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US Scientific R&D Could Face Fiscal Cliff Doom
The tough economic times have had a huge effect on scientific research and development funding. The looming "fiscal cliff" may be the last straw for many programs. "The American science programs that landed the first man on the moon, found cures for deadly diseases and bred crops that feed the world now face the possibility of becoming relics in the story of human progress.
American scientific research and development stands to lose thousands of jobs and face a starvation diet of reduced funding if politicians fail to compromise and halt the United States' march towards the fiscal cliff's sequestration of federal funds."
into armed conflict by private banks, who, through their monetary policy are exerting undue political influence on the White House. It matters not which party sits in power, they have very little choice but to do what they are doing.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
From TFA: "1,082,370 U.S. citizens employed in the life sciences, such as biology and genetics, as well as physical and social sciences. Of these, approximately 31,000"
Wow, those are some massive cuts. An entire whopping 3% of the people may lose their jobs!
People just don't get it. The US government does not need to cut its budget by 3%. It needs to cut its budget by 50% or more. Many programs and federal departments need eliminated entirely. It's not even about the $16 Trillion debt. If the government ran honest accounts, it's about the $200 Trillion debt.
Don't worry, citizens of America. That's only some $650,000 per person that the government has borrowed on behalf of each and every one of you. No problem, right?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
"The Wire is the story of the decline of western civilisation... disguised as a cop show" - David Simon
The Ascent of Man (credited as the inspiration for Carl Sagan's Cosmos) discusses this from a scientific perspective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYq4p3z_WXA
Civilisations rise and fall, it"s a sad fact, We must strive to preserve the light of knowledge for future generations who
might actually appreciate and choose to do good with it.
The problem is not the cut itself, but where the cut is being made. Remember news reports that the U.S. government spends more on air conditioning for troops in Afghanistan than the entire budget of NASA?
Does not that then suggests that the government should cut back on military spending? But no, they prefer to cut NASA's budget. After the priority is to blow people and clog the banksters with money.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Vital, down-and-dirty national spending and revenue decisions have been put off for GENERATIONS. We are staring doom in the face. Can salvation be found solely in science spending? Of course not. But does every single budget item and all tax policies and rates need to be on the table and without any sacred cows? HELL YES. And then the specific choices should be wise ones.
Without firm specifics at hand, I still feel very confident that there is 3% of utterly useless fat that could be trimmed from science funding. That's all we're talking about here.
P.S. - I admit that I see no sign whatsoever that seriously addressing the general situation is anywhere near the radar of the fools leading the nation - fools that WE installed. Profound differences over what needs to be done exist. FINE. OF COURSE they exist. But these losers won't even engage. That represents the most disgusting, reprehensible behavior which is possible to imagine.
The financial parasites that don't actually do anything or produce anything useful have recovered their massive bonuses already, but we are cutting back on people who actually produce thins that improve the quality of life.
Our existence needs to produce a surplus. People need to be fed, but that's not enough. As a society, we need to contribute to the humanity's scientific, cultural and philosophical legacy. That's the real "Kilroy was here."
I'm not saying the current level and direction of government funding is right, but financing these "unproductive" efforts is a crucial government function. We were gifted by the previous generations -- we owe it to our descendants.
"The German science programs that landed the first man on the moon" - Corrected
Why is it that people want to turn EVERYTHING into the final Armageddon that will be the end of everything. There is no difference between the 'fiscal cliff' and every other time the US government changed the rules because they are too lazy and comfortable to address the real financial issues. No difference - except this time it is the dreaded FISCAL CLIFF. O, NO!!
NONE of the real issues have been addressed anywhere. And we will pay for it at some point. The whole planet will. The American government is not the only lazy and comfortable government in the world.
a D thing!
What we have to do is to reindustrialize America. That is, get the jobs back from overseas. How do we do that? First, we have to recognize that jobs did NOT go overseas because of work-for-peanuts foreign labor rates. No, no, no. They went overseas because of... taxes! Specifically, income taxes are toxic to industry in any amount. We should get rid of them.
_The_ answer is the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax calls for the complete repeal of all income taxes, every last one of them: individual, corporate, alternative minimum, self employment, estate, gift, social security / medicare, capital gains, etc. etc. Income taxes are essentially a tax on prosperity, and like RR said, "If you want less of something, tax it." Boy does that work great with income tax. We have waaaaaaay less prosperity than we could have.
The Fair Tax taxes consumption. That is, it is a sales tax. Stop with the knee-jerk "regressive" reaction, already, the income taxes are already incredibly regressive, with the Social Security / Medicare tax taking the first 15.3% of _every_ person's wages from the 1st dollar they make, it not mattering a whit that such person is only making $11,000 / yr. And if that isn't regressive enough, the Social Security / Medicare tax is capped in the $100K range, meaning the really rich people pay far LESS percentage than the poor person.
The Fair Tax taxes consumption, and "prebates" the amount of tax you pay on the amount of money you spend up to the poverty level. That is, if the poverty level is $11K per year for you if you are single, then the government sends you the amount of tax on $11K, in 12 equal monthly payments, so if you're poor you don't pay a penny of Fair Tax, it is paid for you.
