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White House To Announce IT-Powered Smart Grid
FizzaNawaz writes "On Monday, the Obama administration is preparing announce the next steps that the US will take to build its 21st century electric grid, and IT is expected to play a big part in the plans. The White House is hosting a 90-minute media event called 'Building the 21st Century Electric Grid' and is releasing a new report on what it will take for lawmakers and the private sector to come together to solve this aspect of the energy challenge."
Ofcourse after all those years of spreading fud about internet connected powergrid - it's about time they build it.
Is there anything the government can't keep it's paws out of?
Gundam?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
... And actually put some thought and investment into a secure infrastructure, this time? The existing implementations are horribly reliant on auxilliary security controls, such as firewalls, to protect systems that rely on plaintext passwords and access controls to protect them from buffer overflows and other rudimentary vulnerabilities. These systems, and the NERC CIPS policies that act as a paper armor against scrutiny, present a real danger to our infrastructure, and pouring more money into procurement is really going to make things worse.
Will Siemens have anything to do with the 21st century electric grid?
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
Private companies are going to pay for multi billion dollar infrastructure without anti competitive exclusive usage of it?
What is the point you are trying to make?
If you have to ask, you don't get it.
Yeah, God forbid our country actually do something with its wealth. We should all just sit around on our asses, living off the work of our grandfathers, while complaining that nothing ever gets done.
We decided to leave high-speed internet deployment to the private sector. How's that working out? Oh, look, $50 a month for speeds that would make Europeans laugh, and the ISPs are already looking into bandwidth caps on top because they don't want to bear the expense of laying more fiber.
Clearly.
We all know where this is going ......
an I-phone app to shut down the grid?
I'm moving on.
Good riddance.
And what is the private sector doing to update the antiquated power grid?
Uh, yeah. Doesn't matter how "smart" you make your grid, every watt used has to be generated at some power plant. It's not like our current grid is dumping massive amounts of power into a hole somewhere. So if you want to reduce the need for power plants, you're talking about reducing demand, and the only way to do that through the grid is to turn people's stuff off whether they like it or not. Do not want.
And electric vehicles can only increase demand. Massively, if they were to really catch on.
We've not had wealth since the Clinton administration. Now we have debt. That being said, infrastructure is something worth borrowing money to improve. Doing so will lower long term costs and create jobs.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
It's infrastructure, dunce. This is what government should be doing.
So what are you saying? that the private sector doesn't think it's worth it, and so we need to ream the tax payers for it, or are you saying that the private sector isn't as forward seeing as the government sector? Uh huh.
Right, I have to ask this as a (more than likely) ignorant European who probably just doesn't "get" it - but what's with the obsession with "commies"? Who exactly are you referring to? I know that "Back in the day" of the cold war when Russia was seen as the big mortal enemy of the US, most people referred to them simply as the commies, or "communist Russia", but it has been like 2 decades since the USSR fell, who's left? Is it China? Is that who the "commies" are? If so, what has China got to do with the Obama administration?
I genuinely do not know - why are Americans obsessed with communism? Why is it that, for example, a national health service is a bit "communist"? And why does that inherently make it bad? I'm not saying +1 for communism, more along the lines of "Even if it is a tad communist, how can free health care for all actually be a bad thing?". In the same way that Hitler was supposedly a vegetarian (I know he actually wasn't and it's just a myth, but anyway), why does that mean that being a vegetarian is a bad thing? Charles Darwin was supposedly a womanising prick, but that doesn't mean his theory on Natural Selection is any less valid. Not that I think that a free health service IS communist or anything, but I digress.
Anyway, the sum total of what I'm asking is basically -
* Who are the "commies"?
* Why do people care about the "commies"?
* Are people afraid of the "commies" for some reason? Are they thinking that if a new electric grid is built, suddenly Russia will revert back to the USSR or something?
* Is Slashdot communist?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I say if the governments just gonna keep printing money, might as well build something cool before they've destroyed the dollar.
We've not had wealth since the Clinton administration.
I think you mean "...since the Roosevelt administration".
...or maybe you meant "...since the Wilson administration".
There's no place like
I'm just hoping they dont get their paws into our encryption keys by exploiting power fluctuation attacks. (http://www.darknet.org.uk/2010/03/boffins-crack-openssl-library-using-power-fluctuations/) Does any knowledgeable nerd know if that is feasible? I'm a pessimist and I assume everything the government does benefits us (or them) in more than one way. Is the smart grid the biggest backdoor to come yet?
If by private sector you mean government enforced duopoly then I guess I agree with you. I have absolutely no faith that the government won't use this to push their agenda. I can see it now someone is in their basement playing wow at 4am and some government peon cuts their power because its not healthy to be up that late. The court rules that its constitutional because that persone was on government health care.
So your point is to do nothing... got yah.
Just a side note.... its a rant if you just complain... its an opinion when you lay out the facts... and its a wise man who offers a solution.
Yeah, God forbid our country actually do something with its wealth. We should all just sit around on our asses, living off the work of our grandfathers, while complaining that nothing ever gets done.
I'm on it!
#DeleteChrome
No no... the Clinton era was actually reducing our debt.
We have plenty of wealth. This idea that we're broke is a right-wing lie to excuse robbing the poor and giving to the rich. If we repeal the Bush tax cuts and cut our military down to a reasonable size (say... not bigger than every other county in the world put together), we'll be back in the black in no time. Instead, we get demands to end Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and Food Stamps, and use that money to give a record-breakingly large tax cut to the top 2%.
Lots of generated power goes to waste. Our current grid is effectively "dumping massive amounts of power into a hole." The smart grid helps to reduce that waste.
If you have to ask, you don't get it.
Congratulations, you have successfully demonstrated that you understand what a "question" is.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I read somewhere that Bill Clinton put some solar panels on the roof of the White House. His successor (GWB?) took them off, as soon as he can. So, has Obama put them back on? After all, energy policies begin at home.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Disclaimer: I'm Canadian.
On the left side of the political spectrum you have socialists. If you go even further left you have communists. It isn't necessarily that there are "commies", but using the term is a way of deriding certain ways of doing things. Having the government use tax dollars (or in the US case, borrowed dollars) to improve the power grid something might be seen as the left-wing way of doing so; whereas providing tax incentives to private corporations to do the work might be an example of a right-wing way of acheiving the same goal. While the Obama admistration aren't "commies" by most people's definitions, they could easily be classified as socialists.
What I'd like to know is how the US government plans to pay for new programs like this? Their economy is slowly imploding and they're being crushed by unprecidented debt, yet they're worried about building an IT-Powered Smart Grid??
Infrastructure investments like this are long term. The private sector has trouble thinking past the next quarterly report. The OP might not have meant that the private sector isn't as forward seeing as the government but I'll say it.
Time and time again the private sector has shown that they will only do the bare minimum required to wring every dollar out of the general public with the least amount of effort and if it requires lying through their teeth then so be it.
