“We can reduce the federal government to nothing more than a glorified assisted living facility and we still wouldn’t be able to balance the budget.” That is the best line ever!
We would have a balanced budget. That's actually about it. We would be anywhere from 1 week to 2 months into the next year, i'm not exactly sure, but interest social security, medicare, medicaid, and all the other bullshit we should never have spent money on in the first place is the majority of our spending.
This video very nicely displays the problems of the USA government budget deficit. However, this video goes beyond things like increasing government revenues due to taxation or GDP growth thereby effectively reducing your relative debt. That said the fact that the current situation is unsustainable over the longer term without intervention is to me at least as clear as day.
if I were to give you a million dollars a day to spend until you spent a trillion dollars from the day Christ was born, you'd be 2013 years old now and would still need to spend $1 million/day for the next 726 years to hit a trillion. We now owe 17.9 trillion dollars.
My point was that government's deficit usually goes down when interest rates have risen and it becomes harder for them to borrow without racking up massive interest payments. At the same time, the Domestic Private Surplus also drops when interest rates rise - generally during an unsustainable boom that causes a recession to greatly shrink the surplus. Further, the most recent recession shows that the massive Bush deficits coincided with massive domestic private deficits.
The math shows that the government can only fund itself for 7 months, and that it would have to cut nearly everything in order to make it the rest without running such a massive deficit that it obliterates all services for future generations. That's the point.
Yes, I know of Stefan Molyneux. I was actually introduced to anarchism with his book "Practical Anarchy." "But, then, I don't need to convince YOU of that, do I?" I am not sure what you mean here.
Does the video have any citations to some of these numbers? A lot of these seem to be a lot shorter than they're supposed to be. Defense-related expenditures for example have had reports for 2012 that ranged around 1.03-1.45 trillion dollars, rather than the 930 billion we've got here.
During the early 80s, taxes were cut but revenues actually increased. Why? Because tax rates in the 70s were above unit elasticity. the government lowered taxes to unit elasticity and thus, increased their revenue.
Not so fast, it's recognized even in the corporate world that outsourcing has it's own cons. 1. There's a loss of quality. 2. There's a higher risk of confidentiality and privacy loss. 3. Hidden costs, because you don't know all of the operations going around to these people you're contracting to, it may end up costing more than you realize. 4. loss of managerial control, your turning to another company, as such, you lose DIRECT control. 5. You're tied to that companies success.
The things he said at the end, "The only things left: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Interest on the debt" (one thing he ignores is that the interest rate on the debt is at an historic low and will most likely rise in the future).
Actually it took that money from the private sector and gave a grant to Vicent Cerf who had already come up with packet switching on his own. Not to metion that TCP/IP isn't the only protocol that could have done the job.
Taxes are analogous to prices. If a store owner lowers prices, he'll get more customers but make less money with each sale. If he raises prices, he'll have fewer customers, but make more money with each sale. If you graphed his expected revenue compared to prices, you would see a curve that rises up from 0, levels off at a point called "unit elasticity", and then falls back down. This is analogous to government revenues, taxes are price investors pay for conducting business in this economy.
No no, I understand that's his point, that's why he mentions S.S. and retirement obligations at the end. I was just highlighting this fact by explicitly stating it.
I heard somewhere that in ancient times, civilizations like Egpyt and Greece would whipe detbs clean. They essentially whipe the slate clean and start over. That is never going to happen, but at the very least they should cut the interest rate. 14 trillion dollars in debt is more money than anyone can ever have.
Furthermore, I've been known to out an anarchist that didn't know he was one from time to time. It goes a little something like this: "Do you think it's wrong to initiate force to achieve an end." "Yes." "Then you're an anarchist."
I'm going to split a hair here because it's worth mentioning. The modern-day corporation is actually a legal entity, protected by law, to basically absolve or limit liability by individuals involved in economic activity. So basically, through this structure or entity, the benefits of capitalism flow only in one direction. Many large corporations today couldn't get to their size if the CEO's personal assets were on the line.
It's a matter of profitability. Taxes are taken out of revenue, not profits. That distinction is key to understanding how taxes can literally drive a company out of business. If Microsoft made 10 billion in revenue, but had 6 billion in expenses (just an example) a tax rate of 45% for Microsoft would result in the company losing 500 million dollars. The only way to encourage businesses to start up or expand in the US is to give them every opportunity to turn profit.