What this does is make the USA the worlds newest, bestest tax shelter for industry to produce goods and services tax free. That is huge, since, according to Fair Tax researchers, approximately 22% of the selling price of everything produced in the USA is composed of industry expenses caused by income taxes. That is, a $40,000 SUV built in this country has about $8,800 of income tax expense in it. By contrast, it only takes about 30 - 33 labor hours to build the $40K SUV, and at the industry-stated rate of $78 / hr expense of labor to the the car companies, that is only $2,500 labor expenses to build the SUV.
Want to fix the economy permanently? Pass the Fair Tax, get unemployment down to 3% in about 2 years, killing about $100,000,000 of unemployment expenses and $70,000,000 of food stamp expenses to the gov't, and increase gov't revenues due to the huge expansion in the economy. Then, when full employment is achieved, wages start going up because of a labor shortage. That is when we can decide to let anyone that wants to immigrate to come here without restriction other than criminals and people with dread diseases, who we can also provide with good jobs and high wages, which.... generates more revenue from their spending. That, plus the fact that the Fair Tax broadens the tax base by including, for the 1st time, criminals that use the money stolen from the public via illegal means to buy their luxuries which will be taxed, as well as the idle rich that have no income but will be taxed heavily when they buy that $70M yacht, and, BTW, the rich contribute far more to the tax base than they do now simply because of their spending on luxury items.
We can do this, or continue with the income taxes sucking the lifeblood out of our economy, and be forced into austerity, and eventual 3rd-world existence because we'll be forced to lower wages to the work-for-peanuts foreign worker equivalent, while the gov't takes taxes from the wrong places, and forces jobs to continue to flee the USA and end up in places like India and Bangladesh.
A huge percentage of our spending is in maintaining the empire. Bring all of the troops home and cu all payments to foreign governments would solve this problem overnight.
If we could give up the $1T+ empire we would be fine.
If you then default in the debt we would be in great shape. You could even pass a law to make those bond losses count as earned income over the next 10 years to minimize the harm to citizens. Plus nobody would lend us money and we would automatically balance the budget.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I don't know if it's even possible for most people to be rational on this issue but I'll make a stab at it.
Is it scientific spending that is bankrupting the US government?
No it is not.
This is NOT where the cut should come. The cut should be everything else.
I won't state what should be cut because things are so ideological and people are so irrational on the subject that their eyes will roll back into their heads and start foaming at the mouth. But I think we can all agree that it isn't scientific spending that is generating the US debt.
Very well. Cut what is driving spending up.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The whole "fiscal cliff" doom the fox network is spreading (check who owns redneck eh discovery) just means that if congress digs in its heels and does nothing the President gets his way by default because tax breaks that the repubicans want to extend and increase for the rich will END!
Obama can just sit back and relax if he has the balls, he can get far more taxes by simply waiting out the republicans then trying to bargain with them. The smarter republicans know this (both of them) and are not at all please with their redneck counterparts trying to create a crisis that only exist in republican eyes.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Woo Hoo!
Welcome back, former British colony of Virginia. :)
How about withdrawing tax benefits given to religious groups and instead tax Churches like any other business and use the money to fund tax breaks for science. As far as I can see science has done many things to make our lives better in recent years where as religion has just stood in the way of the progress of science.
Whoever makes the budget gets paid last.
It's just that simple.
If there's no money left, then Congress should get no pay until the situation is fixed.
Analysts are predicting that next year China will overtake the US as the leader in scientific output.
Wonder if that might be a big enough blow to the US ego to consider a reverse in funding cuts?
& they wonder why smart kids study day-trading instead of STEM.
When one transfers resources from the most productive members of society over to the least productive, the overall productivity of that society will go down.
American society has decided, in the previous two general elections, to greatly increase the amount of resources that it transfers from the most productive to the least productive. Hence, the productivity of American society should be expected to drop. This drop in productivity will take many forms, no doubt, including a slowing of advancement in science.
Why is anybody surprised by this?
Stop declaring war and sending money overseas. You'd get back about $500-750bn a year instantly.
Abolish all taxes and associated administration, except for one.
Stop declaring war and sending money overseas.
Implement a 50% income tax rate on individuals. By a quick reckoning based on census data and current average wages, this would give you about $10T a year. Current tax receipts contribute only 25% of the current $15T annual GDP (only Chile and Mexico tax less as a share of GDP!). This would make them contribute nearer to 67%. The rich get taxed in proportion, the non-working don't get taxed, the lowly worker gets taxed a pittance. Products, imports and running a business get cheaper = wages have more value anyway.
Stop declaring war and sending money overseas.
Enforce that income tax like mad, so that people *can't* escape it. Hell, make all currency have to go through a central US bank if necessary.
Stop declaring war and sending money overseas.
Good programs can always be rebuilt, if not by us, then by someone else. At least the fiscal cliff will cut military programs...and cutting them is far more important to me than any science program. Other countries can have science programs and educate their people....we need to stop being such warmongers first.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Personally, I'd rather see Financial Crisis Quake.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wow, human progress is becoming a relic of human progress. Those humans must be a bunch of oxymorons!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I mean, we're the electorate, and we consistently vote for representatives who are short-sighted, self-interested, and frankly, stupid.
I don't care WHICH side of the political fence you're on. Both parties have full rosters of idiots, and we seem to be listening more and more to the histrionic extremists and punishing the moderate centrists.
BOTH parties seem entirely focused on maintaining their own partisan grip on power and enriching their supporters, rather than actually doing their jobs.
