Armchair Economists, Unite!

[Lord J Esq]

I say that's preposterous. We could have cut the upcoming deficit almost in half just by letting the high-income Bush tax cuts expire, restoring tax levels for the highest earners to Clinton-era levels, still under 40 percent.

Closing down entire segments of the government whose value you clearly don't understand, when there is a pain-free alternative available that won't even cost you a personal penny, nor would put a single person into poverty or financial disability, is a no-brainer.

[GenesisOne]

Let the tax cuts expire? If this were a viable solution, why didn't the Democrats let things be when these same tax cuts were made in 2001 and 2003? Am I to conclude from this that they (the tax cuts) were a bad idea when budget deficits were small, but a good idea when the deficit floats around $1.4 trillion? I'm confused.

Let's assume, just for the moment, that we take the do-nothing option and allow the tax cuts to expire. The only thing that will happen is that the federal budget deficit will, at best, be cut in half. Each decade we allow them to continue adding to the debt and billions of dollars in annual interest payments. Ultimately, we will pay for this either with a devalued dollar (inflation) or much higher taxes on future generations, stifling our future economic competitiveness. Or, we can just tax the rich like we used to under Clinton, when the economy grew like gangbusters.

It's been proven time and again that tax cuts to the rich don't work. For your perusal:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=547

Also, am I to take your last sentence at me as an insult against or a complement to my idea? Better yet, elaborate on how your "pain-free alternative" will work.

[Lord J Esq]

Let the tax cuts expire? If this were a viable solution, why didn't the Democrats let things be when these same tax cuts were made in 2001 and 2003? Am I to conclude from this that they (the tax cuts) were a bad idea when budget deficits were small, but a good idea when the deficit floats around $1.4 trillion? I'm confused.

Yes you are confused. The tax cuts were passed by a Republican Congress under a Republican administration. The Democrats didn't have anything to do with it. They weren't even responsible for the expiration date on the tax cuts: The Republicans did that themselves in order to be able to use the budget reconciliation process to increase the deficit, which normally isn't allowed.

Let's assume, just for the moment, that we take the do-nothing option and allow the tax cuts to expire. The only thing that will happen is that the federal budget deficit will, at best, be cut in half. Each decade we allow them to continue adding to the debt and billions of dollars in annual interest payments. Ultimately, we will pay for this either with a devalued dollar (inflation) or much higher taxes on future generations, stifling our future economic competitiveness.

I didn't mean to give the impression that we should only cut part of the deficit. At these levels, nobody is contending that the deficit is sustainable. Even half of 1.5 trillion dollars is still way too much money to add on to the deficit each year. My point in mentioning the Bush tax cuts was that here we have a painless organ to cut a substantial portion of the deficit without really hurting anybody.

It's been proven time and again that tax cuts to the rich don't work. For your perusal:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=547

Oh, boy. I'm going to hazard a guess that you said something you didn't mean. Let me re-explain where things stand now, because it's clear you've gotten something mixed up:

Bush created the tax cuts using his Republican Congress early in the last decade, and expanded them again later on. These tax cuts were across the board, but were especially generous for the top income brackets. That was why he did it: He essentially helped rich people avoid their historical tax obligations by cloaking the maneuver in a modest tax cut for everybody else.

It took a huge chunk out of the government's revenue stream, which is partly why the Clinton-era surpluses turned to large deficits under Bush. Bush then proceeded to make things worse by taking us to war, which is 20 percent of the present-year deficit by itself, and by running an administration that did nothing to regulate the financial excesses that led to the economic crisis in 2008, the fallout of which is more than 50 percent of the present-year deficit.

The tax cuts were set to expire at the end of the last Congress. Obama and the Democrats wanted to renew them for everybody except those in the top income brackets, because the extra revenue from rich people paying a higher tax rate would have deeply cut the deficit and improved the country's financial outlook over the coming decade. However, Democrats in the Senate couldn't convince Republicans not to filibuster such a plan. The Republicans, for their part, demanded that the tax cuts be renewed for the rich too. They stuck to their guns, and they won. The tax cuts were completely renewed at the end of the Congress. They have a new expiration date, and we're going to have this battle again in a few years.

When a tax cut expires, that means the tax rate goes back to what it had been previously. It's a tax hike, or more appropriately a reversal of the original tax cut. In short, taxes were going to go up at the end of last year, back to Clinton-era levels, but since Congress decided not to let that happen, the deficit is now going to be much higher than it otherwise would have been had the tax cuts on the rich expired as the Democrats had hoped.

Now, moving on, you originally posted some claptrap about shutting down large segments of the government. All of your suggestions were preposterous, but let's just go with one consequence of the item at the top of your list: By closing the Department of Education, among other deleterious consequences, you would destroy over $100 billion annually in financial aid for students to attend college. A college education is a verifiable path to greater personal wealth. That wealth far outweighs the amount paid by taxpayers to support federal student aid. So your scheme would close the doors of a college education to hundreds of thousands of people annually. Not only would this present an enormous loss in their personal lives; it would impoverish the whole country through a massive opportunity cost.

What I posted earlier is that not only is your bullshit so stinky, but there's a mind-bogglingly obvious, major solution that would greatly reduce the deficit without cutting anything: Let the tax cuts on the rich expire. That's what almost happened last year, but didn't because Democrats are timid and Republicans are unreasonable. By letting the tax cuts on the rich expire, the deficit would have shrunk by, to paraphrase Carl Sagan, billions and billions.

In reply to that, you posted a link to that article from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Presumably you did this to rebut my suggestion. If so, then either you didn't read your own article, or you didn't understand my original position.

The article, although it is years out of date now, asserts that the better economic policy would be to let the tax cuts expire, which is exactly what I recommended in my earlier post. And that was a report from Bush's own Treasury Department! Your link doesn't refute my position; it bolsters it.

Meanwhile, I have no idea what your position actually is. This is one reason why I would not participate in an economic debate under your moderatorship. You have no meaningful grasp of the concepts at hand, and you couldn't help but get involved in the argument despite being the self-imposed arbiter of it.

Also, am I to take your last sentence at me as an insult against or a complement to my idea? Better yet, elaborate on how your "pain-free alternative" will work.

If we're talking about shutting down all that stuff you should we should shut down, consider it an insult--not at you, but at the idea.

However, to the extent you present yourself as competent on these matters--such as by thumbing your nose down at those of us who "don't understand the Greek reference" (and thus implying, even more outlandishly, that you do!)--you may take the insult personally. Noisemaking and grandstanding like yours is what makes an intelligent discourse so difficult to have in this country on almost any political matter.

[FaustWolf]

Thanks for the rubric a few posts back J, sounds like a start to me. Reminds me that this is the kind of discussion that should take place in upper level economics courses. Currently, theory classes are too wrapped up in plugging some completely un-mathematical things into mathematical models for my taste.

@FaustWolf: You're right in saying that entrepreneurs need very little to start their own business, but there is one thing that's keeping most good entrepreneurs from surfacing: government regulation. Our economic growth has stalled because millions of pages of regulations make businesses too fearful to invest. Entrepreneurs have a slim chance of knowing (or probably won't even know) what the rules --or taxes--will be tomorrow. This discourages hiring.

What says you about this?

I'll agree that there are probably a fair number of regulations that are outdated and should be stricken, but I wouldn't favor a blanket overnight elimination. It's something lawmakers would do well to sit down and sift through while collecting testimony from businesses. What's interesting is that we can safely assume established businesses have at least a one-way path of communication with our government through lobbyists. I wonder what's keeping most troublesome regulation in place? A real desire on the part of our government to protect the little'uns, or big businesses tolerating regulations that prevent small businesses from springing up?

Either way, I'm tempted to view the problem you describe as an underutilization of resources. Do local chambers of commerce not maintain an expert in regulation and tax law who can provide this kind of advice to entrepreneurs for free or at little cost? Honestly, I have no clue -- but it's something I'm interested in investigating. There are probably plenty of underemployed law school graduates who could be turned to this use at relatively little re-training cost, if someone is only willing to foot the bill.

Another consideration that's popped into my mind is that entrepreneurs might take the presence of severe regulation as a sign of guidance: maybe they're trying to compete in an industry or niche that is too well-established. It's impossible to avoid all regulation of course, but looking for opportunity in areas of the economy that are less regulated might better promote innovation and diversification.

[Thought]

Here's the list of cuts that I'd like to see made:
- Privatize mass transportation, at least in urban dwellings (e.g. trains, buses)

Above all your proposed cuts, this one struck out as particularly curious. Why privatize mass transportation? Is this only to bring such institutions out of the red? If so, that seems to undermine the general intent of mass transit. That is, in cities like Washington DC (several million deficit in its budget, last I heard), there isn't much that can be done to increase efficiency that hasn't already been done. The main tasks of privatization would be to either increase revenue through increased ticket prices or to reduce costs by reduced routes or frequency (this latter being un-ideal as it likewise reduces revenue).