Need an example? How about the global economic crisis we're currently digging ourselves out of. By the way, the scum sucking leaches in the private sector that caused this meltdown seem to be the first ones that recovered. Funny that? Personally I think these parasites should be buried under so much regulation and bureaucracy that they'd never see the light of day.
So yeah, the private sector can't be trusted to do the right thing unless it's at the end of a very big government stick.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
So is this an admission you don't know what you're going on about either?
In a word: stupidity.
"Commie" is an epiphet/slur/insult. Stronger than idiot or *sshole, but right on the heels of c*nt or n*gger.
That is setup at his home as he very fat and is on workers comp. So he gets to work from home.
What I'd like to know is how the US government plans to pay for new programs like this?
Well that's obvious. They're going to bankrupt power producers like coal via cap and trade, with this institute high taxation on all non "green" power generation. Ensure that the US goes to a 3rd world country and therefore no one will have any need to worry about power. And oh charge a premium on green power generation, somewhere in the 40-80c/KWH.
The other option is to take out an assload of debt, and at the same time turn in the printing presses again, hyperdevaluate the currency.
In otherwords, he's a communist in socialist clothing. It's the only way that the government can pay for it.
Om, nomnomnom...
In US politics only old people participate[1] since voting isn't mandatory and young people are stupid and lazy[2]. You have to remember that the soviet union collapsed in 1991 and a grand total of 2 years of voters have lived since then. 1 year if you count the last major election (2010). Even if you exclude youngsters you still only have 10 of about 60 years of voters who don't remember the soviet union being around. It's going to be a while before the average citizen didn't have their political paranoias formed after Communism stopped being a threat.
[1] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/todays_median_age_voters_grew.html
[2] Sad but true.
The private sector didn't decide to give out risky sub-prime mortgages. Your beloved feds made them do it, with a wink & a nod that if things went to shit, Uncle Sucker would bail them out.
Man, you just wasted a lot of dialogue on an obvious troll. Troll: 1 Neokushan: 0.
Hydraulic pizza oven!! Guided missile! Herring sandwich! Styrofoam! Jayne Mansfield! Aluminum siding! Borax!
Uncle Fester seems eminently more suited to the job.
Have gnu, will travel.
is no one worried about skynet
You're on an internet that was invented with government money. Get off now.
I wonder if Bruce Willis will still be around to save us from a firesale once this is in place ;)
Bow before me, for I am root.
You're right - we should leave networking the grid into efficiency among its many monopolies all to Enron. A private corp will do it right. And quickly, too - none of this waiting around for the government to get around to taking the risks no one else has. Enron will never abuse the market it hosts. It will spend its profits reinvesting in innovation and efficiencies. Keep your government paws off my Enron!
--
make install -not war
IEEE 802.3a400amp
Thank you, one dimensional Republican.
--
make install -not war
You do realize that right now there are two choices for the future of Medicare and Medicaid on the table. There is the Paul Ryan (Republican) plan. This plan will distribute the money to states as block grants allowing those who will not enter the program for another ten years to choose which of several competing options to use the money for, while leaving it completely unchanged for those older than that. Then there is the Obama (Democratic) plan. The latter plan will set up a government agency that will decide what types of treatment will be covered so that Medicare and Medicaid expenses do not exceed a specified percentage of GDP (I forget the number, but Medicare and Medicaid will exceed it under the current configuration by 2014). This agency can only be overridden by 2/3s of both Houses of Congress.
So, neither party is calling for the end of Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. However, the Democratic plan calls for the more drastic curtailment of benefits to those who are beyond the point of being able to (without great difficulty) develop alternate plans for their retirement.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
No they didn't. The Fed fucked up, but the private bankers were rolling in dough because of it. The Fed told bankers to lend to poor folk and that the Fed would buy that debt off the banks books allowing them to loan again. What happened? Well, the bankers decided they didn't need to care about getting money back since the Fed took the loan off their hands so they just made tons of money with fees. "Liar loans" were a product of the bankers not the Fed. Fannie and Freddy don't lend money they simply pay banks that lent money to a certain segment of population.
Stupid? Very, but the bankers were abusing the system. It was sort of a lending cost plus contract. This was a very popular business model in the 90s (Thanks Clinton!). One of the big name bed makers, don't remember who exactly at this time, basically passed from one hedge fund to the next. Each company would simply take loans on the potential worth of the company, take millions in fees, then sell the company for what they could. Wash, rinse, repeat. The Fed made big mistakes but the private industry raped the people for as much as they could.
Based on everything I have read about a "smart grid", this is about making sure that everyone has an electric meter that lets the power company (and through them the government) track exactly when and how much electricity they use. "Dear Mr. Doe, we see that you have set your air conditioner to 72 degrees. Don't you think it would be more responsible to set it at 74 degrees."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Just because fox News told you that doesn't make it true.
Or, as someone posted earlier, you could cut the military spending down to some reasonable multiple of the rest of the world, phase out the Bush tax cuts and work to keep the entitlements down to a dull roar. It certainly can be done, we just have to have the political will to simultaneously reign in both the Military Industrial Complex and Big Banking.
We're doomed.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I couldn't find one provable assertion in that entire post - the gov't collects about $2.6T/year and spends about $4.3T/year, a $1.7T deficit each year (excluding the exceptional TARP, Stimulus, and other one-off spending events). The Bush Tax Cuts "cost" $470BN/year ($400BN/year for the "middle-class tax cuts" everyone was so keen on maintaining, and $70BN/year for the top 1-2% that we simply couldn't afford), and last year our entire military expenditures came to about $660BN/year, for all operations, including our "overseas contingency exercises" - that leaves you about $500BN/year short of being "in the black"...
Medicare & Social Security will implode in a few years, something needs to be done - your acceptance of the lie that Republicans want to "end" medicare is exactly why the Democrats have taken their "Thelma & Lousie" approach to simply over-promise benefits and gun it for the cliff...
MSNBC will be glad to know you're reflexively parroting their talking points without question.
Ken
Cheney's Energy Task Force already did all the research. All they have to do is refer to those files!
you had me at #!
Is there anything the government can't keep it's paws out of?
"it's" as in "it is" or "its"?
do() || do_not();
We decided to leave high-speed internet deployment to the private sector. How's that working out? Oh, look, $50 a month for speeds that would make Europeans laugh, and the ISPs are already looking into bandwidth caps on top because they don't want to bear the expense of laying more fiber.
The government handing out monopolies is not 'the private sector'. It's actually those companies becoming part of the government. If prices are high and profits are high then you should wonder why competition isn't rushing in to take a cut of the profits. It's because they aren't allowed to.
Hopefully it won't be controlled by Siemens PLCs, or any other crackable system. Hopefully it will be on its own private WAN.