Instead of having a reasonable cross-spectrum discussion about meaningful subjects like the role of government in the 21st century, we seem to be satisfied with an educational system that churns out 'citizens' with only a faint grasp on basic concepts of math or reading (to say nothing of civics, history, or art), and who are thereby easily swayed by entertaining but vapid emotionalist demagogues from both extremes.
To the OP: assume you have a budget planner who can't do basic math, and continues to budget your spending for far, far more than you make every year. Then, when things get tough, he does things like whine that "you need to just make more money" and cut off your long term investments instead of making the needed choices about maybe not buying a new gun this year, or cutting off some of the freeloading relatives who could probably get a job anyway (mainly because the guy you buy guns from takes him on junkets, and the freeloading relatives keep recommending that he's the guy for the job, respectively).
Wouldn't you FIRE him immediately for gross incompetence, if not have him outright prosecuted?
Some of us had the 'excessively sympathetic friend' in high school. The friend that, whenever something went wrong, they always 'helped us' by figuring out someone else to blame for everything. Didn't get the library book in on time? It was the LIBRARY's fault for being closed on Sunday (not you, for waiting until the very last moment to return it...). Girlfriend dumped you? She was a controlling harpy (it certainly had nothing to do with you cheating on her, that was just a mistake...). Failed calculus? Of course it was because the teacher hated you (and nothing to do with the fact that you got stoned instead of doing your homework). It was always someone else's fault.
Those are the talking heads on both sides.
They are entertainers. They are employed because they are entertaining blamers. Not because they're reasonable, not because they're wise. And we keep listening to them - the Limbaughs and Colters, the Maddows and Mahers. These are the people that make us feel better because everything is "someone else's fault".
WE are the ones who keep returning 95%+ of politicians to their seats.
WE are the ones who are ultimately responsible for putting them there.
WE have nobody to blame but ourselves.
-Styopa
We went over the cliff the moment Obama was re-elected and it became clear that there would likely be gridlock and a completely inability to avert it. Don't take this to mean I am blaming it on Obama alone - it just is what it is - a Congress and a President who are each of them incapable of compromise in any meaningful way.
I work for a major multinational C&I electronics manufacturer, and our R&D office had about 250 engineers (software, hardware, manufacturing) until about a week ago. Deep R&D cutbacks were announced for 2013 onward and several projects were canceled or mothballed. 70 engineers were laid off Wednesday before thanksgiving with more layoffs to be announced in January, depending on what Congress and the President are able (or not able) to do about solving this.
Our business depends on capital spending, and that valve was shut off pretty much immediately. We're still trying to figure out what to do with the millions in inventory that were running down the line for orders that were canceled in the days after the election.
It's gruesome, folks. Seriously. I'm on the front lines and the media is not letting any of you see what is happening here. You're being shown pictures of fantasy through rose-colored glasses, but the reality is that the economy's wheels are locked up and the train is sliding to an abrupt halt.
The time to wake up is now, and to get on the phone to your Congress Critters and the President and tell them that this is no longer the time to dig in their heels and butt heads. Don't send emails. They just get form-letter responses. Call on the phone. Demand to speak to them. Wait on hold. If you live in the DC area, go there in person. If your critter is actually home, go bang down the doors of their local office.
This is serious.
For the last 12 years, they've pointed out over and over that the primary cause of our budget woes is Medicare/Medicaid and to a lesser extent Social Security.
Forgetting about a couple of unfunded wars are we? Or a military that outspends the combined budget of the next 15 largest militaries combined for no obvious reason? Medicare and Defense are the big budget problems. Social Security not so much.
Social Security is not funded like Medicare or Defense. It was only last year that expenses exceeded non-interest income and it won't be until 2021 at present funding that total expenses exceed total revenues. Social Security is fully funded and what funding problems it has are fairly easy to fix. Of the biggest government expenditures Social Security is quite literally the least of our problems. Extend the age to receive benefits and a few other simple tweaks to funding and it will be fine.
Compared to the trillions of "losses", the home loans defaulted were practically nonexistent.
Derivatives and naked credit swaps created a "money bag" bigger than the entire global GDP from which the bankers took a cut on every movement (whether it made a profit or not).
But blaming the home loans is popular with idiots like you because it has two wonderful (for your ideology) benefits:
1) It makes it Obama's fault
2) It makes the poor the ones who did it all
The financial parasites that don't actually do anything or produce anything useful have recovered their massive bonuses already,
We should let congress drive over the fiscal cliff so that republicans take the blame for their intransigence on perpetuating the untenable Bush tax cuts.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
It needs to cut its budget by 50% or more. Many programs and federal departments need eliminated entirely.
The only programs that truly matter as far as the deficit is concerned are Medicare/Medicaid, Defense and Social Security. Those three together account for about two-thirds of the US budget. Get those programs under control and the problem is solved. All other discretionary spending combined accounts for less than 20% of the budget. Either we need to raise taxes to fully fund the programs we seem to want or we need to cut those programs to a level of taxation we are willing to accept. Either way will work but any argument about anything beyond Medicare and Defense (Social Security is easy to fix and self funding) is either naive or political pandering.
That's only some $650,000 per person that the government has borrowed on behalf of each and every one of you. No problem, right?