To interject an anecdote, I take the bus into work fairly often. It is a 10 minute car ride but a 50ish minute bus ride. Cut the number of buses that run and it would suddenly take around 2 hours to get to work. Four hours out of my day means that I would need to find an alternate transportation method (driving, most specifically). This would eventually cause me greater expenses, it would increase consumption of gasoline, it would increase traffic, and thereby increase the city's obligations (more police to monitor more drivers, more EMTs to respond to more accidents, and more road maintenance).

If, instead of reducing the number of routes or frequency, a privatized mass transit system instead raised prices, it would not affect me directly (as I get "free" bus fair through tuition fees). But this would increase tuition costs to people in my situation, and it would extract extra money from the lowest echelons of society (those individuals who cannot afford to buy a car or gas). This restricts the expendable income of those groups that have little to no expendable income to restrict.

Or, in other words, if mass transit is privatized, it seems likely that it will cease to be transit for the masses.

EDIT: Of course, things are all interrelated. It would be a boon to consumers if groceries were cheaper. Simple solution to this is to not transport foodstuffs. Consider the economic waste that occurs when we ship oranges from Florida to Alaska. Somethings are unavoidable for basic nutritional requirements, but there would be a great social savings if food was once again produced in the local hinterlands of cities. How does this relate to mass transit? It taps into the basic idea that transportation is a service that should be leveraged for the greater good. In the case of mass transit, this means increasing availability. In the case of foodstuffs, this means restricting it.

[Lennis]

Here's the list of cuts that I'd like to see made:

- Close the Department of Education
- Close HUD (Housing and Urban Development)
- Close the Commerce Department (Free trade to them is an oxymoron)
- Eliminate corporate welfare and subsidies (including agriculture, green energy, public broadcasting)
- Privatize mass transportation, at least in urban dwellings (e.g. trains, buses)
- Privatize Social Security and Medicare
- Repeal government interference in medicine and insurance, especially licensing

Genesis, with the possible exception of the privatization of mass transportation, these all sound like traditional Republican talking points.  I'm not saying that's bad, but I would like to know your reasoning behind these cuts, because most of them would be so extreme as to fundamentally change the fabric of our nation.  If all of these cuts were made there would be a massive shift in the political balance of power in this country; the rich and powerful would be free to do pretty much whatever they want, and the poor and powerless would be forced to accept the new reality.  A lack of regulations would also mean a lack of protection from those who seek profit over the common good.  Privatization over traditionally public institutions would leave the people without an effective voice.  Private industry is under no legal or moral obligation to listen to anything the people say.  People without a government to stand up for their interests are not truly free.  That is an illusion.  I'm not saying that privatization is inherently bad, but putting the people's interests in the hands of those who are by nature concerned only with profit is inherently dangerous.  The job of private business is to make profit.  Period.  They do not care about the bigger picture or how their decisions might hurt other people, because that isn't their job.  That's government's job.  If government doesn't do its job, or punts the ball to the invisible hand, what do you think will happen when that invisible hand eliminates the middle-class?  The disaffected will see their government as weak and seek to replace it with one more aligned with their interests.  This kind of activity can rightly be called "political instability".  Why would we want to create the conditions leading to a government's ineffectiveness and subsequent removal?  Nothing good can come from that.  If I had to make a choice as to which of the things you listed should be cut, or greatly reduced, it would be Social Security – for reasons that are not at all ideological.  That is a program that is destined to fail anyway.  I'll explain why in a moment.

We could have cut the upcoming deficit almost in half just by letting the high-income Bush tax cuts expire, restoring tax levels for the highest earners to Clinton-era levels, still under 40 percent.

Lord J, I don't think repealing the Bush-era tax cuts alone will solve our sovereign debt problem.  We had long-term structural problems even before Bush became president.  We had structural problems before the tax-and-spend Democrats were replaced by the borrow-and-spend Republicans in 1994.  We have known for a very long time that Social Security would run out of money once the baby-boomers retired, but no one was willing to tackle the issue because the issue is, frankly, unresolvable.  There is no political solution to a problem that is inherently cultural.  There simply isn't a large enough tax base to continue funding entitlement programs at their present levels, and the problem is even more pronounced in Europe and Japan where the population is steadily declining and getting older.  They have no solutions either, and we have already started to see things unravel in Greece and Spain.

Our entitlement programs were created under the assumption that populations would continue to slowly expand and always provide a financial cushion on which the older generation could rest.  That assumption has been proven false, largely due to the population explosion and innovation that occurred after World War II.  The baby-boom generation was not to be exceeded in number by subsequent generations due to the era of technological advancement they helped usher in.  It lead to a smaller and more specialized workforce that could be far more productive than the large workforces of the past.  The burdens of increased education spending to compete in this new economy put downward pressure on population growth, which is the primary cause of our entitlement problem.  Social Security only works when there are more people paying taxes than there are people collecting benefits.  Politicians can spin this any way they want, but nothing they say can change this fundamental truth.  Unless there is another large population explosion, Social Security will fail.  But that will not happen, as there is no economic incentive to have larger families.  There are not enough jobs to support them, nor will there be.

One of the only constants in this world is change, and a very big change is coming whether we like it or not.  The age of universal entitlement programs is coming to an end.  They are inherently unsustainable.  Instead of providing comfortable retirement income for those young enough to appreciate it, the programs will be modified by necessity to provide emergency assistance only – and that only to the most elderly who are incapable of working.  Everyone younger will be expected to pay their own way, and this will mark the beginning of a major cultural and economic shift in the developed world.  People will have to spend less and save more.  A lot more.  That means less disposable income, which in turn will lead to a greatly reduced economy, fewer jobs, and much greater downward pressure on population growth.  This is something that only a few years ago I would not have predicted.  In the 1990's, I always figured that overpopulation would be the greatest crisis of the 21st century.  It isn't.  So long as mankind continues to advance, the downward pressure on population growth – at least under the present economic model – will continue to grow.  This makes the whole notion of entitlement programs something that I think historians will make fun of in the centuries to come.  They will view non-emergency entitlement programs to be no less ridiculous than the way we view slavery today.

That is not to say that all government programs and institutions are failures, though.  It is in the government's interests to get health-care costs under control, or the economic impact on a citizenry already reeling from Social Security's failure would be disastrous.  The HUD will be needed to build low-income housing that the growing poor can actually afford to live in.  And closing the Department of Education is unthinkable.  How would the public school system function without some kind of administration to guide its actions?  Or are you proposing that the schools be privatized as well?  That additional economic burden would put even more downward pressure on population growth, possibly even leading to decline.  That would mean even fewer jobs down the road.

Meanwhile, I have no idea what your position actually is. This is one reason why I would not participate in an economic debate under your moderatorship. You have no meaningful grasp of the concepts at hand, and you couldn't help but get involved in the argument despite being the self-imposed arbiter of it.

I'll have to second Lord J's opinion, at least in part.  I don't see much arbitration going on here.  I see an all-too-familiar battle between a Republican and a Democrat that's starting to get out of hand.  I remind you both to look at my signature.  The sword cuts three ways. 

[GenesisOne]

Bush created the tax cuts using his Republican Congress early in the last decade, and expanded them again later on. These tax cuts were across the board, but were especially generous for the top income brackets. That was why he did it: He essentially helped rich people avoid their historical tax obligations by cloaking the maneuver in a modest tax cut for everybody else.

Agreed. That's one of my stances: I'm against tax cuts for the rich because I believe trickle-down economics is a lot of bunk.

It took a huge chunk out of the government's revenue stream, which is partly why the Clinton-era surpluses turned to large deficits under Bush. Bush then proceeded to make things worse by taking us to war, which is 20 percent of the present-year deficit by itself, and by running an administration that did nothing to regulate the financial excesses that led to the economic crisis in 2008, the fallout of which is more than 50 percent of the present-year deficit.

Agreed.

The tax cuts were set to expire at the end of the last Congress. Obama and the Democrats wanted to renew them for everybody except those in the top income brackets, because the extra revenue from rich people paying a higher tax rate would have deeply cut the deficit and improved the country's financial outlook over the coming decade. However, Democrats in the Senate couldn't convince Republicans not to filibuster such a plan. The Republicans, for their part, demanded that the tax cuts be renewed for the rich too. They stuck to their guns, and they won. The tax cuts were completely renewed at the end of the Congress. They have a new expiration date, and we're going to have this battle again in a few years.

Couldn't convince them? I didn't vote for them just so they'd wimp out on us. And as for that battle, I'm seriously not looking forward to it.

Now, moving on, you originally posted some claptrap about shutting down large segments of the government. All of your suggestions were preposterous, but let's just go with one consequence of the item at the top of your list: By closing the Department of Education, among other deleterious consequences, you would destroy over $100 billion annually in financial aid for students to attend college. A college education is a verifiable path to greater personal wealth. That wealth far outweighs the amount paid by taxpayers to support federal student aid. So your scheme would close the doors of a college education to hundreds of thousands of people annually. Not only would this present an enormous loss in their personal lives; it would impoverish the whole country through a massive opportunity cost.