I don't doubt that but I think his point was (or at least I hope) that we need to both cut money and raise some, it's impractical to just to one to fix such a huge deficit
The video *did* look at the cost of all foreign aid and the cost of occupying other countries. The fact that cutting all of that *still* wouldn't balance the budget is the reason why they said that the government needs to go beyond these normal cuts if it is to balance its budget. In any case, we know that the government isn't going to balance its budget. Politicians don't have the right incentives to do that.
It depends on the individual and sacrifice. Back to executives who do work very hard: there are prominent others with limited oversight, attend few meetings and at best court other leaguers and officials to lavish outings and activities. How is that worth more than the functions of a business whole? There are investors deprived of dividends and/or returns while board members dictate unilateral, insider compensation while not doing much good, if much at all.
If you* had paid attention, he didn't mention NASA or the military ect..until after the first 7 months, which he was explaining how if these programs were cut they would not even cover the last 5 months. Does that ring a bell?
Remember, the economy was in decline during the bush administration, so it doesn't necessarily mean that we're still on this or that side of the laffer curve. I suggest you watch "Can We Balance the Budget By Raising Taxes?" by LearnLiberty. Regardless, you're right about one thing, as taxes increase, raising them further becomes more asymptotically unjustifiable.
Correlation is not causation. The deficit may have been minimized in the late 90s - that did not have anything to do with the tech bubble bursting. They just happened to occur at the same time. One could point out that we are currently experiencing the worst economic crash and aftermath since the Great Depression, while running deficits greater than most countries GDPs.
That was not the point he was trying to make. He was showing that people complain about taxes being too high, and yet they want all these things from the government, but the government can't pay for all these things unless taxes were to go up. Him saying the cuts was a way to emphasize how crucial it is that taxes are implemented.
That's the silliest thing I've heard (at least on a video of this caliber.) That's like saying, if my income level goes up, I'll have the same amount of money. And if my income goes down, I'll have the same amount of money. If that's the case, why not just have no taxes at all? Then we'd still have 2.2 trillion a year right? From no taxes at all?
In theory, the problem can be solved by privatizing Social Security and Medicare. In practice, this is less likely to happen than is a monetization of the deficit. IOW, the government prints money to fund its spending. We're seeing the start of that now with the repeated quantitative easings.
PRE-obamacare healthcare programs make up 33% of of government spending, and social security costs about the same, healthcare and social security are the U.S. government's two biggest expenses, with military spending coming in at a distant third
One could argue that only if one entered the jurisdiction voluntarily. Being born in a jurisdiction does not constitute an agreement to this social contract any more than having a contract fall into your lap constitutes an agreement to its terms.
"You still havent convinced me that we should cut corporate taxes & lose 100s of billions in revenue" You don't get it. Cutting corporate tax rates is meant to attract corporations to start up or do more business here. If you have more corporations starting up or doing business here, you'll by default be bringing in more revenue, because you'll have more corporations to tax. Further, as this video shows, fixing the deficit will only work by making Government cutbacks anyway,
I'll try to help, but i'm not entirely sure what you said, to be honest. The point this video's trying to make is that our mandatory spending (social security, medicare, medicaid, interest on the debt) is so overwhelmingly massive that that ALONE gives us a budget deficit. And therefore if we want to balance the budget we have to make major cost-cutting reforms to our entitlement state.
A one-year temporary 50% tax on the rich would likely not have too bad of an effect on the economy (provided everyone believed that it was really temporary and really a one-time event). The problem is the second part. Government isn't good at making things efficient because the incentives in the public sector don't reward efficiency (if anything, they tend to award inefficiency). Consequently, my guess is that the $400 billion would be largely wasted.
My point is that competing insurance companies would drive the cost of health care down so individuals can afford it, without the government forcing other people to pay for my health care. "Freer the market, freer the people."
Well, if that trading is influencing the need or desire for action by the state department then it should be paid for in some way by the interests at hand, not everyone. If there is an inherent risk in dealing with foreign governments, then that can and should be forecasted as easily as any other expense a business takes into consideration.