A meaningless statistic. As big as the debt is as a percent of GDP, we've had larger debts in our past that have been dealt with just fine, most notably after WWII. That doesn't mean it isn't serious but your attempt to frame the issue doesn't really address how the debt would be dealt with. Corporations pay quite a lot of tax and can be made to pay more if need be. A relatively small percentage of the population has a vast portion of the nation's wealth. Furthermore all the debt the US government has is denominated in US dollars which can be created at will (with some fairly serious negative effects).
We jumped off this cliff in 1971 in order to pay for the the Vietnam war. We've been falling ever since. It just hasn't looked like we're falling because we're all boxed up inside a Fiat currency. Now that we're nearing the bottom and bouncing off a few jagged boulders, people are starting to realize we might be screwed. I love how this "Fiscal cliff" they've invented is designed to scare everyone, even scientists, into letting them raise taxes and reduce services even more. Hilarious.
Military spending is a red herring. Yes it can be cut. But even if we completely eliminated it we'd still be on a path to bankruptcy due to the above entitlements.
No it is most definitely NOT a red herring and your argument could apply equally to Medicare or Social Security which. Each of those three programs account for around 20% of the federal budget. You could apply your exact same argument to Medicare since it accounts for close to the same amount of cash as the Defense budget. If we accept your argument, even if we eliminated Medicare completely (ignoring the obvious devastation that would cause) it wouldn't balance the budget at current taxation levels. Some combination of cuts to Defense and Medicare are inevitable unless we significantly increase taxation. (I'm less worried about SS since it can easily be fixed and still is self funding)
Well, its been said before, and the right now has no excuse or cutesy argument, their own idiotic stupid, head up their ass actions have brought us here. The republicans in congress cock blocked every fucking thing the president tried to get through and wasted all of our collective taxpayer dollars to try to get Romney elected. And that argument of "oh wait.. congress was democratic controlled for the first two year of Obama's first term!" is a non argument because tell me people have forgotten the voting in congress on Obama care and Bart Stupak retiring because some Moron Called him a "Baby-Killer" because of how he voted. Why was that loudmouth moron not arrested? The Republicans ran the country into the ground to try to get Romney elected and those morons failed, now we are stuck here and those idiot retard texan fuckheads are going to now try to blame Obama for invading iraq, for 911, for the tea party , for the fiscal cliff and got knows what else.
this is what happens when we have a president like bush that wastes all our funding on a war that no one wanted and then tries to blame everything they did on the other political party. Im calling a spade a spade. The Democrats are not without fault but the Republicans should be tried for crimes against humanity. IT seems like every time we have a two term Republican president that generation of high school kids and the whole of the American people get dumber.
Seriously dont believe me? look it up. matter of public record. It is frustrating as hell that you get this condescending BS , well you're very naive, but the two partys are really one party.. bullshit,, sorry try again.. or the whole , well its our way of life that is to blame. or its entitlement or we are heading to a socialist nation.. all these patently false logical fallacy laden arguments being listened to by people who have less than a 70 IQ who are members of the republican party are to blame here. Sarah Palin for instance posted those targets and Gabrielle Giffords got shot because one of their little fucktards went for it. America would do well to clean house in congress and get rid of the tea party. PERIOD no arguments.
The problem with the sequestration deal is that it was essentially a suicide pact: if Congress can't agree to a more-balanced budget, then savage austerity measures take effect, crippling government functioning across the board.
That's great as a motivator, except that one party is motivated by an ideology that actually wants that kind of austerity. In short: it's not a very good suicide pact if one side already has a death wish.
Also, don't worry about it being a mutual self-immolation: the Republicans will demand that only social spending (and not military) gets cut, and the Democrats will cave at the last minute in the name of compromise.
I suspect it isn't such a big deal, really. "Fiscal cliff" has started to sound like fingernails on a blackboard to me.
What would probably happen can be found here (caution - graphs with data).
That numbskull ran up our debt like there is no tomorrow, and now it's time to pay the piper. Economics is the the strong suite of Obama voters.
Hope and change.
Despite the rhetoric on both sides, there is no cut in federal spending coming any time soon. Even if Congress and the President do not come to an agreement (a not unlikely possibility) all that will happen is that spending will not increase by as much as projected. That is the situation at it stands is this. The law as passed last summer says that if Congress does not pass and the President sign (or Congress pass over the President's veto) some law changing things the amount that all parts of the Federal government will be allowed to spend next year will be 10% less than the amount that was projected to be spent in the last set of comprehensive "budget" documents passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. That is, they are not going to take how much Congress approved to be spent this year and reduce it by 10%. They are going to take the amount that Congress guesstimated they were going to spend next year (which includes a sizable increase from this year) and cut that by 10%.
Most people think that when they talk about cutting spending by 10% it means that if they spent $3 million this year on a program, next year they are going to spend $2.7 million. It doesn't. It means that they are going to spend $3.6 million rather than $4 million next year (numbers chosen for ease of calculation).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Won't cut taxes, won't slow the spending down, corporate bailouts, spend, spend, spend, so we have an enormous price to pay, we'll collapse and have a lot less in the end.
At least the Dem's see some sort of fiscal responsibility.
Foodstamps and various forms of social-welfare programs are run by the individual states, which although some states are in trouble, they are not burning dollars to heat the buildings like the federal government.
No, there is not.