You employ a couple of misconceptions in this line of thought.

First is the notion that all $100 billion of those dollars go solely to financial aid for college students, which simply isn't true. You fail to mention all those K-12 students, teachers, professors, counselors, learning directors, deans, etc. They too have a say in the matter, and the general consensus is: "we can manage ourselves just fine."

There's also the misconception that college is a verifiable path to success. Here's a website thick with names of those who went on to find success, and they all either dropped out of high school/college: http://www.collegedropoutshalloffame.com/ And that's just the letter 'A'. By the same token, success in college isn't always measured by graduation. There are hundreds of thousands of graduate students who are left unsatisfied with their careers/trades. Verifiability it ain't.

Then there's the misconception that student success is a direct result of financial assistance from the DOE. Not remotely. It's the hard work and dedication of the teachers, parents and kids themselves that create and foster the success of these schools.

I personally thought you'd be for the closing of the Department of Education. The Department, in and of itself, is another form of Federal Government intervention in the duties of the State Governments. The schools in the U.S. are run by the states. The Local Governments license their teachers, approve the curriculum programs and manage the school system including buildings equipment, transportation, and food, to name a few. Every problem and every question a parent or a student has can be answered on a State level. The school system is funded by state income, sale, and property taxes. Federal government just sprinkles billions of dollars on the top of the education pie to spice it up a bit.

The creation of The $4 billion “Race to the Top” is not the only Obama education pet project.  Investing in Innovation Fund will cost us $650 million. Teacher and Leader Pathways will take another $405 million. And the there's the Teacher and Leader Innovation Fund ($950 million). It is great to recognize our teachers. There are similar State programs and schools and parents nominate good teachers for recognition every year. It is outrageous to spend $950 million borrowed from China for a duplicate program on a Federal level. There is no excuse for that.

The states suffer in recession and Obama should be working on turning the economy around, not turning around our schools. $3 billion dollars were appropriated by Obama for the School Turnaround Grants. At the same time the President cut the $3 billion NASA Constellation Systems budget ($3 billion dollars). The program was supposed to take us to the Moon and Mars. I wonder what would bring us more innovation for $3 billion: NASA or the School Turnaround Program. You make the call.

The schools are under the State jurisdiction. States collect our taxes to run schools. It is not the Federal Government job to turn around schools. It is the Local Government job. The Federal Government's job is to make sure the U.S. economy gets out of the hole fast so the States can collect more revenue to turn around their schools. The Federal Government job is to run NASA so we don’t have to beg the Russians to give our astronauts a lift to the space-station that was build with US tax-payer money in the first place.

The only schools that government should be running are the military schools and academies and those are separate under the Department of Defense not under the Department of Education. The national security is the main function of the federal government, education is not.

Keep in mind also that the DOE receives no financial or managerial audits to this date, and they are more than ready to close down public schools who don't stack up to their generic standards, and once the schools close, they are left to wear, tear, and vandalism, and the entire community suffers, especially those who worked at/attended those schools.

Education ought to be in the free market. It's ludicrous to take money from the States only to launder it through Washington and then return it to States. There is absolutely no need for the Department. They are trying to duplicate the State Education Board’s functions and that is costing the tax-payers billions of dollars. It is great that federal government wants to help education financially, but let’s get real. Today, as it was when the Department first came in during the Carter Administration years ago, it is up to the communities to lift themselves up to the top.

What I posted earlier is that not only is your bullshit so stinky, but there's a mind-bogglingly obvious, major solution that would greatly reduce the deficit without cutting anything: Let the tax cuts on the rich expire. That's what almost happened last year, but didn't because Democrats are timid and Republicans are unreasonable. By letting the tax cuts on the rich expire, the deficit would have shrunk by, to paraphrase Carl Sagan, billions and billions.

But even billions and billions wouldn't be enough to offset the deficit, which is trillions. Once we've let the tax cuts expire and the U.S. is still in the red, then what?

Meanwhile, I have no idea what your position actually is. This is one reason why I would not participate in an economic debate under your moderatorship. You have no meaningful grasp of the concepts at hand, and you couldn't help but get involved in the argument despite being the self-imposed arbiter of it.

Well, now you know, and I believe that education is far too important to let government bureaucrats manage.

If we're talking about shutting down all that stuff you should we should shut down, consider it an insult--not at you, but at the idea.

However, to the extent you present yourself as competent on these matters--such as by thumbing your nose down at those of us who "don't understand the Greek reference" (and thus implying, even more outlandishly, that you do!)--you may take the insult personally.

Why else would I say "don't understand the Greek reference"? Because those who--oh, I don't know--actually don't (and that automatically excludes you, based on your reaction) wouldn't understand it. To say that I was thumbing my nose down at those individuals is just you trying to paint me as a snobbish intellectual elite. The only insult I take personally is how you would do something like that and, in the very next sentence, say the following:

Noisemaking and grandstanding like yours is what makes an intelligent discourse so difficult to have in this country on almost any political matter.

Yeah... Let's keep it clean, okay?

[GenesisOne]

Attention, Armchair Economists.

I hereby concede that I've been a bit of a dick. Instead of sticking to being an arbiter of scholarly debate, I went into the heat of the debate and offered up my two cents without knowing that I'd be in the minority of said discussion points. I hate myself for it.

So, as of right now, I hereby shift myself back to my original position of intention, which is being a moderator. Nothing more, nothing less.

Here we go, starting with Lennis.

I'm not saying that's bad, but I would like to know your reasoning behind these cuts, because most of them would be so extreme as to fundamentally change the fabric of our nation. 

Would you at least concede that the fabric of our nation has changed within the past decade in the absence of the hypothetical cuts?

If all of these cuts were made there would be a massive shift in the political balance of power in this country; the rich and powerful would be free to do pretty much whatever they want, and the poor and powerless would be forced to accept the new reality.

But haven't the rich and powerful been doing so without the hypothetical cuts within the past decade? Or even during the Clinton Administration? As for your predictions, I cannot assume that you're wrong, but I cannot assume that you're right, either. You need to reinforce your claim with good evidence.

A lack of regulations would also mean a lack of protection from those who seek profit over the common good.  Privatization over traditionally public institutions would leave the people without an effective voice.  Private industry is under no legal or moral obligation to listen to anything the people say.  People without a government to stand up for their interests are not truly free.  That is an illusion.  I'm not saying that privatization is inherently bad, but putting the people's interests in the hands of those who are by nature concerned only with profit is inherently dangerous.  The job of private business is to make profit.  Period.

 
You speak about a lack of regulations and therefore a lack of protection. What about a flood of regulations? Would this fare any better? And speaking of protection, who exactly would be protected? The workers? The employers? Who?

Your assertion about private industry's lack of legal or moral obligation to anybody's opinion is a hasty generalization. Are there not those in the private industry who are genuinely concerned about people's opinions and ergo act on them?

And then there's your assertion that profit = sole concern of private industry = inherently dangerous. Is it not also the job of big businesses to make a profit as well?

They do not care about the bigger picture or how their decisions might hurt other people, because that isn't their job.  That's government's job.  If government doesn't do its job, or punts the ball to the invisible hand, what do you think will happen when that invisible hand eliminates the middle-class?

And what would you make of how the U.S. government has currently "done its job"? In your opinion, could it stand to be better or worse the way they are regulating business and the overall economy?

The disaffected will see their government as weak and seek to replace it with one more aligned with their interests.  This kind of activity can rightly be called "political instability".  Why would we want to create the conditions leading to a government's ineffectiveness and subsequent removal?  Nothing good can come from that.

Within the past decade that the U.S. government has "done its job," how would you rank their ability to align themselves with our (that is, We the People) interests and expectations, on a scale of 1 to 10? (1 being "not at all aligned", and 10 being "completely aligned")

You claim that nothing good can come from creating "the conditions leading to a government's ineffectiveness and subsequent removal." Would you concede, at least in theory, that We the People are partly responsible for creating such ineffectiveness in the first place? If so, then shouldn't We the People be responsible for correcting such ineffectiveness?


More to come...

[Lord J Esq]

You employ a couple of misconceptions in this line of thought.

First is the notion that all $100 billion of those dollars go solely to financial aid for college students, which simply isn't true. You fail to mention all those K-12 students, teachers, professors, counselors, learning directors, deans, etc. They too have a say in the matter, and the general consensus is: "we can manage ourselves just fine."

"Simply" not true?

You know...you can reference claims like the one I made. I don't just make them up. I picked that topic because I have written about it in recent days and happened to have many facts and figures fresh in my memory. That money is not the budget for the Department of Education. (Indeed, the entire Department of Education operates on a smaller budget than that.) That money is pure financial aid disbursed through the Office of Federal Student Aid. In fact, I deliberately rounded it downward to $100 billion so that I wouldn't have to check the exact figure, but the real number is higher. Well, now you've prompted me to check anyway. Here it is:

http://federalstudentaid.ed.gov/static/gw/docs/fsa_annual_report_2009_508compliant.pdf

"Simply" not true? Look: When you say something like that, which I happen to know is wrong, and when you adopt such an attitude in so doing, not only do you reveal your ignorance of the subject; you also make it very laborious to engage with you at all. Clearly I'm dealing with somebody who is okay with having a totally uninformed opinion. Clearly I'm dealing with somebody who can't be bothered to learn about the topic they are debating. Clearly I'm dealing with somebody who has no respect for the dialectic, no respect for factual justification, no respect for the intelligence of his debate partners.

