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50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

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Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#61

Post by mkr-hn »

ekianjo wrote: post #27
ajross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd feel better about that graph if it wasn't so horribly spun. The vertical scale is showing a delta from the original value, not the value. It looks like an exponential explosion in spending when it's actually about 3.5x since 1970. Honestly, if I were an investor and a startup tried to sell me that chart, I'd walk out of the room. The broader point is valid, though. Education policy in the US sucks. But the detail…

No need to ridicule libertarians like that. There are different kinds of libertarians, different movements, and not all have such simple ways of thinking. At least libertarians invite criticism in the field of inflated government spendings.

I thought libertarians were a fringe group of idiots until someone on HN said they were libertarian while saying something sensible. It's been hard to fight the habit of ignoring them. It doesn't help that the Koches and their institute are cited in the stupid babbling of the more vocal ones.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#62

Post by ekianjo »

mkr-hn wrote: post #61
ekianjo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to ridicule libertarians like that. There are different kinds of libertarians, different movements, and not all have such simple ways of thinking. At least libertarians invite criticism in the field of inflated government spendings.

I thought libertarians were a fringe group of idiots until someone on HN said they were libertarian while saying something sensible. It's been hard to fight the habit of ignoring them. It doesn't help that the Koches and their institute are cited in the stupid babbling of the more vocal ones.

Usually mass-media use the worst examples of libertarians to make fun of the whole concept/idea behind it. That's a common fallacy used to fight different kind of groups, when they are not mainstream and opposed to the current "approved way of thinking".

EDIT: Hayek, Nobel Prize in Economy in 1974, is one of the most well-known libertarians out there: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1...

His advices on Economy were notoriously NOT followed.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#63

Post by mkr-hn »

ekianjo wrote: post #62
mkr-hn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought libertarians were a fringe group of idiots until someone on HN said they were libertarian while saying something sensible. It's been hard to fight the habit of ignoring them. It doesn't help that the Koches and their institute are cited in the stupid babbling of the more vocal ones.

Usually mass-media use the worst examples of libertarians to make fun of the whole concept/idea behind it. That's a common fallacy used to fight different kind of groups, when they are not mainstream and opposed to the current "approved way of thinking". EDIT: Hayek, Nobel Prize in Economy in 1974, is one of the most well-known libertarians out there: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1... Hi…

I didn't get my previous view of libertarians from mass media. I've seen people who I'm pretty sure are libertarian in this very thread arguing intelligently against extremist views. They usually go unchallenged outside HN, which is how people get a bad impression.

Libertarianism isn't well-served by letting anarchists call themselves libertarian unchallenged. I would like to see more of what I see on HN out in public view.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#64

Post by anamax »

_delirium wrote: post #52
anamax wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not in dire crisis: we will start to see it drag on other government finances in 20 years, It's actually a drag now, as it has been paying more in benefits than it receives for the past few years. Yes, I know about the bonds. Paying them back is a drag because they weren't used to create profitable assets.

That seems like a problem for the regular budget to sort out: Soc. Sec. basically has the money it needs for some decades, but the rest of the budget either needs significant cuts or tax hikes so that it can pay back Soc. Sec. what it owes it. I don't think it's an acceptable option to retroactively say that some of the Soc. Sec. taxes won't be paid back to Soc. Sec., and just kept for the general fund. If that happe…

> I don't think it's an acceptable option to retroactively say that some of the Soc. Sec. taxes won't be paid back to Soc. Sec.,

I didn't suggest that. I'm just pointing out that the "drag" has already started.

> and just kept for the general fund. If that happened, then it's basically been a regressive income tax all along

It's not a regressive tax because of the payout is capped too.

In fact, it's actually a progressive tax because of the way that payout works. The ROI for folks who pay the minimum is pretty good. The ROI for folks who hit the cap is horrible.

That said, some subgroups do worse/better than others. The worst is probably black men. They don't live long enough to get the payouts. I think that white women are the big winners.

> If that is likely to happen, then at least the regressiveness should be fixed ASAP by removing the $110k cap, because the only justification for the cap is that the money is earmarked for Social Security.

Actually, the designers of SS put in the cap because they thought that it was the best way to protect SS from political fights.

Are you planning to remove the benefits cap as well? If not, it's just another tax and rich people are going to care. SS's designers wanted rich people to ignore SS.

If you do remove the benefits cap, then you get to explain why Ross Perot gets $400k/year in benefits.

I think that SS's designers got that part correct. The payout formula needs some tweaking.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#65

Post by anamax »

_delirium wrote: post #52
anamax wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not in dire crisis: we will start to see it drag on other government finances in 20 years, It's actually a drag now, as it has been paying more in benefits than it receives for the past few years. Yes, I know about the bonds. Paying them back is a drag because they weren't used to create profitable assets.

That seems like a problem for the regular budget to sort out: Soc. Sec. basically has the money it needs for some decades, but the rest of the budget either needs significant cuts or tax hikes so that it can pay back Soc. Sec. what it owes it. I don't think it's an acceptable option to retroactively say that some of the Soc. Sec. taxes won't be paid back to Soc. Sec., and just kept for the general fund. If that happe…

> That seems like a problem for the regular budget to sort out

I agree. My point is that the problem exists now.