All the distribution and transmission facilities are owned by utility companies. Some of them (e.g. TVA,BPA) were created by the government, but they have independent lives, and have no taxing authority. There are government regulators of utilities (Generically Public Utility Commission (PUC)) as well as things like CAISO (California Independent System Operator.. the folks who provide the coordination of generation and transmission among the various entities in California). Much of the non-retail aspects of electricity is fully de-regulated (e.g. generation) and subject to the swings and roundabouts of market forces (for instance, Enron playing games)
google the phrase "obama vs bush drone strikes" and you will see the current democrat administration has use the "remote controlled toys".
Which brings it back to the OP; "It matters not which party sits in power"...
Implementing austerity measures to get you out of recession when you're talking about government spending is a failure.
Because government get a cut every time money moves.
And if the government spending goes down, they have to pay out more (for police as well as social security) because commercial entities will cut back and slash jobs.
NOTE: you don't find a 50% reduction in CEO pay when cutting staff 10% but you DO see a 50% increase in CEO when a company expands by 10%... Odd, innit.
Don't forget all the greedy union teachers that crashed the economy. They're lauding all the way to the bank, as they drive by in their Tercels and Suburus.
I drank what? -- Socrates
When it comes to making jobs, government investment in R+D correlates directly with economic growth, and the best thing for the economy would be to make research and development in primary science and transferrable technology paramount in budget.
Every state government that has ever succeeded at balancing their budget has done so by doing something extremely bipartisan and reasonable.
Step 1: Determine an acceptable timeline target.
Step 2: Divide the deficit by the time you have.
Step 3: Annual, incremental, across the board, flat revenue increases & spending cuts.
The time of crisis requiring bipartisan cooperation is not the time to be suggesting divisive schemes for re-allocating shares of the government pie!
Problem: Government is too big; Taxes are too low.
Solution: Make government smaller; Raise taxes.
THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT!
that if the budget cut is extreme that somehow the money just vanishes? That is not how it works. The problem is that the US Government combined with the states and various local governments, are taking too much money out of the economy as it is. Worse, they are wasting a good amount of it.
Plus, take away the standard scare tactic. Politicians abuse the poor all the time with such tactics as "they will take your food stamps". Why do you think so many were giddy over the ACA? Because they have a new fear tactic. After all, tell me what a politician threatens to cut first?
a) Education
b) Police
c) Fire
d) Research into fruit flies
e) A new library named after their mother.
f) a bridge to nowhere?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The government is not a business. The government is not supposed to be a business.
If you want to look at this in business terms, however, government should be considered a natural monopoly on the use of force. It was given this natural monopoly by Hammurabi, "...so that the strong might not harm the weak." The "competitive market" for governments is commonly called warfare.
Why are markets good? What's all this fuss about "competition" anyway?
Simply, competitive markets are good because they are efficient solutions. In efficient markets, prices tend to approach the marginal cost of a service. In inefficient markets, prices will tend to approach some measure of the perceived value of the service. This is why health services tend to be heavily regulated: the value of your continued existence is uncapped.
The amount of competition in a market is highly correlated with the capital costs to enter the market, which is where we get the term "entry barrier". If there is a high entry barrier, markets are no longer a good solution. These services are the natural purview of government: if you can't eliminate the "drag" with markets, you can attempt to do so by effectively making everyone a shareholder.
The more fundamental confusion of yours, however, is the assumption that what is "good" for a business has anything to do with what is "good" for government. In point of fact they are frequently diametrically opposed.
"found cures for deadly diseases "
Government dollars show precious little cost/effectiveness in funding research to fight diseases. Where's the cure for cancer? Heart disease? OK, I'll make it easy - Diabetes? No? Nothing yet?
Whereas I read that as those offering the loans doing it, since the offering is what is being mentioned not the accepting.
There is no fiscal cliff. Moving on...
So supposedly the tax income for the US Federal Government has dramatically decreased? Show me those numbers please. Then, if it is true, ask why. Then once you find out why, address the problem. America is getting more and more populated as far as I know, so taxes should be increasing...
That when cuts are mentioned everyone says cut this program and that program and raise taxes. (military cuts are a given)
Why does no one ever say: make all politicians including the president take a pay cut by 50%? If they are the ones that keep ignoring the problems then make them pay.
What really kills me is that the candidates for office spend collectively billions of dollars to campaign when that money could feed and house the homeless and indigent.
american government = obscenity
China spends far more than they report. How many advanced aircraft programs do they have underway right now? The Chinese also don't have a history of working to ensure peace in some of the more unstable parts of the war. Instead they profiteer from others' misery by selling weapons; sometimes to both sides. In the grand scheme of things, a US military is a better idea - just ask the China's neighbors.
Universal health care either gets dumbed down in these "Occidental" nations ( you get to see your doctor on Skype now in the UK ) or they start going back to privately funded ( Canada ). The unemployment rate in these countries is usually much higher than the US ( 25% in France ). The fact is, these countries don't spend money on their military, because the US does.
The obvious thing about economic subjects like this,
is that , allthough physics does not claim to be even analytically able to solve a three body dynamical evolution ,
when budgets are involved , everyone is suddenly the expert.
And the instrument everyone is using is the holy grail of all arguments .... : the percentage %
All talk boils down to this amount x percentage , compared to that percentage y
All the world is suddenly describable within a scale from 1 to 100
It's funny , but totally wrong.