"Crashes and booms are fueled by more than just the credit market" They are directed by other factors, but the easy credit provided by the Fed setting interest rates lower than the market normally would is how they get going. And the Fed cannot sustain this without high levels of inflation, so it lowers the rates, ergo crash. The particulars of what kind of bubble, etc. are determined by the other factors (govt interference, shape of the economy, etc.)
think of how much money fucking 18 trillion dollars is, I can't even wrap my head around a million, let alone a billion, but a trillion? times 18??? What the fuck dude...
if I were to give you a million dollars a day to spend until you spent a trillion dollars from the day Christ was born, you'd be 2013 years old now and would still need to spend $1 million/day for the next 726 years to hit a trillion. We now owe 17.9 trillion dollars.
"comfortable" is subjective and retirement money is still an individual's responsibility, not the government's. if your profession is unprotected, you should probably start saving. people of today, both old and young, need to readjust their spending habits and lifestyles to what is affordable and practical for their specific income and savings. it is possible to live a frugal life with walmart and amazon, but many are unwilling to adapt their mindsets or lifestyles.
You missed the entire point of the video. He was proposing that even IF you cut all of those things, you still cannot balance the budget because those things are not the majority of the problem, which is the socialized assisted living programs of social security, medicare, medicaid and the accumulated interest payments of previous debts.
The US started out more like 13 independent nations under a union that brought a stronger common protection, and a free trade zone that brought prosperity. Robert E. Lee was an Abolitionist wouldn't be shocked if he voted for Lincoln, but he couldn't raise arms against his native Virginia, back then it was your State first US second. Lincoln changed this in the Gettysburg address with "the United States is" as in singular. When before it was "the United States are." as in plural.
Hong Kong on the other hand is considered by most the most free market in the world, even more so that the U.S., and it shows. Although Hong Kong is only one city and surrounding residential areas, it has the 8th most traded currency in the world. So I think if you were trying to make a decision whether high taxes on business were good or bad for the people, the comparison of Hong Kong and the rest of China is pretty convincing.
What is not mentioned, is what the Government spends the money on from July-31 on back to January-1. 7 full months of tax paying money is not accounted for. He basically removed all of the things our Government spends in the mainstream, but does not regard where the unaccounted spending goes. Ron Paul - 2012.
Crashes are the result of unsustainable inflationary booms fueled by easy credit (and that credit drying up when fears of inflation drive up interest rates). Easy credit happens to ALSO help fund large deficits, and those deficits tend to shrink some (but not much) when the easy credit is lessened. You are missing a common cause. And a dangerous one at that, as the US can no longer afford for interest rates to rise - and keeping them low will create inevitable inflationary disaster.
That is insane. It seems that the government has not a clue how to almost anything within a budget. simple economics and addition and subtraction are things that they can't do.
Yes, what we now call "Social Security" -- a combination of payroll taxes and retirement benefits -- would become "general taxes" -- the same payroll taxes but no retirement benefits.
you missed the point, a majority of our spending is on social security and medicare and medicaid. If we are to have any chance of balancing the budget you have to make cuts to them.
Fortunately, we don't have to raise tax rates. All we really need to do is reform the tax code by cutting out many exemptions. It's the "Simpson-Bolles" plan, and it even results in a lower marginal rate, yet generates more revenue. I'll check out that vid...LearnLiberty knows their stuff.
You are criticizing his cuts that he makes in the video. Even though the cuts he made were making a point of the size of entitlements' funding. So again, you didn't get it. The point of his video was letting the viewer come to their own conclusion what should be cut, just because a thesis isn't directly said doesn't mean that it isn't strongly implied.
i agree with cutting the future of these programs, and honoring the ones in place now, but i believe it's our foreign aid that needs to be cut if we truly wanted to continue these programs, that i don't personally think should be there.
why would the government cut these things when it can just print money? sure this will mean that the dollar goes down in value, but other currencies which are also pegged to the us dollar (the chinese currency at the moment i think) would also depreciate, so america's purchasing power in china would remain constant.
Probably. I mean, there is no incentive to save money in the government sector. It's not like you have to please a customer. They just extort money from your checks!
If the executive wasn't providing some type of service to the company, the board of directors would fire him and get a new executive. The problem is that good CEOs (et al.) are VERY hard to find, which is why their job pays so well. Keep in mind that it's not up to you to decide what is and is not good for a business. If you don't like a company, you don't have to do business with them. The only people who should have a say are the board of directors and the shareholders.