There's also the misconception that college is a verifiable path to success.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77

Then there's the misconception that student success is a direct result of financial assistance from the DOE.

Student success is not solely the result of financial aid, no. But for those students who wouldn't be able to attend college without it, that aid is a prerequisite to their success.

I personally thought you'd be for the closing of the Department of Education. The Department, in and of itself, is another form of Federal Government intervention in the duties of the State Governments. The schools in the U.S. are run by the states. The Local Governments license their teachers, approve the curriculum programs and manage the school system including buildings equipment, transportation, and food, to name a few. Every problem and every question a parent or a student has can be answered on a State level. The school system is funded by state income, sale, and property taxes. Federal government just sprinkles billions of dollars on the top of the education pie to spice it up a bit.

I'm fascinated that you thought I'd be in favor of dissolving the Department of Education. I mean that sincerely, not as a jab. I took a little while to try and digest your paragraph to understand why you might think that of me. I'm still not sure. I would surmise you thought that I thought that the DoE is wasteful.

Perhaps it would behoove you to understand what the Department of Education entails:

http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/focus/what.html

Here are its specific programs. Be aware that it's too long to read end to end, but you can read about the most interesting portions at your leisure:

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/gtep/gtep2009.pdf

Investing in Innovation Fund will cost us $650 million. Teacher and Leader Pathways will take another $405 million. And the there's the Teacher and Leader Innovation Fund ($950 million). It is great to recognize our teachers. There are similar State programs and schools and parents nominate good teachers for recognition every year. It is outrageous to spend $950 million borrowed from China for a duplicate program on a Federal level. There is no excuse for that.

First, although technically a fallacious argument if I were to use it to rebut your point, consider your comment in context of the actual size of the federal budget:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/sheets/fct/24_14.xls

Incidentally, you can find the FSA programs in there. The loans won't show up as clearly as the grants, because there's money going both in and out, but you can look at those in the document I linked above.

But, really, my point is that $1 billion is about 0.03 percent of the budget.

Now, that doesn't mean that a given item isn't wasteful just because it's relatively small. But it does mean that your proposal would do almost nothing to help solve the budget deficit. Realistically, there is no way to solve the budget deficit without doing some combination of three things:

1) Raise taxes.
2) Drastically downsize some combination of the Pentagon, Social Security, or Medicare.
3) Accept a fundamentally less functional government. (Your solution, which would entail literally thousands of such sacrifices along the lines of the end of Federal Student Aid.)

As to whether or not the three programs you mentioned are wasteful or not, consider the reality of public education as it exists in this country today: a mess, a nightmare, with no unified political will to fundamentally overhaul the system, and in any case no money to pull it off. We are left instead to incremental solutions which may at least serve to provide instructional lessons for larger-scale maneuvers in the future.

From the DoE website:

"The Teacher and Leader Innovation Fund would make competitive awards to States and LEAs willing to implement bold approaches to improving the effectiveness of the education workforce in high-need schools by creating the conditions needed to identify, reward, retain, and advance effective teachers, principals, and school leadership teams in those schools, and enabling schools to build the strongest teams possible."

I recognize that those are important problems in the system. We need to do more to reward, retain, and situate competent educators. I'm not qualified to say if that program is wasteful or not, but the premise is sound.

The states suffer in recession and Obama should be working on turning the economy around, not turning around our schools. $3 billion dollars were appropriated by Obama for the School Turnaround Grants. At the same time the President cut the $3 billion NASA Constellation Systems budget ($3 billion dollars). The program was supposed to take us to the Moon and Mars. I wonder what would bring us more innovation for $3 billion: NASA or the School Turnaround Program. You make the call.

President Obama does not appropriate funds. That is the role of the Congress. A semantic aside, but hey.

I wasn't aware of the School Turnaround Grants program, but I am familiar with the story of Constellation. That was a debacle from the beginning, because Congress never adequately funded the Mars initiative. What Obama did by cutting it was to stop throwing good money after bad. The only responsible alternative would have been a vast budget increase for human spaceflight at NASA, which was not going to happen. To his credit, Obama did propose a budget that increases NASA's funding for its aeronautics and other non-manned-flight research, which is a critical, oft-invisible part of NASA that does great work. That will yield definite economic gains in the future.

Meanwhile, to address your point more directly, your argument that we shouldn't focus on the education problem in the midst of an economic crisis is obtuse. For one thing, the two are related. For another, the federal government isn't just a couple of people sitting around in a conference room somewhere. There's a whole cabinet-level segment of the government, called the Department of Education in fact, dedicated to dealing with the issues of education on a continual basis. When you insinuate that investments in education don't produce innovation, you are in fundamental error. How much innovation from a given program remains to be seen, and in any case I'm not the expert to say. But, having worked in public education (as well as attended public school and college), I can see for myself the relationship between innovation and education.

Education ought to be in the free market. It's ludicrous to take money from the States only to launder it through Washington and then return it to States. There is absolutely no need for the Department. They are trying to duplicate the State Education Board’s functions and that is costing the tax-payers billions of dollars. It is great that federal government wants to help education financially, but let’s get real. Today, as it was when the Department first came in during the Carter Administration years ago, it is up to the communities to lift themselves up to the top.

This paragraph is gibberish.

But even billions and billions wouldn't be enough to offset the deficit, which is trillions. Once we've let the tax cuts expire and the U.S. is still in the red, then what?

The deficit is about $1.5 trillion, no "s". Still, it's a big number. Once we've let the tax cuts expire and the U.S. is still in the red, we raise taxes selectively, cut spending selectively, and reorganize the government--not to kill it, but to streamline it.

Why else would I say "don't understand the Greek reference"? Because those who--oh, I don't know--actually don't (and that automatically excludes you, based on your reaction) wouldn't understand it. To say that I was thumbing my nose down at those individuals is just you trying to paint me as a snobbish intellectual elite.

I would never try to paint you as an intellectual or an elite. In any case, to use that reference the way you did, your understanding of the Greek situation is no better than of the American situation.

The only insult I take personally is how you would do something like that and, in the very next sentence, say the following:

Noisemaking and grandstanding like yours is what makes an intelligent discourse so difficult to have in this country on almost any political matter.

Yeah... Let's keep it clean, okay?

I really have nothing against you personally. My complaint is that you are putting on an air of authority which is not credible, and are polluting the discussion in so doing. You really, honestly, seriously do not know what you are talking about on any of this. You are not educated on the subject. Hell, ~I~ am not educated on the subject, and I still know enough to see that you don't know what you're talking about. I can only guess where you've gotten your ideas from.

My resentment is in no way against you, but against the audacity of what you proposed: massive privatization and government contraction. That is fundamentally untenable if we wish to preserve our way of life, let alone improve upon it. The problem is that your views are merely a symptom of a much larger movement on the political right which has succeed in strangling our government from within, ever since the Reagan era. Taxes are too low, spending is both too low and inefficient, and there's no willpower to do anything about it because right-wingers have a handy slogan called "tax-and-spend" which immediately makes any discussion about major economic reform a non-starter.

No, more to the point, my resentment is that your ideas, if made real, would dump millions of Americans in the cold overnight, destroy the national future, and erode our civil liberties if not wreck our democracy outright.

That's my problem with people who open their big mouths to argue politics. They have no grasp, no grasp whatsoever, of the ramifications of whatever it is they're spewing--left, right, center; most people are utterly clueless when it comes to the actual consequences of implementing the ideas they propose. It is offensive to me, because it is grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly irresponsible. It comes from ignorance, egotism, and indoctrination. It comes from lack of appreciation, lack of patience, lack of curiosity. It comes from all that is rotten in our species, and it lays bare the inherent failure of any democratic system: In a democracy, mooks have the vote.

You've been hornswoggled and you don't even know it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If I had to make a choice as to which of the things you listed should be cut, or greatly reduced, it would be Social Security – for reasons that are not at all ideological.  That is a program that is destined to fail anyway.  I'll explain why in a moment.

...

Lord J, I don't think repealing the Bush-era tax cuts alone will solve our sovereign debt problem.  We had long-term structural problems even before Bush became president.  We had structural problems before the tax-and-spend Democrats were replaced by the borrow-and-spend Republicans in 1994.  We have known for a very long time that Social Security would run out of money once the baby-boomers retired, but no one was willing to tackle the issue because the issue is, frankly, unresolvable.  There is no political solution to a problem that is inherently cultural.