The Ryan plan eliminates Medicare as we know it. Yes, some older people will be grandfathered in. And yes, it replaces it with a new system with the same name. But those don't change the fact that the system we know as Medicare would end under his proposal.
Furthermore, the official estimates are that his plan would only cover a small portion of health care costs, which means most seniors would be simply unable to afford care, which means they bankrupt their children and die miserable with guilt (or hide their illnesses and die in pain). And the figures Ryan uses to create his estimates are laughably optimistic, calling for the US to enter a sustained period of growth the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the Industrial Revolution.
citations needed.
...you first talk about how you're NOT going to outsource said IT jobs to India.
News flash there, Obama. US job "creation" doesn't really count if we get outsourced 6 months later after we design and build the damn thing.
You want to get your lawmakers involved? Then do what's right and keep US jobs in the US.
Andrew Jackson is the only President to pay off the national debt. Presindent Clinton, with the "help" of the Republicans in Congress was able to restrain spending and get government spending in-line with revenues, leading to a token annual surplus his last year in office, with PROJECTED surpluses if nothing changed from the year 2000 to 2010... Unfortunately, things changed since Clinton left office.
Clinton reduced the annual deficit, yet did not reduce the national debt while he was in office He took office with $4.6T in debt and left office leaving about $5.6T in debt. [source]
Debt is what we accumulate, year after year. Deficit is the new debt we rack-up each year, that gets added to the debt. Debt Deficit
Ken
Commies, or Communists, come in many dastardly forms. They include:
1. Pinko.
2. Bolshevik.
3. Russian.
4. Chinese.
5. Cuban.
6. Canadian.
7. European.
8. Anyone of differing opinion.
God help us if anyone of the above manage to infiltrate the US and spread their Communist creed.
why repeal any tax cuts. instead lets cut taxes in half and reduce the federal government by a factor of ten to an impotent shadow of its former self. 90% of what is does is unnecessary.
Wow, you managed to claim the republican plan wasn't a naked attempt to destroy Medicare. You can replace Medicare with a $15K voucher that won't cover half the cost of medical insurance for most seniors and call *that* Medicare, just as you can replace a cop with a pizza and call it a policeman, but it really isn't.
Instead of rationally determining how to distribute a finite resource, as do most of the western democracies, you want to put the decisions about rationing health care in the hands of rapacious for-profit companies. I attended managers' meetings with the most senior managers at WellPoint insurance, and I can tell you, those people are scum-sucking monsters.
You really don't understand what you're saying, or you're just a terrible person.
Except if you looked at your pay stub or W-4 you would see that Medicare and Social Security were provisioned separately from the other Federal Taxes. The programs were also fairly self-sustaining until the politicians started to bleed them dry of extra funds to waste on more spending.
That would, no doubt, explain why the national debt increased every year of the Clinton presidency?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
How much of the power grid is in the hands of private power comapnies - state-regulated monopolies that have to get state approval for any expenditure, investment or rate increase aren't really "private sector" companies...
If your state was worried about implementing a "smart grid" they could simply require thier utility to do it, but they'd have to allow the utility to increase rates to pay for the investment, and oddly, most (but not all)politicians are against the idea of raising electricity rates...
Ken
And when we had higher defense spending before Clinton during the Cold War we created, trained, and funded Al Qaeda. So by the same logic if we have higher military spending we are just shooting ourselves in the foot further down the road.
Sony.
ts a wise man who offers a solution.
C2H5OH in H2O is the solution.
What was the problem again?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It will cost in the 1st year than the entire projected cost of the project, will run into "unexpected" technological difficulties and the failure will be blamed on "unknown unknowns."
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
And when we had higher defense spending before Clinton during the Cold War we created, trained, and funded Al Qaeda. So by the same logic if we have higher military spending we are just shooting ourselves in the foot further down the road.
More accurately, if the military/intelligence is spending money on things that don't pertain to defense of the homeland, we are shooting ourselves in the foot further down the road...
There's no place like
one dimensional Republican
So you're saying he has (or is) a point?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
A point is zero dimensional
ts a wise man who offers a solution.
C2H5OH in H2O is the solution.
What was the problem again?
Hea don't leave out the H6C12O6 and CH3CH2CH2COOCH2CH3
Is it to benefit the people of the country or corporate profits? A true smart grid and new regulations should encourage small energy producers and even individuals to generate excess power. I'd love to put up extra solar cells and a good sized windmill but in most areas there's no reguirement for the power companies to buy the excess power they simply take it and don't pay for it. In fact I'd be charged a maintenance fee just to be hooked up to the grid even if I fed back twice what I used. Look at it this way, if you live in a good area for sun and put up say a 10 kilowatt solar bank every 5 years and wound up with 30 to 50 kilowatts still producing at retirement you should be able to benefit financially from that power you are providing. Let's say a modest farm put up a series of windmills or maybe used bio-gas to produce electricity. I've read of some decent sized dairy farms producing enough to power a 100 homes on top of what they consumed. In some areas they wouldn't be able to sell back the excess power. The power companies complain that all the small providers cause line problems that exceed their value. If we are blowing all this money on a smart grid that should address such problems then government needs to pass laws forcing power companies to accept power from individuals and pay a fair price for excess power. It could reduce the need for new power plants and remove some of the pressure on fossil fuels. I think everyone that can aford it should be encouraged to produce as much power as possible.
What, exactly, is "government money" pray tell?
Yeah because huge bloated defense programs, building weapons we don't need, really has a huge effect on counter-terrorism here at home. Meanwhile Bush was in office for 9 months, and his people were dismissing Richard Clark for "running around with his hair on fire" concerning Al Quaeda.
All this article was, was an announcement for an announcement. (could I get any more repetitive?) A list of people and groups who will be there. Yay! Nothing substantive besides, basically, "this will be awesome, and will use IT!"
Bad even for /.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The main cause of our economic problems is the recession. As the economy improves, federal income will improve with it. If our tax rate had been held constant since the 90s, and if our GDP were back at normal levels, we'd be making about $5T this year. So actually, the problem is even less serious than I thought.
Also, those sources that you linked directly contradict your statements. According to them, Social Security will be fine until 2050, and the one on Medicare simply says that the cost will increase to about 6% of our GDP in the long run (10.7% without the ACA).
I know Fox has poisoned you. They tell you we're broke. We're not. They tell you SS and Medicare are on the verge of collapse. They're not. They tell you anyone who disagrees with you is a slave to the LIEberal media. I don't watch cable news at all.
They lie to you. For your own sake and that of those you love, turn off the TV.
"IT types" can barely manage internal networks without glaring security holes, I would never trust them to operate a national power grid. There are few enough control systems people you should trust with the job, and I outta know, I work in the controls industry.