How will abolishing the Federal Reserve help? They are in charge of making sure the US dollar doesn't rapidly inflate through maintaining the number of government bonds in circulation. By abolishing the Fed the government would be forced to pay the bond holders all at once, which would only sky rocket the debt even higher. And getting rid of taxes would give even less income for the government, so that wouldn't help either.
Often there is no choice in purchasing from certain companies. The board could get rid of a CEO but rarely ever do due to contracts. If the shareholders vote out a board member they can be simply reappointed by the other board members. Often the majority of shares are focal. If it's so rare to find a good CEO, then why do they ALL need to be paid so well? The statement is a contradiction in point. The excuse is disclosure and the problem is equity as compensation. CEO is not the only executive.
And by how? Cutting the Fed? That would make things exponentially worse. The Fed is in charge of maintaining the government bonds, and if cut the government would be forced to pay back all those bonds at once, thus sky rocketing the debt.
It realistically will not be as sweeping, but yeah. Also squeeze indirect beneficiaries of social programs, raise trade tariffs and we can reduce the debt while encouraging domestic commerce and industry, in turn creating more revenue. Government officials should be volunteers whose living is funded by nonprofit charities and their constituents, instead of acting as brokers for entities who are extracting government capital and currency for profit.
True, the US is 50 times bigger than Denmark, but on the other hand the US GDP per capita about 7.000 USD bigger than the Danish in PPP. Of course, the US is using too much money on the military (4,75 % of GPD for the US vs. 1,46% for Denmark and 2,5 for the world) So there is more money per person in the US than in Denmark, and even though the liberal government we had through the '00 used a "boom-and-bust" financial policy, Denmark is still considered a strong, or at least safe, economy.
so what i want to ask is: if all those things are such a small fraction of the spendings, what is the bigger fraction? if all the things we traditionally expect from governments are a drop in the bucket then WhO is FiLlInG thE rest of the bucket?
The current market economy IS a resource based economy. Also, eliminating currency would run us into the problem of the double-coincidence of wants which makes economic transactions much less efficient.
I just thought that it was worth mentioning that you cannot really compare Hong Kong to he rest of China, as Hong Kong was under British control until 1997. The the poor majority that you mentioned live in rural areas of China outside of the SEC's (Special Economic Zones which are basically free market bubbles along the east coast). Damn 500 character limit cutting me off in mid thought.
Well the CEO I was thinking of was Home Depot's Nardeli who got fired with a nice $210 million severance package. He didn't do anything and made out like a bandit. Ask the common shareholders of HD whether they had a say on that severance package. There are plenty of CEO's that are major shareholders of the companies they manage.
“We can reduce the federal government to nothing more than a glorified assisted living facility and we still wouldn’t be able to balance the budget.” That is the best line ever!
I really wish we could have seen that same calender, but reversing the cuts. What would it have looked like cutting S.S., Medicare and Medicaid?
We would have a balanced budget. That's actually about it. We would be anywhere from 1 week to 2 months into the next year, i'm not exactly sure, but interest social security, medicare, medicaid, and all the other bullshit we should never have spent money on in the first place is the majority of our spending.
This video very nicely displays the problems of the USA government budget deficit. However, this video goes beyond things like increasing government revenues due to taxation or GDP growth thereby effectively reducing your relative debt. That said the fact that the current situation is unsustainable over the longer term without intervention is to me at least as clear as day.
This is by far the best video I've ever seen on government spending.
if I were to give you a million dollars a day to spend until you spent a trillion dollars from the day Christ was born, you'd be 2013 years old now and would still need to spend $1 million/day for the next 726 years to hit a trillion. We now owe 17.9 trillion dollars.
Who is we? I didnt make any promises to anyone.
"Federal departments which are focused under the accountability of lawmakers"
That's a good one.
My point was that government's deficit usually goes down when interest rates have risen and it becomes harder for them to borrow without racking up massive interest payments. At the same time, the Domestic Private Surplus also drops when interest rates rise - generally during an unsustainable boom that causes a recession to greatly shrink the surplus. Further, the most recent recession shows that the massive Bush deficits coincided with massive domestic private deficits.