I take issue with your perspective here. We could fix Social Security in two minutes, by removing the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes. Anyone who makes under $100,000 a year wouldn't shell out a single penny, and the whole problem of SS's solvency would vanish for a century. If, somehow, the costs of living as an elderly person were to burgeon this century and Social Security were threatened again, we could then impose a more radical fix: Reduce benefits for high-income earners. That would provide essentially unlimited solvency control without actually changing anybody's way of life. (Conceivably we could write in protections to take care of very rich people who somehow went broke in their old age.)

The problem with Social Security is not that it is fundamentally unsustainable as you assert, but that there is no political will to pursue a revenue-based solution, and so by definition people are chattering about what kind of cuts we'll have to make. It's narrow-minded and dim.

Social Security only works when there are more people paying taxes than there are people collecting benefits.  Politicians can spin this any way they want, but nothing they say can change this fundamental truth.

Your fundamental truth is incorrect. Your mistake is subtle: Social Security only works when there are more revenues in taxes than outlays in benefits. The number of people involved is not independently relevant. With an upside-down pyramid population (which the U.S. doesn't actually have), the way to balance something like Social Security is to lift the income cap (as I suggested), increase the tax rate to the highest level at which the burden does not hinder economic growth more than it helps it, and, from there, cut benefits as necessary. In that order.

Perhaps at some point humanity will become so longevous that a premise like Social Security will be fundamentally unworkable. Then we can reevaluate things like the age for which one qualifies, and the scope of benefits for recipients generally.

One of the only constants in this world is change, and a very big change is coming whether we like it or not.  The age of universal entitlement programs is coming to an end.  They are inherently unsustainable.

You may rest easy now that your worries have been resolved. There are fundamental threats to the nation; Social Security entitlements is not one of them.

They will view non-emergency entitlement programs to be no less ridiculous than the way we view slavery today.

Really? People will say that helping the elderly and the infirm is as ridiculous as slavery?

I don't see much arbitration going on here.  I see an all-too-familiar battle between a Republican and a Democrat that's starting to get out of hand.  I remind you both to look at my signature.  The sword cuts three ways. 

I defy you to defend your claim to the high ground. There aren't many people who can outflank me on any subject where I would take a stand, and in any case you two are not among those few. When life shows us a King, a Jester, and a Cynic, and the King and the Jester both claim to hold the Crown to the Kingdom while the Cynic berates them for not reaching some kind of a compromise, I think the greater fool is not the Jester but the Cynic.

[GenesisOne]

"Simply" not true? Look: When you say something like that, which I happen to know is wrong, and when you adopt such an attitude in so doing, not only do you reveal your ignorance of the subject; you also make it very laborious to engage with you at all. Clearly I'm dealing with somebody who is okay with having a totally uninformed opinion. Clearly I'm dealing with somebody who can't be bothered to learn about the topic they are debating. Clearly I'm dealing with somebody who has no respect for the dialectic, no respect for factual justification, no respect for the intelligence of his debate partners.

You are a lot of things, Lord J (as I have come to know from talking with you here in the Compendium), but here you clearly demonstrate that you are not a very good judge of character.

"Totally uninformed opinion"? Who doesn't have one?

"Can't be bothered to learn about the topic they're debating"? I've got a life beyond this forum, as does everyone else here, and with how my life's being run, there simply isn't enough time to learn all the fine details and theories of micro and macro economics. The basics I can learn (and perhaps take a little further), but my educational aspirations do not lie in the field of economics, so don't expect my answers to be in sights of, let alone the ballpark of, Nobel laureates.

"No respect for the dialectic, no respect for factual justification, no respect for the intelligence of his debate partners"? You read too much into people's opinions, and perhaps even insert intentions and motivations in people's words where none previously lay. I am very much concerned with facts, as you've clearly shown yourself to be, or else I wouldn't have any respect for your intelligence (or anyone else's, for that matter) in this debate. I firmly believe that argumentation is the art of defending your beliefs, not offending somebody else's, but time and again, you're armed and ready to verbally chastise anyone (especially me) whose opinions differ from yours.

Contrary to everything you have just said here, I find debates to be a learning process for myself in the realm of a) constructing sound arguments, b) reinforcing said arguments with legitimate evidence, and c) responding to opponent's claim. Clearly I need practice in all three areas, but that ditty you made here cut me to the quick.
 

I really have nothing against you personally. My complaint is that you are putting on an air of authority which is not credible, and are polluting the discussion in so doing. You really, honestly, seriously do not know what you are talking about on any of this. You are not educated on the subject. Hell, ~I~ am not educated on the subject, and I still know enough to see that you don't know what you're talking about. I can only guess where you've gotten your ideas from.

My resentment is in no way against you, but against the audacity of what you proposed: massive privatization and government contraction. That is fundamentally untenable if we wish to preserve our way of life, let alone improve upon it. The problem is that your views are merely a symptom of a much larger movement on the political right which has succeed in strangling our government from within, ever since the Reagan era. Taxes are too low, spending is both too low and inefficient, and there's no willpower to do anything about it because right-wingers have a handy slogan called "tax-and-spend" which immediately makes any discussion about major economic reform a non-starter.

No, more to the point, my resentment is that your ideas, if made real, would dump millions of Americans in the cold overnight, destroy the national future, and erode our civil liberties if not wreck our democracy outright.

That's my problem with people who open their big mouths to argue politics. They have no grasp, no grasp whatsoever, of the ramifications of whatever it is they're spewing--left, right, center; most people are utterly clueless when it comes to the actual consequences of implementing the ideas they propose. It is offensive to me, because it is grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly irresponsible. It comes from ignorance, egotism, and indoctrination. It comes from lack of appreciation, lack of patience, lack of curiosity. It comes from all that is rotten in our species, and it lays bare the inherent failure of any democratic system: In a democracy, mooks have the vote.

You've been hornswoggled and you don't even know it.

And in the amount of time it took myself to eventually come to terms with my hasty posting that you selflessly took your time to type out an essay-length's rebuttal, I have rescinded myself to the position of moderator. I could've saved you a lot of typing, and I didn't. That's why I declared that I've declared myself to be a bit a dick in the whole matter. I'm at least glad you recognized that.

[Lord J Esq]

...there simply isn't enough time to learn...
...my educational aspirations do not lie in the field of economics...

If you're not willing to commit to learning, you're not going to be taken seriously by thinking people when you butt in with your opinions.

I find debates to be a learning process for myself in the realm of a) constructing sound arguments, b) reinforcing said arguments with legitimate evidence, and c) responding to opponent's claim.

That's fair. People often learn through debate. I think you should consider what it is you want to learn, and what it is you are likely to learn as a result of your present methods and tactics. If I had not made those replies, perhaps you would have learned nothing about the topic on which you spoke so assuredly. I encourage you to strengthen your learning henceforth by no longer coming to a debate intending to defend the point of view you have already chosen, but instead to come to a debate seeking to analyze whether an argument is, not agreeable or disagreeable, but sufficient to justify its assertion.

Opinions are the luxury of people who know what they are talking about. Newcomers to a topic should bring only their curiosity. Questions will teach you more than assertions, and they will not lead to your feelings being hurt. More importantly, they will not imperil our society the way uninformed opinions do.

Now...

I offer this next bit of advice sometimes to people who end up feeling bad after a confrontation with me: There are many genuinely malicious people out there, and often they will stand between you and what you want. You will need more than knowledge of topic to overcome them. You will need self-control. I'm not one of those misanthropes. I'm glad you're interested in the topic and I hope you learn both about the topic itself and how to improve yourself so that you may learn more clearly and do less assuming. I don't take any satisfaction in hurting people's feelings, but I do find it satisfying when I can teach people to learn the importance of self-awareness and self-control. Learn to deny your opponents power over your emotions. In real debate, in real challenges, your feelings don't matter, nor does anything matter which is not related to the substance of the issue. Put it aside.

That said, there's more for you to learn about here than just economics. You have a lot to learn about the consequences of putting forth an unchecked idea and doing so with the ego and conceit to think that you have it right. The things I said about you which hurt your feelings...

When you say something like that, which I happen to know is wrong, and when you adopt such an attitude in so doing, not only do you reveal your ignorance of the subject; you also make it very laborious to engage with you at all. Clearly I'm dealing with somebody who is okay with having a totally uninformed opinion. Clearly I'm dealing with somebody who can't be bothered to learn about the topic they are debating. Clearly I'm dealing with somebody who has no respect for the dialectic, no respect for factual justification, no respect for the intelligence of his debate partners.

...are all true. They were not meant to hurt your feelings. You chose to interpret them that way. Those determinations were and are an opportunity for you to scrutinize your own style, your methods in debate, your very conceptualization of learning and the exchange of ideas. I'm quite ready to accept that you meant what you said when you said that I am "not a very good judge of character." But you're mistaken. I am...very, very good. And if you search, and ponder, and explore what I said to you, in good conscience and with a critical mind, you will not be able to disagree with any of it. Because all I really said to you was what you showed me about yourself. What I'm good at is paying attention to things like that.