I don't know... that's not exactly the body type I'd picture pushing the Wheel of Pain...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_c4lzk84-Q5U/S_MZB0_tV2I/AAAAAAAAASM/dM18eyQS5kw/s1600/wheel_of_pain.jpg
The software flaw that allowed it has been patched, any device that uses a battery or is on a UPS would be 100% immune, and then I doubt any PC (vs simpler electronic device) that suffered such a fault would continue running (it would cause the mother of all memory errors and lead to a kernel panic/BSOD), so I wouldn't worry about it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
for the pool on how long it will take Anonymous to crack this thing?
Now we have debt.
You gotta mouse in your pocket? I don't have any debt..
And what all of you call 'inflation', I call grand larceny, and this 'IT -powered smart grid' is a pretty good example of exactly that.. about as wasteful as studying the flow rate of ketchup..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
In America, IT powers electricity!
Apart from providing the common defense, the purpose of governments is to deplete the surplus productivity. Ours is exceptionally good at the latter. Let's hope they don't let go of the former.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Of course, after you look at your W-4 and pay stub, you might also look at the Federal budget, and notice that all that money that is "provisioned separately" is then thrown into one big pile.
And then they spend the big pile.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
First of all, Clinton's defense cuts were hardly "huge." The military budget was what was huge.
Secondly, if you think more defense spending would have prevented 9/11, I'd like to know what planet you're from because it's not earth.
Clinton, for his faults, actually was pretty proactive in trying to fight terrorism in general and Bin Laden in particular. Only one thing would have prevented 9/11, and that's better intelligence and communication between agencies.
Bush bumped up the military spending and it did nothing to reduce terrorism - which actually increased on his watch.
The biggest domestic terrorist attack in the Clinton years was the Oklahoma City. Do you think more military spending would have prevented that?
The Bush tax cuts plus zeroing the military budget together reduce the deficit by about 2/3.
Which would leave us bleeding money at about 2003-2007 levels.
In other words, not enough, by about 50000 rows of apple trees.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
To the hard right, socialists are the new communists. Sweden might be their poster nation of socialism run amok, or perhaps Greece now thanks to the recent debt trouble, but all of Europe is on their list of bad examples. France was a popular whipping boy, especially when they were indulging in a bit more anti-Americanism than average. It's harder to pick on Sweden because that nation works too well. But the minute Sweden slips up, I guarantee you'll be hearing all kinds of "I told you so!".
Just why they think that has me puzzled too. Surely taking the burden of providing health care off our corporations' HR departments is one of the most business and job friendly moves the government could have made? You know, lower the cost of employing people by removing the overhead of running health care programs, so that businesses will be able to employ more people? And we'll reap savings by catching problems earlier instead of waiting or denying care until they're emergencies, as we do now. The way we run our heath care now is, as the expression goes, "penny wise, pound foolish". Force people to be tough and not seek medical care, even when they should. But they don't see it that way. They see only the "moral hazard" problem. They think if health care is made "free", that's socialism, and people will abuse it. They haven't looked at any actual data on that issue, or if they have, they just dismiss it as biased or wrong.
They also have this knee jerk view that government can't do anything efficiently. Reagan once famously said "government is not a solution to our pro
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
It is a full shutoff for about 20 mins at a time per hour.
one dimensional Republican
So you're saying he has (or is) a point?
Yes, it's on the top of his head.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's election time again. The Obama wants to get re-elected. Time for false promises again.
We have plenty of wealth. This idea that we're broke is a right-wing lie to excuse robbing the poor and giving to the rich.
The US entitlement programs for the next half century ('unfunded liabilities') will cost somewhere around $140T. The GDP of the US is about $13T. The 'GDP' of the entire world is $59T. Not taxes, total production.
What's your plan? Remember, government tax rates above ~17.3% of GDP reduce total revenues by slowing growth and the US is already at about 27%.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I think that quote was said by Obama, just before his teleprompter cut out.
then they spend the big pile. ..and then they borrow 47% more and spend that, too.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's not entirely the fault of the private sector. Shareholders - people who have money to invest but flat-out don't understand business - are just as much of (if not bigger) part of the problem.
An example. Let's say you own a t-shirt printing company that pulls in $200,000 a year. You have no debt whatsoever. Your printing machine is outdated and starting to run down, so you decide to buy a new one - but it will show an overall loss on the quarterly report. Sure, you'd probably end up making back its cost over time, but that quarterly loss is a nigh-unforgivable sin in the corporate world. Instead, a loan is taken out - effectively cooking the books - so you're not shown to post a loss.
It's shit like this that is the one of the huge reasons we as a country are in as much trouble as we are. Nobody can think for the long-term anymore.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
If thats true why isn't anyone telling us?
Even if it is a tad communist, how can free health care for all actually be a bad thing?
Because it's not actually free as in freedom OR free as in beer.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
I've been there when they buried the cables on the i5 corridor and the Oregon Trail. I've held these cables in my hand. They're as thick as your arm, with many thousands of fiber optic links. I've no reason to believe other trunks aren't as well provisioned. That's the way of these things: digging the trench and negotiating the rights of way costs far more than the cable, so you may as well put as much cable in the ground as you can when you have the chance.
End point technologies have advanced quite a bit since they buried these glass links. One single link is more than sufficient to carry all the Internet there is, with 10x redundancy. The rest of those links remain mostly unlit and wasted.
The Internet is awaiting core switching tech to support this, but the physical links are in place. There's more than enough bandwidth in the ground to carry 1000 times the Internet we have now, or more. The switching tech is 20x current demand. The difference from what you have and what it costs is pure profit. The funny thing is that the tech to put data across a single fiber is moving faster than our use of it, so those dark strands may be dark forever.
Scarcity of bandwidth is a myth perpetuated to make you pay more for bandwidth. In Boise, Idaho on the Oregon Trail I've met CIOs that believe that 512Kbps is a good bandwith to pay many thousands of dollars a month for. And the 50Mbps I pay $50/month to Comcast (100x their bandwidth) passes directly beneath the street in front of them on its way to Europe when I download the latest ISO image for Mandrake.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That sounds like it would be illegal under new WTO rules. Anything that blocks trade is going to be illegal.
The cause of the crisis was the rich white bankers committing fraud when bundling the risky mortgages and claiming they were lower risk than they actually were. Foreclosures have been a regular occurrence since the beginning of lending. But the rich white lying bankers cried "look at all the blacks not paying" when the rate was still well below historical norms. The rich white bankers blamed the crisis they caused on Clinton and blacks.
None of the problems were from foreclosure rates being high causing instability. It was from the packaged and resold securities being fraudulently marketed as lower risk (and thus higher value) than they really were. The foreclosure rate never really got that bad, even with all the Faux News coverage showing them to help push the blame on minorities and away from the rich white people.
I'm always amazed that people think Clinton reduced the debt. He was reducing the deficit, not the debt. Debt continued to pile up under Clinton, just not quite as fast.
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm
The last time the debt went down was around 1951.
