The wonders of deficit spending and a globalized economy has produced a record budget deficit for March of $108 billion, twice the amount from last year.
What’s important to note is that we’re running hot at $461 billion year to date.
If a corporation was run in such a manner, the c-level suite would be wiped out clean. Instead, like lemmings, we elect the same assclowns into office, who are literally using America’s tax dollars and borrowing power as their personal piggy banks.
The land of the free and the brave are now slaves to debt and an overwhelmingly bleak future.
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Don’t sweat it When you got Credit!
Yea but that’s a dangerous game unless you know how to be teflon or run from state to state, use people, wives, change identities, don’t worry about your children’s future, etc. etc.
I was thinking today: why don’t the powers that be go for broke, like have the Fed jawbone stocks up, have the government start directly investing in us companies, just to truly fuck over everybody under 50 years old. Isn’t that what powerful old people want: to retire around Dow 30,000. Who cares if the next 20 years of excess destroy the next 100…everyone in charge now will be dead by then.
The debt is just a GOP excuse for not spending money on something that the Dems want to spend money on.
Why is it that people who are supposedly concerned about the national debt usually also want to have big tax cuts and even think they should pay no taxes at all? At least these debt clock people realize that if you take in less money in taxes, that the debt will grow more.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Why is it that the GOP raves about government debt and then puts one unnecessary war after another on the national credit card?
Why is it that we’re not fixing our crumbling infrastructure, which will cost more, the longer we wait, and will also put us at risk of harm of further expense from various systems falling apart? To keep waiting like this will increase the national debt more in the long run, and even moreso if interest rates end up rising and borrowing money is thus more expensive.
No one at all, or almost no one at all, is really concerned about the debt. And maybe they are right to not be concerned. The U.S. is not a corporation. It’s the nation that holds the world’s reserve currency.
Why is there only 2 sides to it?
You can spend less, AND tax more. (Mind Blown)
Theoretically you could. But spending less and taxing more is not politically possible. In fact, the opposite– spending more and taxing less– is the popular thing to promise if you are a political candidate. It even has a name– the Two Santa Claus theory.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-06-21/news/bs-ed-gop-spending-20120621_1_president-obama-federal-employees-theory
I am concerned about the debt. If we destroy our currency, we will ruin our country. A sound, reliable currency is massively important. Ask someone from Russia, Argentina, Venezuela, etc about what it’s like to see the currency destroyed. The Germans are still scarred by it and it not even something that happened in living memory for them.
The Bush wars were irresponsible lunacy.
Oh, here is a more thorough explanation of the Two Santa Claus theory.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/01/26/two-santa-clauses-or-how-republican-party-has-conned-america-thirty-years
If citizens are actually concerned about the debt for real, then perhaps people will get together to form a political party that is really prepared to focus on reducing the debt– even when their own party is in office. This has not been done before.
Keynes said that to stimulate in a recession you can reduce taxes OR increase deficit spending. Neither the left nor the right like to admit there are two sides to that.
We have had abysmal GDP growth. On deficit spending, it’d be nice to spend on things that actually generate a positive return for our future or somehow find ways where the spending is focused domestically.
I think the optimal tax rate for boosting government growth and probably overall economic growth is like a bell curve. Higher taxes just increase the incentive for lobbying and loopholes to be created and used… not to mention that at some point, it eats into businesses growth…
Take a penny and double it 30 times and you get over 10 million dollars. Tax that million dollars now at 50% and you get 5.37 million for you, 5.37 million for the government.
Apply a 30% tax each time you double it and you get
Apply a 33.333% tax each time you double it and you end up with 45k instead of over 10M.
Apply a 50% tax instead each time and you end up with under $2,000 and government collects about $2,000.
The government wants to collect on both sides of the transaction any time there is a transfer of capital. This can be destructive to growth.
In some ways this is an argument for a progressive tax, or providing the ability to defer taxes, but also that taxes can become destructive to economic growth in the long run if they get too high… Your perspective probably differs depending on what political party you align with.
moneybagz, I agree with you.
hattery, you are ignoring the 2nd order effects in your example. The tax money doesn’t disappear (unless the government is retiring debt, in which case future interest expenses are lower). The gov’t spends that money on goods and services. True, the gov’t may not always spend it effectively…
moneybagz, most of the citizens won’t stand for it. The Republicans want the opposite and Democrats don’t see debt/deficits as problems at all (see Medicare & SS as good examples). Whenever someone suggest “cutting waste,” they are almost always referring to the other’s aisles pet projects.
I think Buffet’s returns on capital since 1964 are ~15% per year. Start with a penny and do that for 30 years and you end up with…66 cents. Tax the gain each year at 33% and you get…17 cents. I’ll spot you the 49 cents if you can do it and you pay all your taxes.
America is run like a corporation.Financial
wizardry,, lies ,huge debt etc.,etc.,ect
@Fly – if you really believe the perpetual deficit Triffin dilemma logic, so have to be a long term gold bull.
Those who are not concerned about the debt say that Russia, Argentina, Venezuela, etc. would have been fine, if they had had the world’s reserve currency. They didn’t. We do. And therein lies all the difference, according to Modern Monetary Theory at least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/
The more debt we take on the more risk there is that something goes wrong with the currency and if that happens we will all suffer.
The debt is also wrong because it steals opportunity from our future generations and makes the country less resilient.
Just like illegal immigration, it hurt us. We can make better choices.
Actually, a certain amount of debt at certain times makes the economy better, not worse. And failure to take on debt during a Great Depression or a Great Recession, in order to invest in the future, makes the economy keep getting worse.