You dismissed some of my early points with breezy nonchalance. Clearly you thought you knew better than I did. But you didn't know better. You were okay with having an uninformed opinion. You weren't really seeking to learn, were you? The whole "seeking to learn" thing is just an excuse you've come up with now, and it's a noble idea to invoke, and I hope you make every effort to learn from your debates. But that isn't what you were thinking when you said that it "simply isn't true" that closing the Department of Education would destroy a hundred billion dollars in federal student aid. You said that my statement isn't true, but you didn't know that for sure, and I know you didn't know because I do know that it is true, because I had studied the figures recently. You could have done the same. You could have checked. You didn't. You were, therefore, content to have an uninformed opinion, just as I said. You couldn't be bothered to learn about the topic you were debating.

And that last sentence I wrote up there in the quotebox is both the subtlest yet also the truest of all. One who asserts fact without justification, shows disrespect for everything that intellectual debate stands for. I would accept your sincerity if you said you do have respect for debate, because I think you think you do. But when you act in a way that objectively disrespects a thing, it doesn't matter that you might think you are being respectful.

For your consideration.

[Lennis]

Let me try and respond to several points, first to Genesis.

Would you at least concede that the fabric of our nation has changed within the past decade in the absence of the hypothetical cuts?

Not really, no.  The way our government conducts its business has changed little, at least domestically, over the past decade.  Enacting the cuts you describe would change a lot.

If all of these cuts were made there would be a massive shift in the political balance of power in this country; the rich and powerful would be free to do pretty much whatever they want, and the poor and powerless would be forced to accept the new reality.

But haven't the rich and powerful been doing so without the hypothetical cuts within the past decade? Or even during the Clinton Administration? As for your predictions, I cannot assume that you're wrong, but I cannot assume that you're right, either. You need to reinforce your claim with good evidence.

I'll admit my previous statement was pretty general, but since I'm not an economist, all I really have to go on are general trends.  Yes, the rich and powerful have been steadily gaining power without major changes to our government.  What I'm saying is that making the cuts you suggest would open the floodgates, as it were.  Like a force of nature, it would be very difficult for us to reverse course at that point.
 

You speak about a lack of regulations and therefore a lack of protection. What about a flood of regulations? Would this fare any better? And speaking of protection, who exactly would be protected? The workers? The employers? Who?

That is a fallacious argument.  I wasn't suggesting over-regulation was superior to no regulation.  I was saying that deregulating things too much would have negative consequences.  You seem to be of the opinion that we are over-regulated already, and came to the conclusion that I support that position by default.  I don't.  I feel government is a little too intrusive right now, and that loosening some regulatory powers would not be a bad thing, but only if it's done in moderation.  And Genesis, all of us are protected by government regulations, both at the federal and state levels.  The quality of our food and drinking water is a direct result of government imposed standards.  The Clean Water Act of the 1990's comes to mind.

Your assertion about private industry's lack of legal or moral obligation to anybody's opinion is a hasty generalization. Are there not those in the private industry who are genuinely concerned about people's opinions and ergo act on them?

I actually wasn't being general there.  I was stating an unequivocal fact.  Certainly, there are those in business who really do care, and do great works for the world every day.  But they do this by choice, not by obligation.  They can choose to do good, or not, however they see fit.  The people cannot afford to place their interests into the hands of people they have no power to remove at the ballot-box.  Governments have legal and moral obligations to the people they represent.  This also applies to non-democratic governments.  An autocrat can choose to ignore that obligation and govern however he wants, but there are serious consequences for doing so.  See Eqypt.

And then there's your assertion that profit = sole concern of private industry = inherently dangerous. Is it not also the job of big businesses to make a profit as well?

There is no “as well”.  Making a profit and growing is the only purpose of private industry.  I don't mean this to sound negative.  It only becomes so when private industry begins to take on a role that should be the purview of an elected government.  How can the people demand change if the people making the decisions are outside the reach of democratic controls?

And what would you make of how the U.S. government has currently "done its job"? In your opinion, could it stand to be better or worse the way they are regulating business and the overall economy?

I say the government should do better than it is currently doing.  As I mentioned earlier, over-regulation can be just as bad as regulating too little.  Unfortunately, it was a lack of regulation (or not enforcing existing regulations) that led to the financial crisis, so right now there is a regulatory spree going on in Washington.  This may change with the new Republican House.  Congress may take a more moderate stance on regulation or it may have gridlock.  It's hard to say at this point.

Within the past decade that the U.S. government has "done its job," how would you rank their ability to align themselves with our (that is, We the People) interests and expectations, on a scale of 1 to 10? (1 being "not at all aligned", and 10 being "completely aligned")

I would give them a 5.  There are special interests on both sides of the isle that don't give a rip about the people, but nevertheless have a lot of money to pour into the political process.  We throw one group of bums out, only to have them replaced by people no less beholden to special interests, and we have to throw them out, too.  But through all the bickering and posturing they're still able to get some work done on occasion, so our government isn't completely useless.

You claim that nothing good can come from creating "the conditions leading to a government's ineffectiveness and subsequent removal." Would you concede, at least in theory, that We the People are partly responsible for creating such ineffectiveness in the first place? If so, then shouldn't We the People be responsible for correcting such ineffectiveness?

I was thinking of a worst case scenario in which our government was so ineffective it could no longer function – something which could bring about the fall of the constitutional government and leave a power vacuum.  This would be bad because there is no telling what kind of power structure would replace the old one.  Would a new constitution be drawn up?  Would it even be a democracy?

Indeed, “We the People” are ultimately responsible for the conduct of our elected officials.  We are responsible for believing their lies – and by extension, lying to ourselves.  But we have to be very careful how we choose to correct this.  Taking things out on them is a less effective measure than increasing our own educational awareness and not be so gullible.

-------------------------
And now to respond to Lord J, something that I am already dreading.

We could fix Social Security in two minutes, by removing the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes. Anyone who makes under $100,000 a year wouldn't shell out a single penny, and the whole problem of SS's solvency would vanish for a century.

That's a pretty bold statement.  More so than perhaps anything Genesis or I have said, as it is a specific proposal rather than something general.  Is there some evidence to back up this claim?  If the solution was really so simple, wouldn't Congress have implemented it by now?

 

The problem with Social Security is not that it is fundamentally unsustainable as you assert, but that there is no political will to pursue a revenue-based solution, and so by definition people are chattering about what kind of cuts we'll have to make. It's narrow-minded and dim.

If your revenue-based solution involves taxing only the rich, I can see why there is no political will to pursue it.  It is politically perilous.  $100,000 is no small chunk of change for most people.  An individual can live very comfortably with that kind of salary.  The highest income earners would have some justification in complaining why they shouldn't pay a share, too.  Discriminating against the rich might feel good to most of us, but it would still be discrimination.  Any revenue-based solution would have to be some kind of flat-rate that would apply to everyone above the poverty line.  What would that flat-rate be?  I suspect the figure would make us faint.

Social Security only works when there are more people paying taxes than there are people collecting benefits.  Politicians can spin this any way they want, but nothing they say can change this fundamental truth.

Your fundamental truth is incorrect. Your mistake is subtle: Social Security only works when there are more revenues in taxes than outlays in benefits. The number of people involved is not independently relevant. With an upside-down pyramid population (which the U.S. doesn't actually have), the way to balance something like Social Security is to lift the income cap (as I suggested), increase the tax rate to the highest level at which the burden does not hinder economic growth more than it helps it, and, from there, cut benefits as necessary. In that order.

Okay, you may have me here.  Of course, that assumes that lifting the income cap would be an effective solution.  If so, the order of your implementation is sound.

Perhaps at some point humanity will become so longevous that a premise like Social Security will be fundamentally unworkable. Then we can reevaluate things like the age for which one qualifies, and the scope of benefits for recipients generally.

That point may be sooner than you think.  I've been hearing a few things about the next major innovation in science that should put everyone on notice: biotech.  (I'd post the links if I still knew them.)  In summary, advancements in computers and the mapping of the genetic code are making it possible for medical treatments to be tailored to each individual's genetic profile.  You will no longer see generalized treatments that can produce side-effects in some people.  The net result of this innovation will be a longer lifespan; perhaps a great deal longer.  Whether anyone can actually afford these future treatments is an open question, but the science at least will be there.

You may rest easy now that your worries have been resolved. There are fundamental threats to the nation; Social Security entitlements is not one of them.

You'll have to forgive my pessimism on Social Security, but out of curiosity, what are the other fundamental threats to our nation that you see?

They will view non-emergency entitlement programs to be no less ridiculous than the way we view slavery today.

Really? People will say that helping the elderly and the infirm is as ridiculous as slavery?

Not in principle, only in implementation.  Maybe that line didn't come off very well, though I thought I specified “non-emergency entitlement programs”.  I would not include the elderly and infirm in that category.  Only younger retirees.

I don't see much arbitration going on here.  I see an all-too-familiar battle between a Republican and a Democrat that's starting to get out of hand.  I remind you both to look at my signature.  The sword cuts three ways. 