Well, you can't do much about the debt if you don't have any money left over at the end of each year to pay towards the loans, right? So, lowering the deficit was an effort headed in the right direction anyway. Clinton left us with a surplus. Which Bush immediately turned around and gave back to his rich friends (err, I mean "The American People").
This is Washington in a nutshell: Democrats: Tax & Spend. Republicans: Borrow & Spend. At least the Dems are willing to withstand the public's dislike of more taxation. The Reps are a bunch of cowards who have become quite adept at robbing our grandchildren of their opportunity to live in a country where they would otherwise have been able to participate in the "American Dream."
I haven't been this anguished about our country's future since the 1970's (price freezes, gasoline rationing...). But, Americans have been scared by (the "threat" of more) terrorism. Land of the free home of the brave my ass.
You cowards will get what you deserve in the end. And, it ain't gonna be pretty. If you'll put up with full-body scanners in airports, they know you'll put up with just about anything if they can keep you scared. Wars and rumors of wars (1984 should be required reading in every high school civics class).
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
Even if we were to cut the defense budget completely, that would save less than a trillion dollars. The estimates for the Bush tax cuts run around 350 billion dollars. Seeing as we are running an annual deficit around 1.6 trillion, I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that trimming one and eliminating the other would get us 'in the black in no time'.
+5 insightfuls are handed out a little too readily it seems.
The main cause of our economic problems is the recession.
Thanks, Captain Obvious! I didn't know that recessions caused economic problems.
As the economy improves, federal income will improve with it.
We've been running deficits since the 1950s. At no point in the last 60 years has our government been able to spend less than what they take in. Good economies, great economies, high taxes, low taxes, Republicans, Democrats... it hasn't mattered. At some point, you have to acknowledge the real source of the problem... out of control spending.
I know Fox has poisoned you. They tell you we're broke.
I don't watch cable news at all.
These two statements you made should be more than enough to prove that you are completely full of shit.
I think many are missing the point here, and their ignorance is astounding. We will never have zero debt. There will never be, nor should there, an effort to pay the debt off completely, as having zero debt is dangerous for our government/country. Our founding fathers were smart enough to plan things this way. If our country owes people, businesses, and other countries money, then those creditors have a vested interest in the continued success, and survival, of our country. The whole point is for our country to have debt. Now the discussion to be had, among those with this basic understanding, is how much debt we should have; mainly as a percentage in relation to our GDP.
I am really tempted to leave my post like this, and let people come out of the woodwork telling me how wrong/crazy I am, but I suppose I need to give full disclosure as I cannot take credit for this idea; it belongs to Alexander Hamilton. I think he had something to do with the creation of our treasury, or something like that....
Member of American Sarcasm Society - Motto: "Like we need your help!"
"We should all just sit around on our asses, living off the work of our grandfathers, ..."
grandchildren...
if you design a system that can be described as 'you can gamble with someone else's money all you want - if you win, it's all yours, if you lose, we got you covered' you seriously blame people who exploited the system? It was an obvious and perfectly rational thing to do. When there is no fear of loss, riskier behavior is unavoidable as there are only 2 options left on the table: a win and a fucking big win. It's universal, that's how people behave - be it sandbox, casino, stock market.
When the building that collapses, architects and engineers responsible for shoddy work have their asses dragged to court, while lawmakers producing crap legislation that brings whole nations to the knees walk free.
Letting banks fail was a right thing to do - it would be painful but it would instill fear in the hearts of banksters. Bailouts made them feel like gods who have the whole world by the balls and now they take the full advantage of the fact
Comparatively speaking? You already spend very little for the amount of return that you get for your military. Not only does the level you currently have allow you to project power, but it also in most cases allows you to be the 'world police' of the oceans ensuring that you have free, clean, clear trade lanes to move goods in and out of the US.
What the US spends these days is a pittance compared to the cold war, and is simply proxy used by people who really don't have much of a clue of what's being spent. While trying to dump it into social programs that waste more money.
Om, nomnomnom...
You missed action #3.
There are definitely gains to be made. The US governments spend as much per capita on healthcare as Canadian governments. And then private sector spending about matches that and that's not even managing a universal care system. Medical and pharmaceutical companies need to be told where they can get off and prices brought back down to earth.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
For every $1 less in tax, that person will spend that $1 recursively 10x and cause lots in GDP and benefits.
Give that $1 to the govt, and it is 90% wasted down the toilet money, as it goes direct to the banks in interest payments.
YOU CANNOT TAX YOUR WAY TO PROSPERITY.
Id rather see $1trillion given to the rich people, as they will spend it wisely, so they buy a big boat or large house, that creates jobs through more gardners, mechanics, cleaners, car sales.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Where do you buy your Kool-Aid?
Measured with european standards, the USA is a third world country.
2% or 3% of US population live above 1st world standard, and a hugh majourity far below.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Infrastructure investments like this are long term. The private sector has trouble thinking past the next quarterly report. The OP might not have meant that the private sector isn't as forward seeing as the government but I'll say it.
As opposed to the government, which built tens of thousands of bridges, roads, levees, dams, etc over the last century and then utterly failed to maintain them, diverting the tax money generated specifically for that maintenance to other projects, leaving us with crumbling infrastructure that will cost trillions of dollars to repair? That's to say nothing of the even larger miscalculations in the cost estimates of various entitlement programs prior to their enactment and the subsequent decision to drain them to cover other government debts since their creation...
Or, take my old high school... a local wealthy businesman donated a new field house and a bunch of amenities to the football team. That "free" gift costs as much as two teachers a year just to maintain and because the other sports teams were "neglected" by the donation, the parents of those players insisted the school spend additional millions renovating the other fields likewise, again, costing the salary of a few teachers to maintain all of them, use lights for night games, etc. The school district got a major budget cut from the state this year and opted to close a school and cut several more teachers to make up the shortfall. Such a wise investment that government made, always looking at the long term and never considering the short term costs, much less the long term effects of those costs... but, hey, several administrators got their names on buildings they created with our money, ultimately resulting in tax funded monuments to themselves at the cost of a pesky dozen or so teachers just this year...
Government is just as fallible as private enterprise... the fact that every government eventually topples should be evidence of that, yet for some reason, statists always believe that government is visionary, omniscient and has all the right answers.
BTW - those scum sucking leaches that caused the meltdown and quickly recovered... how did they do it? Oh yeah, by the government taking from you and generations yet to come and giving it to them. Your precious government is no more noble than they are.
Stop Koolaid Politics
You read all of the above and that's all you can come up with? It's quite sad that bragging rights at a spelling bee trump reading comprehension. Instead of your apparent aim of proving superiority it actually shows an incomplete education in the English language - go read some Shakespeare and you'll see that the content is important but the spelling and placement of apostrophes doesn't really matter much, especially somewhere like here.