That math doesn't work. If you cut everything, then you're not counting the remaining days of the year based on the old rate of spending.
your right it should be percentage per day
The math shows that the government can only fund itself for 7 months, and that it would have to cut nearly everything in order to make it the rest without running such a massive deficit that it obliterates all services for future generations. That's the point.
Yes, I know of Stefan Molyneux. I was actually introduced to anarchism with his book "Practical Anarchy."
"But, then, I don't need to convince YOU of that, do I?" I am not sure what you mean here.
All the things he mentioned afterwards. By removing those, that extends how far the available money can go.
Does the video have any citations to some of these numbers? A lot of these seem to be a lot shorter than they're supposed to be.
Defense-related expenditures for example have had reports for 2012 that ranged around 1.03-1.45 trillion dollars, rather than the 930 billion we've got here.
During the early 80s, taxes were cut but revenues actually increased. Why? Because tax rates in the 70s were above unit elasticity. the government lowered taxes to unit elasticity and thus, increased their revenue.
Not so fast, it's recognized even in the corporate world that outsourcing has it's own cons.
1. There's a loss of quality.
2. There's a higher risk of confidentiality and privacy loss.
3. Hidden costs, because you don't know all of the operations going around to these people you're contracting to, it may end up costing more than you realize.
4. loss of managerial control, your turning to another company, as such, you lose DIRECT control.
5. You're tied to that companies success.
I also heard that they take in more private donations than federal subsidies.
Plus there happened to be a little revenue producing thing called the internet coming up at that time.
What was being spent the first 7 months when if you take everything away it does not even equal 5...?
The things he said at the end, "The only things left: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Interest on the debt" (one thing he ignores is that the interest rate on the debt is at an historic low and will most likely rise in the future).
Actually it took that money from the private sector and gave a grant to Vicent Cerf who had already come up with packet switching on his own. Not to metion that TCP/IP isn't the only protocol that could have done the job.
Taxes are analogous to prices. If a store owner lowers prices, he'll get more customers but make less money with each sale. If he raises prices, he'll have fewer customers, but make more money with each sale. If you graphed his expected revenue compared to prices, you would see a curve that rises up from 0, levels off at a point called "unit elasticity", and then falls back down. This is analogous to government revenues, taxes are price investors pay for conducting business in this economy.
@Mann do you think the government didn't overspread or have debt before GWB?
No no, I understand that's his point, that's why he mentions S.S. and retirement obligations at the end. I was just highlighting this fact by explicitly stating it.
Yes, have a question?
His channel is great. The videos you mentioned are exactly what i was looking for!
Thank you!
I heard somewhere that in ancient times, civilizations like Egpyt and Greece would whipe detbs clean. They essentially whipe the slate clean and start over. That is never going to happen, but at the very least they should cut the interest rate. 14 trillion dollars in debt is more money than anyone can ever have.
I believe it's been documented that in 2011 we spent roughly 50 billion more in mandatory spending than we took in in federal revenue.
I am VERY interested as to how many days social security Medicaid and Medicare is worth
@LearnLiberty, We cut funding for all those things at jan 1st?
Furthermore, I've been known to out an anarchist that didn't know he was one from time to time. It goes a little something like this:
"Do you think it's wrong to initiate force to achieve an end."
"Yes."
"Then you're an anarchist."
I love your videos! Thanks!
I'm going to split a hair here because it's worth mentioning. The modern-day corporation is actually a legal entity, protected by law, to basically absolve or limit liability by individuals involved in economic activity. So basically, through this structure or entity, the benefits of capitalism flow only in one direction. Many large corporations today couldn't get to their size if the CEO's personal assets were on the line.
One thing though, won't cutting the programs make the hourly costs LESS than 434million?
It's a matter of profitability. Taxes are taken out of revenue, not profits. That distinction is key to understanding how taxes can literally drive a company out of business. If Microsoft made 10 billion in revenue, but had 6 billion in expenses (just an example) a tax rate of 45% for Microsoft would result in the company losing 500 million dollars.
The only way to encourage businesses to start up or expand in the US is to give them every opportunity to turn profit.
I don't doubt that but I think his point was (or at least I hope) that we need to both cut money and raise some, it's impractical to just to one to fix such a huge deficit
Powerful. Thanks, Dr. Davies.