I defy you to defend your claim to the high ground. There aren't many people who can outflank me on any subject where I would take a stand, and in any case you two are not among those few. When life shows us a King, a Jester, and a Cynic, and the King and the Jester both claim to hold the Crown to the Kingdom while the Cynic berates them for not reaching some kind of a compromise, I think the greater fool is not the Jester but the Cynic.

I defy you to defend your claim that I am the arbiter of truth.  That wasn't my intent at all!  I was only suggesting that you and Genesis weren't being as objective as you should be and that the truth could be very different from either of your positions – or mine, for that matter.  I sensed the argument degenerating into name-calling and that deserved comment.  And I have a lot more to say on this matter since the last time I posted.  There is a lot of intelligent discourse going on here, and I am a bit humbled reading through it, but it is being drug into the mud by the forces of ego, and that does the thread a disservice.  Lord J, you are clearly the best debater on this forum, but you are also very quick to take offense and draw personal conclusions about the other posters that aren't warranted.  Some particularly disturbing jabs:

This paragraph is gibberish.

I would never try to paint you as an intellectual or an elite.

Noisemaking and grandstanding like yours is what makes an intelligent discourse so difficult to have in this country on almost any political matter.

I fail to see how these comments contributed to the discussion.  I know that demeaning one's opponent is often considered fair game in the art of debating, but I take a dim view of this conduct.  You say that people often have bruised feelings after debating you.  Is that because they lost the debate, or because of the way you conducted yourself?  Calling someone a “jester” after pointing out the flaws of his argument (and then calling yourself a king by comparison) only points to a flaw of your own.  You admitted having little more education on the subject of the debate, but you still managed to put yourself on a pedestal far higher than the one you just accused me of standing on.  You justify this behavior by being right more often than you are wrong, and it is the gift that keeps on giving.  That is beneath a debater of your caliber.

That's my problem with people who open their big mouths to argue politics. They have no grasp, no grasp whatsoever, of the ramifications of whatever it is they're spewing--left, right, center; most people are utterly clueless when it comes to the actual consequences of implementing the ideas they propose. It is offensive to me, because it is grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly irresponsible. It comes from ignorance, egotism, and indoctrination. It comes from lack of appreciation, lack of patience, lack of curiosity. It comes from all that is rotten in our species, and it lays bare the inherent failure of any democratic system: In a democracy, mooks have the vote.

I can appreciate such blunt honesty, but it lays bare a lack of emotional detachment from the debate.  I won't presume to guess why you're passionate to the point of demeaning those who offend your sensibilities, but you might want to consider how well that helps the causes you care about.  Are those without intimate knowledge of a subject just supposed to keep their mouths shut?  Under that criteria, there would be very few of us able to have a discussion at all.  That's not very democratic.  Certainly, some opinions will be more informed than others, but is that to say a layperson has nothing meaningful to add?  Who can say?  Sometimes the “experts” are so locked in to a certain way of thinking that the solution has to come from outside of the usual circles.  I won't claim that this is common, but it is wrong to dismiss the possibility out of hand.

I guess I'm done.  If the sword of truth cuts through me in reply, so be it.

[Thought]

And then there's your assertion that profit = sole concern of private industry = inherently dangerous. Is it not also the job of big businesses to make a profit as well?

There is no “as well”.  Making a profit and growing is the only purpose of private industry.  I don't mean this to sound negative.  It only becomes so when private industry begins to take on a role that should be the purview of an elected government.  How can the people demand change if the people making the decisions are outside the reach of democratic controls?

I would suggest that "purpose" may be too strong of a word. The only thing required of an industry is to survive: failure on that account brings about its own judgment. Since there is competition, that does require a business to grow, and growth requires profits, so while these are derivative activities, it could still be maintained that an industry is required to make a profit and to grow. But is an entity's purpose only the fulfillment of that which is required?

The only thing fundamentally required of a human is to continue to survive. This means gathering resources to sustain one's self and growing (both physically and in one's abilities) so as to ensure access to resources. But is a human's purpose the same as these requirements? There are people in the world who do little else but these requirements, but are they truly fulfilling their "purpose"?

This is more abstract than actual, but is seems to pre-enlightenment to limit any institution just to the basics of survival.

Now mind you, this isn't to suggest that private business should take on the responsibilities of government (we've seen businesses do that in the past, it wasn't pretty). Rather, it is to suggest that a business might do well to have a purpose beyond mere survival.

[Lord J Esq]

Democrats pick Charlotte, NC for 2012 convention.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/democrats-will-meet-in-charlotte-in-2012/?hp

That's bold, and a little bit amusing. We won NC in 2008 by the slimmest of squeaks, and if the Dems are going to try to play offense there in 2012, I can only admire their audacity of hope.

(President Obama gets a nickel every time you say that.)

[Lord J Esq]

And now to respond to Lord J, something that I am already dreading.