Its the totem of finance ,
And everyone wants to weild that magic wand
%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Kind of silly is it not ?
Avoid your fears , or wonder at the past
One does have to remember the dollar is a farce and is inflating at high rates which they no longer report (but to be fair most the world is tracking along with it because we are their biggest consumers. ) So regular budget increases are necessary. While parent is generally correct, there is an impact just like a CUT but it is just not as big of a CUT in budget as it sounds. Ask anybody who understands their wage freeze knows it is actually a pay cut!
I want the crazies to drive us "off the cliff" and shutdown the government a few times. Obama needs to show some guts.... Gov shutdowns over budget fights have been going on more since the class war escalated in the 70s (and not coincidentally also the propaganda cover. A core issue in human history, now off limits.) Obama shouldn't fear having the 18-19th shutdown... and this "cliff" isn't as big of a deal but he can't even risk that... The echo chamber is making it a big deal; along with the unconstitutional debt ceiling fight (read the 14th and think how much more of a crisis that was.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Are you suggesting the US just eliminate these organizations or ..
False dichotomy. His suggestions was certainly unrealistic politically, but obviously doing both would help oodles if you could pull it off.
The problem is that regulations were written to benefit the largest and most politically influential banks.
This is true, but all those oppressive regulations are consequences of not having simpler effective regulations, which is a consequence of not really regulating the financial industry in ways they don't want to be regulated. In particular, re-regulate the financial industry usually mean simply regulate them simply and effectively by reintroducing Glassâ"Steagall, simpler but effective.
Solar energy subsidies dwarf the above by near orders of magnitude. Do you think those subsidies should cease as well?
I'd expect he wrote "subsidizing **established** industries" for a reason. Your straw man fails.
In fact, Mitt Romney discusses this scenario very elegantly in his book. Too bad more people didn't read it, as this election will really have some consequences. :-)
Alright, you've just lost whatever credibility you hadn't lost already with your deeply stupid rhetorical fails.
Apparently Bertrand Russell was a fool. Who knew?
Oh my, you sunk even lower. LOL
well they did manufacture the dumb people that took the loans sooo...
We can't even pay for retirement on what taxes bring in. In order to fix that the US economy needs a shot of fiscal prudence and good wages, That would allow us to pay for all the stuff we promised and much of what we need. Figure with an optimized tax collection of 19% we could probably get it done with a real GDP of around 20 billion. That seems to be (c.f Hauser's Law) about all we can get.
This ideal circumstance would allow us to meet current spending and put a few billion (300 or so) into infrastructure and research without borrowing.
Assuming decent cuts in military spending and such we could do very well.
The problem is simply, its impossible, Modern business simply don't create enough jobs, any jobs to cover for immigration and demographic momentum. Automation and outsourcing are to blame here as well as lack of export markets. Marx called this the problem of surplus production, plenty of good. No way to fill demand. In the past (the 50's to 80's ish) we could use a younger domestic market and push exports but that no longer possible. The population is aging globally and every nation on Earth wants to be a net exporter. There simply aren't enough buyers or political will to make up with slack in wealth sharing.
Another big problem the jobs that are created are almost all either high skill requiring massive investment in education for stable families (note we have nether money nor as much family stability for this) or are low pay.
In addition the volume of low skilled immigration and higher skilled, H1B immigrants (and similar) brought in to prevent wage rises make it nigh impossible to get wages up except for the FIRE crowd. This means the little guy who is the basis of society gets screwed . The US is demographically, structurally and fiscally is now becoming 3rd world . In a few decades when the bubble money ends, we'll just be a somewhat nicer version of the rest of the 3rd world, baring a bloody ethnic war of course.
Last
Funding has increased for Honey-Boo-Boo and Doomsday preparation.
America, the newest 3rd world country. Even Foxconn is looking to set up shop there.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Back in the sixties? seventies? It was noted in a lot of places in the mainstream media that the amount of money needed to create one job in the military would create 22 jobs in the civilian sector.
That's TWENTY-TWO civilian jobs. (Please insert all your stories of $722 toilet seats and $1024 hammers here, please.)
And do you really think that's gone down since then?
mark
If you think things will implode if the US drives over the fiscal cliff, watch the nuclear explosion when the world wide economy collapses. Many people think it is already too late to avoid.
Anyway, just stop the unnecessary wars attempting to force our will on other people.
We don't need no stinkin' science. That's all a liberal conspiracy. We need to give more support to the financial institutions and spend more on weapons. We've got all those Muslims to terminate - they want to take over the world! They can't - it's ours, a God given right. Go USA.
Gloom And Doom? Really?
THe December Issue of 'Wired' in their article on the patent problem reports that at GOOGLE, APPLE, and others they now spend more money on patent legal issues than they do on R&D. If (as a country) you are going to point a shotgun at your foot and pull the trigger don't complain of the wounds.
pgmer6809
They could be treated like other non-profit groups, the same as social and activity clubs - a local football club arguably does more for the community than the operational and worship side of a church anyway, since at least they are providing green space and encouraging fitness.
The strictly charitable aspects are usually incorporated separately anyway, since that provides separation for liability reasons and allows separate management more easily More importantly, here charity donations are tax-deductible, whereas religious offerings are not. That means that there's a complete separation between charitable and operational money here.