The video *did* look at the cost of all foreign aid and the cost of occupying other countries. The fact that cutting all of that *still* wouldn't balance the budget is the reason why they said that the government needs to go beyond these normal cuts if it is to balance its budget. In any case, we know that the government isn't going to balance its budget. Politicians don't have the right incentives to do that.
It depends on the individual and sacrifice. Back to executives who do work very hard: there are prominent others with limited oversight, attend few meetings and at best court other leaguers and officials to lavish outings and activities. How is that worth more than the functions of a business whole? There are investors deprived of dividends and/or returns while board members dictate unilateral, insider compensation while not doing much good, if much at all.
Wow!!! really enjoy how these gov't debt videos put things into perspective.
How the hell are we spending 30 B to keep DC open
If you* had paid attention, he didn't mention NASA or the military ect..until after the first 7 months, which he was explaining how if these programs were cut they would not even cover the last 5 months. Does that ring a bell?
very good and accurate video... Ron Paul would love this Professor.
Remember, the economy was in decline during the bush administration, so it doesn't necessarily mean that we're still on this or that side of the laffer curve. I suggest you watch "Can We Balance the Budget By Raising Taxes?" by LearnLiberty. Regardless, you're right about one thing, as taxes increase, raising them further becomes more asymptotically unjustifiable.
Correlation is not causation. The deficit may have been minimized in the late 90s - that did not have anything to do with the tech bubble bursting. They just happened to occur at the same time. One could point out that we are currently experiencing the worst economic crash and aftermath since the Great Depression, while running deficits greater than most countries GDPs.
That was not the point he was trying to make. He was showing that people complain about taxes being too high, and yet they want all these things from the government, but the government can't pay for all these things unless taxes were to go up. Him saying the cuts was a way to emphasize how crucial it is that taxes are implemented.
Cutting exemptions is effectively the same as raising taxes. It won't significantly increase revenue if at all.
That's the silliest thing I've heard (at least on a video of this caliber.) That's like saying, if my income level goes up, I'll have the same amount of money. And if my income goes down, I'll have the same amount of money.
If that's the case, why not just have no taxes at all? Then we'd still have 2.2 trillion a year right? From no taxes at all?
In theory, the problem can be solved by privatizing Social Security and Medicare. In practice, this is less likely to happen than is a monetization of the deficit. IOW, the government prints money to fund its spending. We're seeing the start of that now with the repeated quantitative easings.
If they already don't work then what difference would that make?
No NASA, no Navy, no ...
YAY!!!!!!!!!!
PRE-obamacare healthcare programs make up 33% of of government spending, and social security costs about the same, healthcare and social security are the U.S. government's two biggest expenses, with military spending coming in at a distant third
One could argue that only if one entered the jurisdiction voluntarily. Being born in a jurisdiction does not constitute an agreement to this social contract any more than having a contract fall into your lap constitutes an agreement to its terms.
"You still havent convinced me that we should cut corporate taxes & lose 100s of billions in revenue"
You don't get it. Cutting corporate tax rates is meant to attract corporations to start up or do more business here.
If you have more corporations starting up or doing business here, you'll by default be bringing in more revenue, because you'll have more corporations to tax.
Further, as this video shows, fixing the deficit will only work by making Government cutbacks anyway,
I'll try to help, but i'm not entirely sure what you said, to be honest.
The point this video's trying to make is that our mandatory spending (social security, medicare, medicaid, interest on the debt) is so overwhelmingly massive that that ALONE gives us a budget deficit. And therefore if we want to balance the budget we have to make major cost-cutting reforms to our entitlement state.
how much time will medicare, medicde and social security buy us?
A one-year temporary 50% tax on the rich would likely not have too bad of an effect on the economy (provided everyone believed that it was really temporary and really a one-time event).
The problem is the second part. Government isn't good at making things efficient because the incentives in the public sector don't reward efficiency (if anything, they tend to award inefficiency). Consequently, my guess is that the $400 billion would be largely wasted.
My point is that competing insurance companies would drive the cost of health care down so individuals can afford it, without the government forcing other people to pay for my health care. "Freer the market, freer the people."
You were criticizing how he didn't cut entitlements first, doing that would have stolen a lot of the emphasis on how expensive entitlements are.
