding more tax cuts for the 1%. And they have the money to sell that disastrous policy.

They have shifted the US towards the plutocratic model, threatening the well-being of the 99%, the productivity of the country, democracy - all so a few can own more of less.

Save234

 

[Craig234]

By the way, note a couple things on the graph you posted.

- Social Security has its own revenue stream; before SS, 90% of the elderly lived in poverty. It's there for a reason.

- Our massive healthcare spending is big enough it's a threat to our budget. But it's in part from great progress in healthcare - something worth paying for.

It's there for a reason. But there is a big part in the private healthcare spending that's 'waste' because we pay for profits and redundancies of an expensive, wasteful private insurance system. And there's a good part of Medicare that's 'waste' as well, needing reform, and including inadequate protection from fraud.

The two 'big areas' we can cut are defense - a powerful and corrupt industry that also corrupts our foreign policy and causes harm much of the time - and interest on the debt.

In the long run we need to cut the debt and save that money; growing the debt of course keeps growing the percent of the budget on interest.

In one third world country I saw a report on, they were paying 100 times as much on interest as on education which had becomes almost nothing, IIRC.

It's pretty simple - the same people who lobbied against FDR gained power when they got their spokesman Reagan elected and those policies enacted.

 

[FoBoT]

they won't stop borrowing until interest rates go up, there really isn't any reason to until then

 

[Ketchup]

As a result of that - the economic recovery since the 2008 crash has been large - but 93% of the recovery has gone to the top 1%.Save234

I don't see a link for that, but I'll give you a link for this: the Top 1% paid 36.73% of all income taxes in 2009, the bottom 50% only paid 2.25%. I think they are paying their fair share.

Those figures are all over the place, but I copied those from http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

 

[Svnla]

I said this in another thread and I will say it again. If we do not do anything about the entitlement programs such as SS, Medicare, Mediaid and let them growth with the same rate they are growing now, those programs will swallow the whole US budget very soon.

 

[thraashman]

I don't see a link for that, but I'll give you a link for this: the Top 1% paid 36.73% of all income taxes in 2009, the bottom 50% only paid 2.25%. I think they are paying their fair share.

Those figures are all over the place, but I copied those from http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

That's income tax. If you factor in all forms of tax that are paid then it's quite different. For all forms of tax paid the top 1% pay around 21%, the bottom 50% pay around 6.7%. The top 1% control 43% of all wealth, the bottom 50% about 2.4% of all wealth.

 

[Ketchup]

OK let's factor in those others. What are they? Got a link? Or at least some examples?

 

[the DRIZZLE]

Save234

Your wall of nonsense can't overcome the fact that government spending as a percent of gdp is at its highest levels ever excluding WW2.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

By the way, note a couple things on the graph you posted.

- Social Security has its own revenue stream; before SS, 90% of the elderly lived in poverty. It's there for a reason.

- Our massive healthcare spending is big enough it's a threat to our budget. But it's in part from great progress in healthcare - something worth paying for.

It's there for a reason. But there is a big part in the private healthcare spending that's 'waste' because we pay for profits and redundancies of an expensive, wasteful private insurance system. And there's a good part of Medicare that's 'waste' as well, needing reform, and including inadequate protection from fraud.

The two 'big areas' we can cut are defense - a powerful and corrupt industry that also corrupts our foreign policy and causes harm much of the time - and interest on the debt.

In the long run we need to cut the debt and save that money; growing the debt of course keeps growing the percent of the budget on interest.

In one third world country I saw a report on, they were paying 100 times as much on interest as on education which had becomes almost nothing, IIRC.

It's pretty simple - the same people who lobbied against FDR gained power when they got their spokesman Reagan elected and those policies enacted.

The deficit this year is almost double the entire defense budget including the wars. Defense as a percent of GDP is also at historical lows. I don't have a problem with cutting defense but if that's all you are putting on the table you can't solve the problem.

 

[Craig234]

I don't see a link for that, but I'll give you a link for this: the Top 1% paid 36.73% of all income taxes in 2009, the bottom 50% only paid 2.25%. I think they are paying their fair share.

Those figures are all over the place, but I copied those from http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

I could show you it's not a fair share, but your lack of interest in what I did post...