Makes it more of a fiscal sloping ramp than a cliff.
we would raise $749 billion in tax revenue over ten years
That's 74.9 billion per year... but Obama is spending more than $1000 billion per year more than he takes in! (we are in our 4th year of $1 Trillion dollar annual deficits). If we ELIMINATE Obama's annual deficits by cutting a TRILLION dollars per year, we still go deeper into debt each year because of interest on the TRILLIONS of dollars we already owe. Obama spends more borrowed money each year than the entire decade-long Bush war in Iraq cost. You could fully implement the Obama "Tax the rich" plan and only pay for DAYS of Obama deficit spending.
Obama supporters seem to be completely unable to comprehend the SCALE of the man's fiscal recklessness; he promised to cut Bush's deficit spending in half, BUT he has more than DOUBLED and nearly TRIPLED it (from $400 Billion-ish to about $1100 Billion-ish, depending on which years you compare). We now spend more on WELFARE programs (not counting Social Security or Medicare in this) than we spend on the MILITARY. Parts of the federal government have grown by 60% under Obama. WE ARE IN SERIOUS TROUBLE AND MOST PEOPLE SEEM TO BE SO BAD AT BASIC MATH THAT THEY CANNOT EVEN COMPREHEND HOW BIG THE PROBLEM IS
Don't forget the TSA monstrosity that has done absolutely nothing to stop a single terrorist in 11 years (and counting). That's an easy place to start cutting
Nope. Never gonna happen. When the Agency was created (under Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9-11) the Republicans and Democrats held negotiations; The Republicans wanted private workers and the Democrats wanted government workers... the compromise was that the TSA workers would be employed by the Federal government, but would be forbidden to unionize, just as the people in the military may not unionize. After Obama was sworn in as president, he unilaterally broke that deal and let them unionize (he knew congress would not stop him because his party had total control of both the house and senate by 2-to-1 margins and his party would support him because his party gets LOTS of money from the dues of government worker union members.
Now, eliminating TSA would be the elimination of many thousands of unionized federal employees who shovel boatloads of cash into the Democrat party... TSA is now as permanent as Social Security... bend-over on prepare for your airport cavity search...
Compare the US military budget with China
Not a valid comparison:
1. US Military hardware is made by high-paid (many in unions) manufacturers using facilities and processes subject to high environmental and other regulations with expensive raw material, processed materials, components, and subassemblies (also subject to high labor and regulatory costs)
2. The US favors very high-tech solutions over large numbers (the Chinese army has many more people in uniform)
3. The US uses volunteers who are far more expensive per man (each must have a reasonable salary, benefits, and housing) rather than conscripts.
4. The US military budget (already mostly for personnel) includes money for all the retirees who are a government expense but are not actually part of the active forces
5. As a result of many Cold War treaties, the US has many obligations all around the world and in many places this cannot easily be reduced without inviting chaos; many governments reduced their own defenses because they were depending on the US. Many European countries, for example, have long had their social programs effectively subsidized by the US taxpayers because the US military protection got enabled them to reduce their military expenditures to levels insufficient for their own national defenses. Additionally, US trade has long been across both the Atlantic and the Pacific, so the US has long needed a large naval presence in both oceans to keep the sea lanes open (and that naval presence actually preserved the same peace for commercial shipping of all other nations INCLUDING CHINA). Young people with short historical perspectives presume the free-and-peaceful seas are the historical norm; they are NOT.
Denmark, like all of western Europe, got a nearly free ride through the entire Cold War and even now would be unable to defend itself should Mr. Putin get a little aggressive. Your nation has lived under the protective umbrella of NATO and the deterrence provided by America's promise to wage a Nuclear war, if necessary to keep you free. Many years ago when I wore an American uniform I fully expected to die defending you if the Soviets had pushed into Europe... I doubt you or your neighbors ever put on a uniform and planned/trained to fight defending American soil from a Soviet invasion of California or Alaska (i.e. an invasion of an ally that did not involve your own turf). Had you actually had to provide enough defenses to truly defend yourselves, you and your countrymen would have been unable to afford all that social spending; you'd have had even less social spending had you not only provided enough defense for yourself but also enough extra to protect your American Ally (the mirror-image of the real situation).
Please employ a little introspection, and try saying "thanks" sometime to an American instead of being so smug and superior about your safety hammock
Pure bullshit. Obama was chosen by the US electorate because he has promised to increase taxes to, you know, bring in more revenue. He is quite willing to cut spending
1. Obama was chosen in part because he promised to tax "the rich" not the vast majority of his supporters who get money from the government.
2. He always says he is willing to cut spending... but the only thing he has every proposed cutting are the military (he's the one who required the defense dept to face 1/2 of cuts from sequestration even though it is far less than half the budget) , NASA (in 2008 he promised to kill the Bush moon return program and transfer the money to the schools), and "tax expenditures" on the rich (in other words: raise taxes even more on the rich... which is not a cut in spending at all). One reason all the budget talks ran into trouble last year was that president Obama absolutely refused to put any social spending cuts on paper even though the Republicans had manned-up and proposed a full budget with big unpopular cuts (which Obama then used to attack them this past election).
Obama has explicitly promised more spending to his base (more on college loans, more foodstamps, more help on housing, more on healthcare, etc) while promising not to raise taxes on anybody under $250K (try not to notice all the new taxes on health care, smoking, energy, etc) so from the perspective of his base supporters he certainly is the Santa Clause president.