I doubt that it would do much, but good point.
What happens if I don't pay the government's taxes? What will they do to me?
Well, if that trading is influencing the need or desire for action by the state department then it should be paid for in some way by the interests at hand, not everyone. If there is an inherent risk in dealing with foreign governments, then that can and should be forecasted as easily as any other expense a business takes into consideration.
Has Antony Davies even published anything?
www.antolin-davies.com/index_files/research.htm
First timer to the internet?
"Crashes and booms are fueled by more than just the credit market" They are directed by other factors, but the easy credit provided by the Fed setting interest rates lower than the market normally would is how they get going. And the Fed cannot sustain this without high levels of inflation, so it lowers the rates, ergo crash. The particulars of what kind of bubble, etc. are determined by the other factors (govt interference, shape of the economy, etc.)
think of how much money fucking 18 trillion dollars is, I can't even wrap my head around a million, let alone a billion, but a trillion? times 18??? What the fuck dude...
if I were to give you a million dollars a day to spend until you spent a trillion dollars from the day Christ was born, you'd be 2013 years old now and would still need to spend $1 million/day for the next 726 years to hit a trillion. We now owe 17.9 trillion dollars.
BroGamer32 I'd have to kill myself eating buritos to match that monetary value (if I were to do it in just burritos)
Make an updated version for 2021!!!
Taxes for everyone (including corporations) are at the lowest they've ever been. It hasn't worked so far, so why would it work now?
"comfortable" is subjective and retirement money is still an individual's responsibility, not the government's. if your profession is unprotected, you should probably start saving. people of today, both old and young, need to readjust their spending habits and lifestyles to what is affordable and practical for their specific income and savings. it is possible to live a frugal life with walmart and amazon, but many are unwilling to adapt their mindsets or lifestyles.
You missed the entire point of the video. He was proposing that even IF you cut all of those things, you still cannot balance the budget because those things are not the majority of the problem, which is the socialized assisted living programs of social security, medicare, medicaid and the accumulated interest payments of previous debts.
The US started out more like 13 independent nations under a union that brought a stronger common protection, and a free trade zone that brought prosperity. Robert E. Lee was an Abolitionist wouldn't be shocked if he voted for Lincoln, but he couldn't raise arms against his native Virginia, back then it was your State first US second. Lincoln changed this in the Gettysburg address with "the United States is" as in singular. When before it was "the United States are." as in plural.
Looks like no matter how focused and powerful the government is we still have to take care of ourselves. I really have no problem with this.
Hong Kong on the other hand is considered by most the most free market in the world, even more so that the U.S., and it shows. Although Hong Kong is only one city and surrounding residential areas, it has the 8th most traded currency in the world.
So I think if you were trying to make a decision whether high taxes on business were good or bad for the people, the comparison of Hong Kong and the rest of China is pretty convincing.
What is not mentioned, is what the Government spends the money on from July-31 on back to January-1. 7 full months of tax paying money is not accounted for. He basically removed all of the things our Government spends in the mainstream, but does not regard where the unaccounted spending goes. Ron Paul - 2012.
They are taking a portion of my income for social security every month. What will I get in return?
Crashes are the result of unsustainable inflationary booms fueled by easy credit (and that credit drying up when fears of inflation drive up interest rates). Easy credit happens to ALSO help fund large deficits, and those deficits tend to shrink some (but not much) when the easy credit is lessened. You are missing a common cause. And a dangerous one at that, as the US can no longer afford for interest rates to rise - and keeping them low will create inevitable inflationary disaster.
So you're arguing that increasing someone's top marginal tax rate is going to have a larger negative effect on growth than cutting R&D?
What institution, HexTest?
That is insane. It seems that the government has not a clue how to almost anything within a budget. simple economics and addition and subtraction are things that they can't do.
are you the person in the video??
Yes, what we now call "Social Security" -- a combination of payroll taxes and retirement benefits -- would become "general taxes" -- the same payroll taxes but no retirement benefits.
Me too. Buy platinum and palladium!!
you missed the point, a majority of our spending is on social security and medicare and medicaid. If we are to have any chance of balancing the budget you have to make cuts to them.