Actually the alternative energies with scale problems do help. One of the biggest problems in power generation and distribution is covering the peaks. Small sources of power that are very expensive per MW but have a small cost per unit can be a lot more worthwhile than a big unit that gives you a lot of excess power. Cheaper per MW doesn't help if you need to build something huge and expensive to do it, you don't need most of the power it produces and could instead bring a few windmills or similar small units online instead. It saves on capital costs and saves on fuel costs as well until eventually you reach a point where you are better off firing up that big thermal unit because you'll need it ready in a few hours. Short construction time and very short activation time are the advantages even if you do have a bigger cost per MW.
Also there are a lot more options other than photovoltaics and windmills. There are also hybrid options in use such as solar pre-heating as successfully used in at least one coal fired power plant and it has cut coal consumption. While the PR folk for any type of energy generating industry will pretend that their source of energy is the "one true energy" the only sane approach is to use a blend of energy sources. Photovoltaics are good in some situations, wind in others, hydro, big thermal plants - but they all have situations where they are perfect and others where they make very little sense.
As for putting panels up and taking them down - there's no point pussyfooting around and pretending both situations were anything other than making a petty political statement with a lot of press exposure. Reagan is dead and gone and there is no point trying to pretend he wasn't interested in politics. Excuses have been found after the fact but it was very clear from the newspaper coverage at the time that it was about "making a statement". Reagan was all about pushing the idea of the USA as a land of plenty after Carters oil shock doom and gloom - the solar panels didn't fit the image so the press were told they were coming down. You don't make a big deal about a new roof or any of the other petty excuses.
I don't think there was any need to shorten a link to the wikipedia article on 911 (it's not as if we are on twitarse or anything)
It is also a ridiculously long bow to draw to link defense cuts to 911 - esp when the inteligence agencies had info that something was up but decided it was nothing
spending more money on tanks and planes isn't going to change a judgment call.
(unfortunately we have now gone from one extreme to the other extreme - usually to the point of charades to be seen to be doing something.)
Amazing that people here can be so daft as to forget that the prime reason for our current deficit figure is that we're in the biggest recession since the Great Depression. I mean, seriously, how can you forget about that? How can you, with a straight face, quote our current deficit figures as though they;re a long-term running trend?
Do you think you're the only one who can transform into a car?
Wow -- to you the notion of modernizing our ageing energy grid to save trillions in energy costs and prevent catastrophic disruptions in economic activity due to major power failures is "about as wasteful as studying the flow rate of ketchup?"
Do you think you're the only one who can transform into a car?
The Democratic party plan, also, eliminates Medicare as we know it, so what is your point. Leaving Medicare as we know it is not one of the options on the table.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
black box chips built in China by the lowest bidder, with no control of the actual code, no doubt carefully written by an adjunct of the PLA.
This is so far the only response that is in any way accurate.
The connotation of "communist" for the stereotypical citizen of the US is "the government is going to take my hard-earned resources and give them to someone else." The big issue is that we have this kind of odd dichotomy (it may indeed be a false one) between the concepts of "fairness" and "the American dram." The latter says that I should be able to reap all the benefits of my hard work and/or scheming. The former says "that other person has more than me and that's not fair; they shouldn't have all that stuff because that means I don't have as much."
While in general I agree that having a high minimum standard of living is good for all society, I admit that I don't really have strong philosophical support for any of the existing or proposed mechanisms to provide such a thing while avoiding both the encouragement of entitlement mentality and the tyranny of the property owners (indeed, the class warfare in the US is not against, as people put it, the wealthy versus the non-wealthy, but the property owners against the lessors. In general the wealth follows the property, yes, the root cause isn't the wealth, it's the property ownership laws. So I probably fall into the camp that thinks that feudalism is indeed an increasingly accurate representation of the current economic trends.)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Not if its national defense. Power grids are part of national defense.
The WTO would have absolutely no basis to comment on anything. The OP is absolutely correct. Unless they make it illegal to out source (strictly within US boarders), this move is dumb.
Not by anyone outside the US they couldn't.
Pretty much anywhere else in the Western world, the Democrats would be a right-wing party.
Nope, didn't miss that. Just assumed that the chances of a government actually eliminating a program, or significantly reducing the size of a program, were about zero.
Note recent (and not so recent) attempts to reduce costs of Medicare as examples. If one Party can make political hay from another Party's attempts to reduce Medicare expenditures, it will. Which means no significant reductions in Medicare are possible.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You don't get it, do you? Nobody takes you seriously drinkypoo.
I took a peek at your post history.
There, it's shown that You ran away from simple questions asked of you here that show you're also nothing but a troll http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2225174&cid=36390518 which your evasion in your running away from that simple question makes you out as a logically invalid off topic troll (because that's a fairly simple question asked of you that you ran from which shows you are nothing but an online trash troll).
At Bush's ranch.
ts a wise man who offers a solution.
C2H5OH in H2O is the solution.
What was the problem again?
Hea don't leave out the H6C12O6 and CH3CH2CH2COOCH2CH3
I prefer Splenda.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
It's not entirely the fault of the private sector. Shareholders - people who have money to invest but flat-out don't understand business - are just as much of (if not bigger) part of the problem.
Um, shareholders are part of the private sector. You can't really speak of them as being separate entities.
Your precious government is no more noble than they are.
Why is it that that a person can't even hint that the goverment might be better suited to address a particular problem without people saying things like "your precious government." Way to polarize the discussion.
Is that the IT-Powered Smart Grid is ACTUALLY powered by out of work IT professionals. A large hamster wheel has been constructed towards this end.
It was a simple question. What is the private sector doing about it?
Private companies are going to pay for multi billion dollar infrastructure without anti competitive exclusive usage of it?
Nope, the republicans will never have that.
If thats true why isn't anyone telling us?
I think someone just did...
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
I am curious about the link shortening. I didn't want to trust it, in case it was a goatse (or whatever the new goatse is), because I couldn't look at the url.
When the load is lower (like at night) they turn down generation (stop using goal, gas, oil, etc) at various power plants. As the load rises, they turn those plants back up to meet that load. The fact that the grid isn't "at capacity" doesn't mean you're wasting energy, it means you're saving energy, by not burning as much fuel. The grid itself does have limits too, but not running it at those limits is like driving your truck around without loading it down to 100% of it's carrying capacity. That's not exactly waste.
Now that's not to say that there isn't energy wasted in the grid due to other factors like transmission, but a surplus of "grid capacity" is not the same thing as a surplus (or waste) of power.