> I don't think it's an acceptable option to retroactively say that some of the Soc. Sec. taxes won't be paid back to Soc. Sec.,

I didn't suggest default. I'm just pointing out that the "drag" has already started.

> and just kept for the general fund. If that happened, then it's basically been a regressive income tax all along

It's not a regressive tax because of the payout is capped too.

In fact, it's actually a progressive tax because of the way that payout works. The ROI for folks who pay the minimum is pretty good. The ROI for folks who hit the cap is horrible.

That said, some subgroups do worse/better than others. The worst is probably black men. They don't live long enough to get the payouts. I think that white women are the big winners.

> If that is likely to happen, then at least the regressiveness should be fixed ASAP by removing the $110k cap, because the only justification for the cap is that the money is earmarked for Social Security.

Actually, the designers of SS put in the cap because they thought that it was the best way to protect SS from political fights.

Are you planning to remove the benefits cap as well? If not, it's just another tax and rich people are going to care. SS's designers wanted rich people to ignore SS.

If you do remove the benefits cap, then you get to explain why Ross Perot gets $400k/year in benefits.

I think that SS's designers got that part correct. The payout formula needs some tweaking.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#66

Post by ajross »

ekianjo wrote: post #62
mkr-hn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought libertarians were a fringe group of idiots until someone on HN said they were libertarian while saying something sensible. It's been hard to fight the habit of ignoring them. It doesn't help that the Koches and their institute are cited in the stupid babbling of the more vocal ones.

Usually mass-media use the worst examples of libertarians to make fun of the whole concept/idea behind it. That's a common fallacy used to fight different kind of groups, when they are not mainstream and opposed to the current "approved way of thinking". EDIT: Hayek, Nobel Prize in Economy in 1974, is one of the most well-known libertarians out there: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1... Hi…

To be fair: the source of this discussion was a verifiably distortionist graph produced by a very mainstream libertarian think tank. To my mind, you're simply arguing the converse fallacy. The fact that there are smart people who hold any given opinion doesn't mean that the group associated with that opinion is worthy of praise.

Basically: Hayek being "right" about something doesn't make the Cato institute "not true libertarians".

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#67

Post by _delirium »

anamax wrote: post #65
_delirium wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a problem for the regular budget to sort out: Soc. Sec. basically has the money it needs for some decades, but the rest of the budget either needs significant cuts or tax hikes so that it can pay back Soc. Sec. what it owes it. I don't think it's an acceptable option to retroactively say that some of the Soc. Sec. taxes won't be paid back to Soc. Sec., and just kept for the general fund. If that happe…

> That seems like a problem for the regular budget to sort out I agree. My point is that the problem exists now. > I don't think it's an acceptable option to retroactively say that some of the Soc. Sec. taxes won't be paid back to Soc. Sec., I didn't suggest default. I'm just pointing out that the "drag" has already started. > and just kept for the general fund. If that happened, then it's basically been a regressive…

Re: removing the cap, that was in the case, which is vaguely proposed on and off, that Social Security will never get the money back from its mythical "lockbox", and instead the money will be retroactively turned into just general-treasury money. If it's just general-treasury money, then the Social Security tax is a general-revenue tax (not one earmarked for Social Security benefits), but as a general-revenue tax it's a regressive one.

If the money really is going to be repaid to the Social Security system and used exclusively for benefits, then I agree it's a different situation, more of a quasi-retirement-account.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#68

Post by cpeterso »

streptomycin wrote: post #58
cpeterso wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. Does the "defense spending" category include the trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? George W. Bush's administration conveniently swept the wars' costs into a "supplemental" budget separate from the DoD budget.

None of the graphs are from the Bush era, so your question is irrelevant.

None of the graphs are from the Bush era, but the Iraq war was still active in 2011. I was asking whether the cost of the war's operation omitted from this graph's "Defense spending".

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#69

Post by streptomycin »

cpeterso wrote: post #68
streptomycin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the graphs are from the Bush era, so your question is irrelevant.

None of the graphs are from the Bush era, but the Iraq war was still active in 2011. I was asking whether the cost of the war's operation omitted from this graph's "Defense spending".

I thought, by how you phrased your question, you knew that Obama had reversed Bush's funny accounting policy. If not, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20budget.html

Either way, the wars are very cheap these days.

Re: 50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

#70

Post by adventureful »

njharman wrote: post #40
adventureful wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of our problems are the calculations that were used to justify Social Security and Medicare (over half our budget). Neither program was built to last more than two generations. The politicians that created them didn't care about that (FDR and LBJ), in typical intentional short-sightedness. Both programs were designed to be flush early so they could be plundered. Instead of having trillions sitting in a sov…

> over half our budget 32.9 != over half. Including Medicaid gets 43, still not over half. Not likely to give much credence to rest of your claims.

Ah yes, only 43%. Sorry I missed by so much when I was generalizing. =)
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