Fortunately, we don't have to raise tax rates. All we really need to do is reform the tax code by cutting out many exemptions. It's the "Simpson-Bolles" plan, and it even results in a lower marginal rate, yet generates more revenue. I'll check out that vid...LearnLiberty knows their stuff.
You are criticizing his cuts that he makes in the video. Even though the cuts he made were making a point of the size of entitlements' funding. So again, you didn't get it. The point of his video was letting the viewer come to their own conclusion what should be cut, just because a thesis isn't directly said doesn't mean that it isn't strongly implied.
i agree with cutting the future of these programs, and honoring the ones in place now, but i believe it's our foreign aid that needs to be cut if we truly wanted to continue these programs, that i don't personally think should be there.
why would the government cut these things when it can just print money? sure this will mean that the dollar goes down in value, but other currencies which are also pegged to the us dollar (the chinese currency at the moment i think) would also depreciate, so america's purchasing power in china would remain constant.
Hmm, well, could you name on what things he is wrong on and why?
Probably. I mean, there is no incentive to save money in the government sector. It's not like you have to please a customer. They just extort money from your checks!
If the executive wasn't providing some type of service to the company, the board of directors would fire him and get a new executive. The problem is that good CEOs (et al.) are VERY hard to find, which is why their job pays so well. Keep in mind that it's not up to you to decide what is and is not good for a business. If you don't like a company, you don't have to do business with them. The only people who should have a say are the board of directors and the shareholders.
How will abolishing the Federal Reserve help? They are in charge of making sure the US dollar doesn't rapidly inflate through maintaining the number of government bonds in circulation. By abolishing the Fed the government would be forced to pay the bond holders all at once, which would only sky rocket the debt even higher. And getting rid of taxes would give even less income for the government, so that wouldn't help either.
Often there is no choice in purchasing from certain companies. The board could get rid of a CEO but rarely ever do due to contracts. If the shareholders vote out a board member they can be simply reappointed by the other board members. Often the majority of shares are focal. If it's so rare to find a good CEO, then why do they ALL need to be paid so well? The statement is a contradiction in point. The excuse is disclosure and the problem is equity as compensation. CEO is not the only executive.
How about increasing revenue?
And by how? Cutting the Fed? That would make things exponentially worse. The Fed is in charge of maintaining the government bonds, and if cut the government would be forced to pay back all those bonds at once, thus sky rocketing the debt.
The things that he cut (discretionary spending) are actually essential roles of government... and yet we still can't balance the budget.
It realistically will not be as sweeping, but yeah. Also squeeze indirect beneficiaries of social programs, raise trade tariffs and we can reduce the debt while encouraging domestic commerce and industry, in turn creating more revenue. Government officials should be volunteers whose living is funded by nonprofit charities and their constituents, instead of acting as brokers for entities who are extracting government capital and currency for profit.
True, the US is 50 times bigger than Denmark, but on the other hand the US GDP per capita about 7.000 USD bigger than the Danish in PPP. Of course, the US is using too much money on the military (4,75 % of GPD for the US vs. 1,46% for Denmark and 2,5 for the world) So there is more money per person in the US than in Denmark, and even though the liberal government we had through the '00 used a "boom-and-bust" financial policy, Denmark is still considered a strong, or at least safe, economy.
so what i want to ask is: if all those things are such a small fraction of the spendings, what is the bigger fraction? if all the things we traditionally expect from governments are a drop in the bucket then WhO is FiLlInG thE rest of the bucket?
Whats your argued solution? Video links? I don't want to wast your time, but I do not know where to search within learn liberty
The current market economy IS a resource based economy. Also, eliminating currency would run us into the problem of the double-coincidence of wants which makes economic transactions much less efficient.
I just thought that it was worth mentioning that you cannot really compare Hong Kong to he rest of China, as Hong Kong was under British control until 1997. The the poor majority that you mentioned live in rural areas of China outside of the SEC's (Special Economic Zones which are basically free market bubbles along the east coast).
Damn 500 character limit cutting me off in mid thought.
Well the CEO I was thinking of was Home Depot's Nardeli who got fired with a nice $210 million severance package. He didn't do anything and made out like a bandit. Ask the common shareholders of HD whether they had a say on that severance package. There are plenty of CEO's that are major shareholders of the companies they manage.
These numbers were from 2011, so that might have been a difference.