It will do none of that.. It's a scam to sell more junk, like the security theater at the airports to make a fast buck through government mandates. The disruptions are caused by poorly designed, fragile, insufficient infrastructure and the same corruption (greed and speculation) that's causing the very same problems with food and water distribution. And this will be used to automatically ration a resource that can be produced cheaply and abundantly if not for the pathological behavior of the people who control it. It will make the system even more brittle than it already is. All this computer crap still isn't ready for prime time, especially networked computers. Your banks and supermarkets are crippled when they go offline. If you think cascading failure is a common occurrence now (in fact it isn't), just wait for when all this garbage goes online. It would be far more sensible to put the entire planet on the same grid and with many small localized generators using a variety of fuels that can quickly isolate a problem (old fashion circuit breakers) to facilitate distribution to where it is most needed at any particular moment.
Instead of a bunch of blinking flashing lights, a small degree of sanity is all that's needed to minimize the 'shortages', which are nothing more than an argument over the price (See: Enron) and property rights.. You're being sold a bag of goods by carny pitchmen..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
The way I've heard it put the best is: "Owe the bank a million dollars, and the bank owns you. Owe the bank a billion dollars, and you own the bank."
Add a few more orders of magnitude to the latter and that's pretty much our relationship with China at the moment.
A lot of the US finance "whizzes" in power at the moment actually want the value of the dollar to fall, because then we won't owe China as much "real value". But China has been stubbornly pegging their Yuan to the USD for some reason (awfully nice of them to help inflate our currency with their production). As the US market loses its importance relative to other emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, etc.) it might become possible for them to consider taking a loss on their US investments and allow the USD to go into freefall at their option.
Way to polarize the discussion.
As opposed to the people that believe government has a solution for every problem and consistently refuse to acknowledge its many failures? I mean, we'll totally ignore his bashing of the private sector since that "wasn't" polarizing the issue, right? I guess the state, much like the church of yesterday, should be immune to criticism...
Stop Koolaid Politics
....tons of money into wireless networked smart meters and other equipment that basically has only make-believe & pretend security. All operating in the 900MHz ISM band and is easily interfered with by cordless phones, baby monitors, any other 900MHz spread spectrum radios, etc.
Unfortunately, we don't even have a good plan for "dumping power into a hole' Check out the Norton Compressed Air Energy Storage System which will ramp up to about 3 gigawatts of storage. This is a better plan for capturing that excess capacity and utilizing it when it is needed.
Don't know how that happened. It was all there when I hit the submit button. Wonky computers :(.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
He also didn't believe in free trade fearing it leads to colonial type political systems.
Let me know when get rid of free trade and then we can talk about his vision for national debt to keep us all interested in government.
"The American dram"... you mean 1/8 fl. oz.? In all seriousness, mod parent up. The US and its general direction is most definitely skewed by these entitlements for property owners. Why else would people have gotten stuck in interest-only loans and bit off more house than they could reasonably chew? Something had to make people want to essentially rent from the bank instead of renting from a landlord. At least the landlord sends someone over to fix your drain.
How can you, with a straight face, quote our current deficit figures as though they;re a long-term running trend?
Please point out where I said, hinted, or implied that our current deficits are any sort of 'long-term' trend.
It is a fair question. (Can I ask how old you are?)
Bottom line, the Cold War was not that long ago and it cast a long, dark shadow across the American psyche. The "commies" are any Communist nation and to some degree anyone who's a fan of Communism or even socialism, which is seen as just one step removed.
People care about the commies still because it was not that long ago that they were our big boogey man. They are not afraid of commies as much as hateful: commies are bad because they wanted to nuke us once, and anything that is kind of like communism must also be bad.
I am 40 years old and when I was a kid the threat of nuclear war--with the commies--was very real. Distant, of course, by the 70s and 80s, but still real. There were "in case of nuclear war" instruction signs in buildings near the fire exit maps. We had sappy songs about it.
A generation before mine, the fear of nuclear war with the USSR was much more intense. It's interesting to listen to people who lived through the Cuban missile crisis talk about it, and about living in that time in general.
I am not justifying today's fear of socialism, which I agree is absurd. But it's a cultural and emotional issue, not a rational one. It will be interesting to see how the matter changes in another generation or two.
Why would you need the H2O?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I meant someone speaking for the white house, not some guy on the internet. Maybe I just missed it.
Leave the government and the 'lawmakers' out of it...
"poorly designed, fragile infrastructure" -- So you accept that our grid should be modernized then. Your only issue is this bizarre notion that a smart grid isn't a grid modernization. Before we even start on this, I need to figure out what on Earth you think a smart grid is.
Do you think you're the only one who can transform into a car?
And, FYI, cascading failure in our current grid is a consequence of it being analog. Differential equations of state for analog systems can rapidly transition between different solutions. There are two ways to prevent this. One, to be able to "digitize" the grid as much as possible, to try and make it so that transmission elements are either on or off -- within frequency range or off, within voltage range or off, etc -- the smaller units, the better. Two, to be able to force the equations of state back to previous values as quickly as possible. That means lots of data sharing and power sharing, especially through links that can help counter offset frequencies (aka, the HVDC runs that are essential in most big-picture smart grid plans)
Do you think you're the only one who can transform into a car?
Yes, we "had deficits", in the same manner that a patient with a gunshot wound may have had a cut before getting shot.
And as to where, your entire post is presented as though 1.6T is a long-term running figure. You even make fun of the notion that deficits this high will go away.
Do you think you're the only one who can transform into a car?
So let me get this straight.
Being massively indebted to China is a good idea because:
1) China's "vested interest in the continued success, and survival, of our country" is an important part of our national security strategy
2) Alexander Hamilton believed that the country should be in debt (and that his friends should become very rich in the process). Founding father he was, of massive national debt, corporate welfare, protectionist markets, corporate control of the government and government control of the people.
As opposed to the people that believe government has a solution for every problem and consistently refuse to acknowledge its many failures?
I saw no such thing in the comment you were replying to. You made that up.
I mean, we'll totally ignore his bashing of the private sector since that "wasn't" polarizing the issue, right?
So, you're using the "he started it" defense, eh? Be that as it may, you're still in the wrong.
I guess the state, much like the church of yesterday, should be immune to criticism...
Not at all. Just try not to be so blatantly reactionary about it. Clearly you've had many discussions like this before and you've built up this imaginary opponent who embodies every silly pro-government/anti-corporation comment ever made. And that's just not constructive.
And as to where, your entire post is presented as though 1.6T is a long-term running figure.
The 1.6T figure is the current estimate for the upcoming fiscal year. Here is my exact statement regarding that figure:
Seeing as we are running an annual deficit around 1.6 trillion,..
My statement only talks about right now, not some future date. Where are you getting this 'long-term' implication? I'd really like to know.
You even make fun of the notion that deficits this high will go away.
Where? Are you sure you are reading the correct post? I didn't make fun of anything in my post. Here is my entire post:
Even if we were to cut the defense budget completely, that would save less than a trillion dollars. The estimates for the Bush tax cuts run around 350 billion dollars. Seeing as we are running an annual deficit around 1.6 trillion, I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that trimming one and eliminating the other would get us 'in the black in no time'. +5 insightfuls are handed out a little too readily it seems.