This may soothe your trepidations whilst you read yonder reply...

~~~

We could fix Social Security in two minutes, by removing the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes. Anyone who makes under $100,000 a year wouldn't shell out a single penny, and the whole problem of SS's solvency would vanish for a century.

That's a pretty bold statement.  More so than perhaps anything Genesis or I have said, as it is a specific proposal rather than something general.  Is there some evidence to back up this claim?  If the solution was really so simple, wouldn't Congress have implemented it by now?

Your rhetorical question first. I could pull out my hair, if I were of such a temperament, at the capacity of the Congress to not do what is best even when it would be simple. The "rich" people who stand to lose gold under any kind of progressive tax reform have cultivated a powerful shield for themselves in the form of the anti-tax movement that is a part of modern conservative ideology in America. For over a decade Republicans have instilled the slogan of "tax and spend" to deride their opponents and have achieved remarkable success in moving the Overton Window on tax policy firmly into the realm of not whether taxes should be increased or decreased, but when taxes should be decreased, by how much, and for whom. The mood in this country has become so sour on the thought of higher general taxation that our national politicians feel they could lose their offices by championing higher taxes.

To put it another way, even though the conceptual fix is quite simple, the political cost of implementing that fix is perceived to be unbearable in present-day mainstream politics.

Your question of whether it would actually repair Social Security's fiscal solvency to lift the cap on SS-taxable income is answerable in the affirmative, although with the usual caveats of making general statements about long-term, large-scale revenue forecasts. The link provided by GenesisOne upthread contains some figures on the matter, and although the article is years out of date I find it noteworthy because the figures discussed therein were issued by the Bush Treasury Department, and I remember it being a damning report at the time (in liberal circles).

For the best figures, as determined by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, here's an informative 2010 summary table:

http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11580/11580_Summary.pdf

Look for options involving changing the "taxable maximum" somehow.

Incidentally, a piece of advice I got in 11th grade, and has served me well: The "Congressional Budget Office" is an excellent source for information on matters concerning federal spending. Keep that name in mind when you go looking for such information. They are not a political office, but a part of the federal bureaucracy, and thus they are not motivated to conform to a party's platform positions.

If your revenue-based solution involves taxing only the rich, I can see why there is no political will to pursue it.  It is politically perilous.  $100,000 is no small chunk of change for most people.  An individual can live very comfortably with that kind of salary.  The highest income earners would have some justification in complaining why they shouldn't pay a share, too.

Either I am misunderstanding you here, or you miswrote something. It seems as though you are under the impression that the taxable income cap is $100,000 in actual taxes. That's not the case. Rather, the income a person earns is presently taxable up to about that amount. Thus, if you "earned" $64,802,000 in a given year, only the first $100,000 of it (give or take a few thousand) would be subject to the Social Security tax.

As for how much of that taxable $100,000 ends up being eaten by SS as tax, the rates are available here:

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/taxRates.html

It's only a few thousand dollars.

If the cap were eliminated entirely, then, for a person to actually owe $100,000 in Social Security taxes, they'd have to earn well over $1.5 million a year, if I'm doing my scratchwork right.

Discriminating against the rich might feel good to most of us, but it would still be discrimination.  Any revenue-based solution would have to be some kind of flat-rate that would apply to everyone above the poverty line.  What would that flat-rate be?  I suspect the figure would make us faint.

It may be in this very thread, but in any case I've written in the past at the Compendium more elaborately than I care to now about the "discrimination" of institutions like progressive tax structures and the minimum wage. Flat-taxes are not as equitable as they seem because dollars of income are subject to diminishing returns. The first $10,000 you earn is much more crucial to your basic human needs than the, say, 447th $10,000 you earn. To nevertheless tax all income at the same rate denies this inherent truth and grossly favors the wealthy at the expense of the poorest.

Perhaps at some point humanity will become so longevous that a premise like Social Security will be fundamentally unworkable. Then we can reevaluate things like the age for which one qualifies, and the scope of benefits for recipients generally.

That point may be sooner than you think.  I've been hearing a few things about the next major innovation in science that should put everyone on notice: biotech.  (I'd post the links if I still knew them.)  In summary, advancements in computers and the mapping of the genetic code are making it possible for medical treatments to be tailored to each individual's genetic profile.  You will no longer see generalized treatments that can produce side-effects in some people.  The net result of this innovation will be a longer lifespan; perhaps a great deal longer.  Whether anyone can actually afford these future treatments is an open question, but the science at least will be there.

That's certainly a possibility that we should strive to understand and prepare to anticipate.

You'll have to forgive my pessimism on Social Security, but out of curiosity, what are the other fundamental threats to our nation that you see?

That probably deserves a whole new thread. Create it if you like, and I'll post when I can.

And now we shift gears...

I defy you to defend your claim that I am the arbiter of truth.  That wasn't my intent at all!  I was only suggesting that you and Genesis weren't being as objective as you should be and that the truth could be very different from either of your positions – or mine, for that matter.  I sensed the argument degenerating into name-calling and that deserved comment.  And I have a lot more to say on this matter since the last time I posted.  There is a lot of intelligent discourse going on here, and I am a bit humbled reading through it, but it is being drug into the mud by the forces of ego, and that does the thread a disservice.

There are many lessons in this world that most people never get the opportunity to learn because there are too few qualified teachers. Unfortunately for the ego, one of those lessons is...

(Well, before we get to that, let us salivate in the shadow of the highest of thoughts.)

...How To Behold The TRUTH!!!...

...by which I mean, how to cultivate awareness and critical thought. GenesisOne didn't realize it, but he was committing a great failing of personal character by the tenets of my philosophy, in that he was arguing a point--using other people's talking points, no less--without bothering to check his reasoning or facts, and without reducing his tone to a more tentative state.

I don't expect most people to understand why this is so harmful and even dangerous, although the victims of it will understand very quickly its power to wound. It's like this: Our system of politics is relatively democratic, in that we have free (if not fair) elections. What ordinary people say, especially when they say it en masse, or stand quietly by when others say it en masse, has direct consequences in shaping the law of the land. GenesisOne was making policy prescriptions that would upturn this country. Yet he had no idea he was doing that. Indeed, he thought he was making sense. Perhaps he even still does, if he hasn't completely abandoned this thread. And he contradicted me from his pedestal of ignorance, rather than engage in the honest debate he later claimed to want.

There are millions more like him, people who believe their way to knowledge. Stephen Colbert characterizes such knowledge by its "truthiness," its power to seem true. It's incredibly dangerous. Fetuses are persons. Climate change is a lie. Blacks are lazy and aggressive. Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Those are a few of the false truths people have been led to believe, with life-destroying consequences in each case.

We all, including I myself, are guilty of this failure of believing in objective truths without actually grasping whether or not they are true. I have dedicated my philosophy to the flight from this supreme ignorance, and I readily confront it in others too.

Going back to the first days of the Compendium, I have rubbed some people the wrong way with my occasionally-confrontational style. People you don't even remember used to sing the song you're singing now, about mud and ego and "Golly, J, you really ought to be a little more civil."

So bogus, that sentiment. So unworthy of me, and you. "Civility" is not the goal of debate, nor is it a means to the goal of debate. Civility is what you show when a stranger asks you for the time of day, or when some pedestrian is crossing the street a little later than the signal permits. Understanding is the goal of debate, and there are two things to understand in every debate:

1. The subject under discussion.
2. The perspective of the debaters.

I originally began this aggressive confrontational style as a social experiment, but I quickly learned its power and usefulness. A competent debater, or a self-aware person, or one who is both, will always be immune to anything along the lines of "You suck, moran!" Indeed, I don't even bother throwing such garbage at the people who aren't likely to react to it. And the people who are likely to react to it, are bringing more to a debate than they realize.

Intertwined with any premise and any position is the motive of the person holding it. If understanding is your goal, then you must never come to a debate intending to win. GenesisOne, not as a circumstantial thing but as a matter of character, made that mistake here. He and I have tussled before. There are always a few such people here on the General board who end up becoming object lessons, although some of them have later gone on to appreciate the lesson for themselves.

My goal in this thread is not simply to advance people's understanding of economics. Also present is a much larger ambition, which is to prepare people to be better human beings.

It's not mud I'm flinging, and whatever ego drives me to this quixotic quest is beside the point. I want people to understand the consequences of what they say.

At the very least, to learn to distinguish between assumptions and truths. I want people to add to a debate, thoughtfully and genuinely--not cheapen it into the same old arguments that never go anywhere. I want people to think for themselves rather than regurgitating the "wisdom" of others. I want people to learn to be okay with not knowing something, and to be okay with discussing it anyway.

But most of all, I want people to understand the consequences of what they say, and that means also understanding the ramifications of who they are, and why they say what they say, and how well or how poorly that intersects with who they want to be.

I promise you I am not mean for pleasure. I would frown upon a similar posture to my own in most other people, because I would fear its abuse. My goal is not purely altruistic, but it is not purely selfish either. People deserve to deserve the kind of society I want to live in.

I could be more like our Resident Expert, one Atticus F. Thought, whose considerable intellect has entertained some of these humanitarian notions long before I presented them. He is ever polite, ever respectful, ever civil. I can see how that engenders his popularity, and more importantly engenders community cohesion. There's a place for that posture. But there also needs to be somebody to teach the harder lessons. Thought makes the best of the community he's got. I'd like to build a better community, and then let him make the best of that. And I don't just mean the Compendium.

I suppose the most important question here is whether it is more desirable to have less total discussion, but of a higher quality, or more total discussion, but at the expense of quality. In a sense, everybody's views at the Compendium are welcome. With one notable and embarrassing exception, the administration has never improperly banned anybody for their views or even necessarily their tone. What I do is, I sometimes add a price tag to entering a debate and behaving irresponsibly therein. Nobody can bullshit me. My only constraints are time and energy. The human equation is no threat.

Consider what we have learned here. We have learned not only that GenesisOne values debate for its power to help him learn, but also that his style was preventing him from reaching his goal. Rushingwind once got advice from Zephira's stepdad about how to reverse on a hill in a manual transmission car. It embarrassed her, but now she can reverse on hills in a stick shift.

Because of the nature of what I do, it's not as simple as "staying professional" by sticking purely to the subject matter and not bringing "personal" comments into it, because that personal aspect is inseparable from the nature of the debate itself. What are the flaws of character, the limitations of ego, the warbles of psyche, that lead a person toward ignorance even when they are nominally trying to learn? The answers to such questions can be genuinely humiliating. If you're ever going to learn them at all, better to learn them early in life on some message board from a stranger you're likely never to meet and whose tactics you can happily detest.  I think it would be even worse if I adopted a sympathetic rather than predatory tone. I don't want to inflict lasting distress on anybody. Being pitied can wreak such distress much more effectively than can being preyed upon.

I fail to see how these comments contributed to the discussion.

And now you see, or at least you see my answer: There are two parts to the debate, only one of which is the topic itself.

Calling someone a “jester” after pointing out the flaws of his argument (and then calling yourself a king by comparison) only points to a flaw of your own.  You admitted having little more education on the subject of the debate, but you still managed to put yourself on a pedestal far higher than the one you just accused me of standing on.

I rather thought that was an apt analogy!

But in any case I flatter my own ego enough that I don't need other people to add a chorus. This isn't really about me, except to the extent that I consider myself competent to play the role of Illuminator, and to the extent that I too am a traveler on this journey away from ignorance and toward Illumination. Many of the failings I can now excoriate others for, I once committed myself. I don't have a vengeful nor a cruel bone in me, but I am absolutely ruthless. I am not bound by decorum in this setting, nor do I see any reason to try and be a popular figure when it means costing myself an opportunity to sharpen people's minds and inspire their own desires to become better people.

You justify this behavior by being right more often than you are wrong, and it is the gift that keeps on giving. 

That! is the golden goose. I'd be insufferable if I weren't usually right. But I also wouldn't be so aggressive, if I weren't usually right. Cause and effect, my good Lennis.

I can appreciate such blunt honesty, but it lays bare a lack of emotional detachment from the debate.

My actual emotional attachment to confrontations like this is much different from what you deduce. I am extremely passionate about some of the issues I debate, but confrontations on those issues provoke little emotion in me unless they are contentious confrontations with people close to me. Usually, these debates--such as mine with GenesisOne--provoke little more than amusement or its counterpart annoyance.

Are those without intimate knowledge of a subject just supposed to keep their mouths shut?

A very good question, and one I addressed in an earlier post. I would simply have people not come into an argument looking for vindication and validation. I'd rather people came with a spirit of learning.

If you have an idea like, "Hrm, I think we can help fix the budget deficit by disbanding the Department of Education," and you're not really up to snuff on your knowledge of the issue, then why not pose your hypothesis as a question: "What would happen if we tried to fix the budget deficit by disbanding the Department of Education?"

If it's an honest question (as opposed to dishonest ones like "Do liberals know they suck?"), it is more likely to provoke reasonable, educational discussion--especially if others participating in the debate know more. Even if nobody knows much of anything, you can explore the topic together without bandying about conclusions, declarations, and edicts.