If you disagree, prove it by citing the taxes he campaigned on raising on his base, and/or the benefits he campaigned on cutting from his base.
Because Churches are like clubs... they are groups of people who get together for a non-profit purpose. Every dollar put into an offering plate is a voluntary "chipping-in" for common purpose by somebody who already paid taxes on it. Yes, Churches often gather revenue to build/maintain facilities, pay staff, etc... but they do not have share holders who collect dividends and so-forth like a for-profit corporation. You get can get rich as an investor in a business like Apple or Google (and many such companies use tax loopholes to avoid taxes) but nobody gets rich (other than,perhaps, spiritually) by investing in a Lutheran church or a Baptist Church, or a Jewish Synagogue, etc. It's also a traditional/historical matter that American life used to be organized, in-part, around these institutions which did lots of charitable works (including many schools and hospitals) and allowed their facilities to be used for public meetings like "town halls", voting, etc
Wanna say that such groups should be taxed? Then why not also tax any other get-togethers like tailgaters? Surely when everybody chips in for the beer, the federal government should get to tax that cash, right?
And while we're on the subject, are you one of those strict "separation of church and state" people who say government should have no involvement at all with religion, including stripping monuments from public land? If so, then why should it be able to take any money from them? That would be government funded by religion... sounds like a violation of the wall between church and state to me...
NASA was established under Eisenhower from what used to be called NACA... and it was never run by any German, certainly not any "SS leader". The four leaders of NASA before the moon landing were: Dr. Glennan, Dr. Dryden, James Webb, and Dr. Paine... and after that is not relevent to your comment because the Saturn V Production line was shut down before Armstrong even set foot on the moon.
You probably were referring to von Braun in your comment... while he was in the German military (as was required by his job during wartime) there's no solid evidence he did anything but build rockets (and as a general rule it is accepted that engineers serve their nations during wartime as most professions do when the war is big enough and national survival is on the line). von Braun haters love to point to his wartime position to label him a NAZI, but like to overlook that the NAZIs jailed him at one point because they thought he was intentionally limiting the war effort. Nobody will ever likely know the true story nor what his thoughts and intentions were.
The larger idea that Germans developed the Saturn V are also bogus. SOME Germans, von Braun and associates did SOME of the overall system engineering and pitched-in on specific issues, BUT the vast majority of the engineering was done by Americans and all the detailed engineering was done by engineers working for the contractors. Engineers at Chrysler did one stage, Boing and North American did others, North American did the Command and Service modules, Grumman did the lander, IBM and MIT did the computers, Aerojet and Rocketdyne did the engines, Singer did the sims, Bendix and Ball filled many technical gaps, etc.
Curse Tom Wolfe for misleading people with his book and movie of "the right stuff" where (a) he mislead average people with that line about "our Germans are better than their Germans" and (b) he unfairly painted Gus Grissom as a panicky, greedy villain. NASA never blamed Gus for the loss of his capsule... if they had he would never have flown again (that was the practice for astros who they lost confidence in) instead they put him in a very important role in development and flight of Gemini (which got the nickname "GusMobile") and they assigned him to command the first Apollo mission (where he died in the AS-204 "Apollo 1" fire). Also note that Wally Schirra stayed in his mercury capsule until it was aboard the ship and then hit the explosive hatch trigger to test the problem... the mechanism kicked-back so hard it injured Wally in a way Gus was never injured; Wally insisted thereafter that there was no way Gus blew the hatch on "Liberty Bell 7".
Republicans actually passed a budget through the house that cut spending and the put one of the best-known budget guys in Washington on their ticket as VP candidate. Every time they try to limit spending the Democrats just demagogue the issue and run ads aimed at seniors saying that their Social Security and Medicare are threatened and the GOP is going to push them off the cliff... Obama re-ran that same play as every Democrat has in my entire lifetime. WHEN the crash comes the Democrats will TOTALLY own it since they have fought EVERY attempt to avert it over the past 50 years. THEY put in place all the massive spending programs that are not in the Constitution and demanded those programs get categorized as mandatory and "entitlements" (defense is actually one of the few things the federal government is REQUIRED to do, but they insist it remain in the "discretionary" spending category) while promising to pay for it all with taxes on "the rich" (mathematically impossible).
Democrats have NEVER been fiscally responsible... any time the public gets edgy about deficits, the Dems refuse to cut spending and instead insist that Republicans raise taxes. Don't even TRY giving Bill Clinton credit for a surplus; First, he TRIED to pull an Obama (massive reckless spending and national healthcare) but lost congress to the Republicans at which time Newt Gingrich forced the spending reductions. Second, Clinton's "wonderful" economy was an illusion based on 2 things: the internet bubble, and all the construction and banking activity related to the removal of banking regulations that Democrats now blame the 2008 crash and Bush for.
Isn't it time for the rest of the world to fund their own R and D. India's middle class is as large as the U.S.'s. China has a growing middle class and many billionaires. The Euro zone still has resources. Let all of them develop the next generation of advances. We can than ride their coat tails for a while and expand social programs for Americans with the savings. Or do you think Americans are much smarter than those foreigners?
AL QAEDA translates as database in Arabic. It's a CIA database of operatives under the guise of "terrorists"