Every single assertion you have made regarding my post is completely fabricated. If you think otherwise please quote where my post says any of the things you have claimed.
The Democratic plans modify Medicare, while the Republican plan eliminates it and replaces it with something completely different but carrying the same name. This is not really a contested point.
At no point in the last 60 years has our government been able to spend less than what they take in.
Clinton did it.
At some point, you have to acknowledge the real source of the problem... out of control spending.
And insufficient revenue. Conservatives can't continue to pretend that half of the equation doesn't exist.
No he didn't. I'll see your factcheck and raise you a treasurydirect:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm
Factcheck linked to some congressional budget info showing a 'surplus', but seeing as how the national debt went up each and every year under Clinton, I'm stumped as to how Factcheck thinks that he had a surplus in any given year. In fact, I sent an email to them to point out the treasury data seems to contradict the congressional budget info.
When it comes to accounting, you have to ignore the internal bullshit tricks, and look at the actual outcome. Enron claimed massive profits each and every year with their gimicks, but the end result was bankruptcy. The federal government can claim that there was a surplus, but if they had to borrow that year, then they spent more than they took in.
Smart Grid technologies are being tested and deployed world wide by private industry. The White House has no business in this, and nor should it. They just want to take credit for it.
Not really; a "budget surplus" means you took in more than you spent. Budgets are only for one year.
A "treasury surplus" would mean the treasury has more money than it owes. That's where the debt issue lies.
Not really:
Not really what?
a "budget surplus" means you took in more than you spent.
Really? Thanks.
Budgets are only for one year.
And the overall debt (in the handy little link that I put in my post) is listed year by year.... just like the budget.
A "treasury surplus" would mean the treasury has more money than it owes.
...which is not the case with the US treasury. It owes more than it has, which is the opposite of what you just said. I'm having trouble figuring out what the point of your post is.
The point is that Clinton had a *budget* surplus - not that he reduced the debt.
Is that hard to understand? I don't believe anyone claimed otherwise.
Of course the parent was trolling, but why should I care about that? I've been wondering this for ages and I've got quite a few solid, reasonable responses. The net result is that I've learned something and quite an interesting debate has sparked up. I don't think that was the troll's intention and even if it was, it's not like he's gained anything from it.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I am fairly young at 24, so the cold war is a history lesson for me rather than a horrific memory. Perhaps you're right, it is more of an emotional thing rather than a rational argument and I'm looking forward to seeing how the next generation sees things.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
conveys to me people to are around computer applications with little training and very little pay
The point is that Clinton had a *budget* surplus - not that he reduced the debt.
Why didn't you just say that in the first place? And why did you emphasize *budget*? What other surplus would we be talking about?
But if he had a surplus, why did he borrow money (i.e., add to the national debt)? If you have a budget surplus, the surplus should go to paying down the debt, yet the debt went up. The accounting doesn't add up, and I suspect accounting gimmicks were used to make it look like he had balanced the budget, when in fact he hadn't.
Is that hard to understand?
The way you posted it originally? Yes, it was very difficult to understand.
I didn't post it originally, but the meaning seemed clear.
You tell me, since you seemed to think that the surplus meant he had reduced the debt (i.e. a treasury suplus), which as you pointed out, is not the case.
It does add up. The debt service payments were made. The fact that you charge more on your credit card has no bearing on whether you made your minimum payment and had money left over from your paycheck. If the government has money left over from revenues after paying its obligations, that's a surplus even if the overall debt increased.
Do a Google image search on deficit by year and think again.
The debt increased, but he did balance the budget, which is necessary but not sufficient for getting rid of the debt.
Do a Google image search on deficit by year and think again.
I did, but what does that have to do with my post showing that the debt went up every year under Clinton? It doesn't offer any rebuttal to my original post, which is that the CBO accounting must be full of shit if the debt went up.
The debt increased, but he did balance the budget,..
Think for a second about why those two things can't be true. If you increase the debt, you had to borrow money. If you had to borrow money, it was because you spent more money than you took in. If you spent more money than you took in, you did not 'balance' the budget!
Well, after looking into it further, I concede you have a point. The overall debt DID increase; however, that was mostly intragovernmental debt (Social Security buying gov't bonds as they are required to do) and the public debt actually went down.
Intragovernmental debt is money the government owes to itself, so that's why they don't include it on the graphs - making it look like they took in more than they spent. Actually, they DID take in more than they spent; they just took it in for another purpose. The increase in SS revenues was largely due to the Dot Com boom and foreign investments, so those are legitimate taxes collected, but they don't really count as federal revenue. They are debt, because SS will want that money back with interest when they cash out the bonds.
Of course it's debatable how much Clinton's policies had to do with the boom, and there are different ways of measuring debt vs. revenue (absolute dollars, adjusted dollars, percentage of GDP etc.). In any case, Clinton DID have a surplus measured in revenues/outlays as % of GDP, but luck probably played a large part in those increased revenues (not so much his tax increases).
you seemed to think that the surplus meant he had reduced the debt (i.e. a treasury suplus),
A budget surplus by definition would mean that the debt would be reduced. Let me give you an example:
My monthly expenses are $1,000. I only made $900. I borrow $100 to fill in the gap. I had a deficit of $100. My debt has gone up by $100.
Next month, my expenses are $1,000. I make $1,050. I have a surplus of $50. That $50 goes to pay back some of my debt, which has now gone down to $50.
If the government has money left over from revenues after paying its obligations, that's a surplus even if the overall debt increased.
If you have a surplus, what happened to that extra money? And why would you borrow more money that you don't need? I don't think you quite understand how budgets work.
...that was mostly intragovernmental debt (Social Security buying gov't bonds as they are required to do) and the public debt actually went down.
I actually did more research of my own, and found that they actually list the public debt and the 'total debt', but they always list the public debt as the 'official' number to make things look better.
And my actual point (many posts ago) wasn't a knock against Clinton, but to point out that even when everything was humming along nicely (booming/bubble? economy, no wars, somewhat high tax rates, etc), the government still had to borrow money. They will always want to spend more than they have, no matter the circumstances. It's just a modern disease that is a part of the federal government. Without a balanced budget constitutional amendment, this problem will continue until our finances implode.
Argh, I meant private as in non-publicly traded businessess. Chalk up the weirdness of my post to a combination of a bad cold and Nyquil.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
True, but since the borrowing was mostly intragovernmental debt that was a necessary consequence of increased SS receipts, Clinton didn't really have a say over that.
In other words, they "had to borrow" the money not because they needed it, but because SS regulations required it.
Hm, I never thought of that. Seems like a dumb system to issue new debt to cover excess SS receipts, when they could have used the money to buy up existing treasuries on the open market for the SS trust. It wouldn't reduce the debt, but it would at least prevent the debt from growing and forcing even more interest payments on us.