It all depends on how much debt you take on when, and for what purpose. Unnecessary wars are certainly not an investment in the future. But repair of infrastructure is an investment in the future.
http://www.rweconomics.com/
No argument here, except that there are always second order effects. Take for example the subsidized student loans ala Clinton and tution is up 4000% percent along with all this student debt dragging people down. I suspect a lot of people might have been better off without that opportunity to sell themselves into debt slavery for a 2nd or 3rd class education.
Awaiting the moderation again.
tc, send an email to Jeremy.
His address is admin
He is @ibankcoin.com
Frog, they are trying the keep you from reading my incredible posts. For shame on the awaiting comments filter. The Fly is trying to prevent us from engaging in friendly dialogs!!!
tc, did you send an email to Jeremy, telling him you are having trouble getting your comment through the filter?
No. I didn’t. I think Fly let me through. It was the political name that flagged it probably. We just need to misspell political names I guess.
No, the filters are impossible to figure out. But if you send an email to Jeremy when that happens, he can pull your comment through.
I beg to differ. This is how most c-level suites operate; especially when it comes to what is good for the c-level suite infidels.
Where the hell would we be with oil at $100/bbl?
Looks like the defecit would be $20-30B higher per month with $100 oil.
fake, my intuition tells me it would be disastrous for America. Not sure there will ever again be enough jobs in the domestic petro-chemical industry to make it profitable for most Americans but I could be wrong; we have short memories of acute and chronic historical events and desperation often leads us down the wrong path over and over again because that path is known rather than innovative with risks that are unknown.
Solid comments section gents. I’m proud of you.
Thanks fly, can I ruin it for everybody by throwing in a #MAGA?
So, say we endure great austerity through higher taxes and less spending, no doubt pinching everyone on all sides. We all bite the bullet, not just assistance for the riff raff, but tremendous amounts of federal money spent on contracts with private companies dries up. The money supply will be reduced tremendously as the debt is paid back. If we are successful and pay the debt off completely, then what? Will we be on the road to prosperity? Will our children and grandchildren pay pay less in taxes? What problems will be solved by such a scenario?
US Federal government debt is not comparable to corporate or household debt. The government can issue money at will, and cannot be insolvent.
Yes, this web site addresses those issues quite well, complete with history of how government spending has worked over time. This does not appear to be the time to do higher taxes and less spending and have it work out well. Boom times are when you can do that and have it work.
http://www.rweconomics.com/
I should quit while I am ahead but it’s my nature to be bold. With regard to illegal immigrants ruining this country and our “systems” I again beg to differ with t.c.
Illegal immigrants often did jobs our citizens did not want. I remember Bermuda having the problem of Bermudian citizens refusing to accept jobs at resorts so they often brought in service workers from all over the world (not sure if the same but has similarity).
These Illegals, as you like to call them, kept the wagon trains rolling. They were used and abused. No single group of ethnics is perfect or pure nor are they evil but there are things as Americans we abhor. Eating dogs, brutal removing of a female clitoris and sewing up the vagina, blaming a young woman for being raped etc etc
I think we do need some immigrants to keep coming and picking the fruits and vegetables, since very few, if any, Americans can or will do this.
But I agree with Bernie that we can’t just have open borders. We have to have some control over how many people we let in, in order to be fair to American citizens who should not be losing their jobs to recent immigrants. And this does happen, I am beginning to understand. E.g. there are some construction and factory jobs that immigrants come in and get, that would otherwise go to Americans. Also, many
H-1B visa jobs would otherwise go to Americans.
Many, but not all, people become more moderate after moving to the U.S. and assimilate pretty well.
The biggest problem with the immigration issue is that it is used to get votes– not seen as a problem to be solved. The GOP has been railing about illegal immigration forever. They control both the House and the Senate. If they wanted to address the problem, they would. But they don’t want to.
If they get votes by railing about it and doing nothing about it, why should they address it? Marco Rubio came up with a plan and they practically tarred and feathered him over it. And then they did not come up with an alternate plan either. Their political donor corporations want to hire illegals and pay them substandard wages and take advantage of them. So they please their donors by doing nothing. And they please their voters by railing about illegal immigration.
For the ones that are here its a complex situation with a lot of family and people involved, but we can at least control the border better.
We can control crime better. I’m not convinced about the danger of crossing over the border. It is very dangerous for those that come to USA, outside of legal immigration/visa, seeking to earn honest coin.
I don’t have stats on this but I remember reading that as our economy tanked, the influx of those who are honest but unsanctioned dropped.
Thank You, t.c. and frog and others for keeping the debate a civil debate.
You’re welcome, Vampyr. That you too.
It’s a breath of fresh air to have a frank and civil discussion about what people think might be the policies that would be in the best interests of our nation.
vampyr, that was mainly because housing construction was a HUGE job-provide to illegal immigrants. Today, it’s not hard to find articles about home builders not being able to find construction labor. Of course, considering the unemployment rate of the less educated, what they really mean is that they can’t find labor at $5-10/hour anymore.
I live in the heart of Christmas Tree Country and the locals absolutely refuse to do the work. They’d rather yell about people “stealing their jobs.” Without legal migrants to do the work, then the wealthy landowners would have less wealth and our environment would be a little better (if you see what they sprayed on the trees, you would not want one in your house.)
Don’t be a nervous nellie, Fly.
Monthly numbers are noisy, due to the timing of outlays and receipts. The monthly deficit is especially noisy, because it is the difference between two larger numbers.
Fiscal YTD, receipts are up 4.0%, outlays are up 4.2%, and the deficit is up 4.9%.
Those changes are moderate, given the growing overall population and the faster-growing older population.