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Senator Makes NASA Complete $350 Million Testing Tower That It Will Never Use
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Phillip Swarts reports in the Washington Times that NASA is completing a $350 million rocket-engine testing tower at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi that it doesn't want and will never use. 'Because the Constellation Program was canceled in 2010, the A-3's unique testing capabilities will not be needed and the stand will be mothballed upon completion (PDF),, said NASA's inspector general. The A-3 testing tower will stand 300 feet and be able to withstand 1 million pounds of thrust (PDF). The massive steel structure is designed to test how rocket engines operate at altitudes of up to 100,000 feet by creating a vacuum within the testing chamber to simulate the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Although NASA does not expect to use the tower after construction, it's compelled by legislation from Sen. Roger F. Wicker (R-MS), who says the testing tower will help maintain the research center's place at the forefront of U.S. space exploration. 'Stennis Space Center is the nation's premier rocket engine testing facility,' says Wicker. 'It is a magnet for public and private research investment because of infrastructure projects like the A-3 test stand. In 2010, I authored an amendment to require the completion of that particular project, ensuring the Stennis facility is prepared for ever-changing technologies and demands.' Others disagree, calling the project the 'Tower of Pork' and noting that the unused structure will cost taxpayers $840,000 a year to maintain. 'Current federal spending trends are not sustainable, and if NASA can make a relatively painless contribution to deficit reduction by shutting down an unwanted program, why not let it happen?' says Pete Sepp, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union. 'It's not rocket science, at least fiscally.'"
Tower of Pork
No, that's in Vegas.
Table-ized A.I.
a $350 million rocket-engine testing tower at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi
compelled by legislation from Sen. Roger F. Wicker (R-MS)
will cost taxpayers $840,000 a year to maintain.
Hey let's pour money into my home state plzkthx
I'm betting he just wants the kickback, since his 'reason' is completely incorrect. No research facility that wastes time, money, and other resources building or buying equipment they know they won't use is never considered being on the forefront of research, and actually lose funding as nobody wants their grants or donations to be wasted on known boondoggles.
What is BS? After all, you do agree that inflation is a limit of deficit spending with a fiat currency.
I have several friends that work at General Dynamics here in Metro Detroit and the government spending has them in a quandary: they are forced by politicians to create a bill as high as possible - mandatory junkets and overtime, even when there's nothing to do. "Research" projects are the only thing that they do and they just post youtube videos, cancel the project and start something new. None of them can quit, even though the economy has recovered, because they are being paid so well as a result of the requirement to bill taxpayers so much.
Does anyone know why the Republicans came right to the table on the sequester this time around? Because offense spending (thinly veiled as "defense" spending) was to be rolled back to 2003 levels. That is absolutely evil if you are a member of the Republicans.
I bet this thing comes in useful in the near future... They'll find something to do with it. It might even be useful. I'd rather they build things like this than dole out bank bailouts like they are candy on Halloween.
Didn't they lease or sell one recently to SpaceX or one of the other private companies? Sounds like the money was already allocated as well, so what's the damage?
...meet Bridge to Nowhere
It all comes down to poor planning to begin with. Look at the Superconducting Supercollider ($2Billion to dig a friggin hole), this Tower, the cancelled Constellation program, cost overruns such as the $1.5Trillion F-35, etc. The government needs to do a much better job planning things out, and once planned, bring them to completion on time and on budget. If not, you have to have HUGE FINES or even jail time for bidding on things you know you can never accomplish. Don't blame that Senator for pork. Senators are elected to bring pork to their constituency. Blame the stupid planning by the administration of Sean O'Keefe for the failures of the Constellation program.
I approve this post.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
The BS is that 'Current federal spending trends are not sustainable' I see nothing but deflation right now. Cutting spending does not lead to the end of deflation.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Constellation was killed for political reasons. The difference between Constellation and SLS is the party letter beside the name of the President that authorized it. Stupid shit like this is going to happen when you fuck over politicians, contractors and everyone else for no good reason. Make them finish it just to stick it in their eye.
Also I disagree to even the term 'deficit spending.' A net deficit in terms of taxes and spending means a net savings in the private sector. If the government spent less than it destroyed in taxes, the economy would shrink, no matter if it were a republican (low tax, low spend) or a Democrat (high tax, high spend) policy. In deflation, it should be a stimulus policy (low tax, high spend). Europe is stupid (high tax, low spend). Yeah it sucks over there because they are not using their power as a fiat currency to put more Euros into the economy.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Also, it is a fallacy to think that taxes fund expenditures at the Federal level, since the federal government has a fiat currency, It can always pay its debts, not withstanding the limits of inflation).
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
The article acts as if they are wasting $350 million by completing it. But it does not say how much has been spent already. Maybe there is not that much money to save by cancelling it?
And I can't believe that the NASA will not use it in the future, the article also gives no real reason for that.
It's B.S. We have a fiat currency and the only limit to spending is inflation.
Chronic debtors rationalize more debt. News at 11.
Can't they repurpose the tower? They are still developing new rockets, even if it's not the same one when the tower was designed. What makes it so this tower can only be used for a particular project that happens to have been scrubbed? This is NASA we're talking about; they can find a way to work with it.
Considering US debts are overwhelmingly dollar denominated the effects of inflation on ability to repay debt are quite muted.
"It is important that a large emphasis be placed on safety and testing, and we cannot launch any type of vehicle until we test it extensively using NASA's best tools for testing," Cochran said after a 2011 hearing on the agency's budget.
How did the Saturn V ever get off the ground without such a rigorous test infrastructure as this?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
But they only shower federal dollars on business owners in Mississippi. No medicaid expansion for the poor in Mississippi. Fuck the poor!
Have gnu, will travel.
I wouldn't trust them to properly differentiate between a scientific boondoggle and useful scientific research.
Maybe this facility is useless, maybe it's not. But the NTU doesn't share an agenda with those who would fund a program of basic reasearch in this country.
Its not debt. If it were a state, it would be a debt. Think of it as a deposit in the private economy. http://neweconomicperspectives...
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Yes, it's called NASA, and in particular NASA Advisory Council, and a parallel, independent, council from the National Academy of Sciences.
A politician with pork on his mind doesn't give a crap about any of them.
I see nothing but deflation right now.
Either you are not looking very hard, or you are basement dweller raiding your parents fridge. Seriously if you actually track what your spending on groceries, gasoline, clothing, and healthcare; I would be STUNNED if you still claim there is deflation.
The only deflation out there in recent years has been in heating costs (for folks using nat gas) and electricity in some areas. Housing had its big gaps down in 2008-2010, but has pretty well been inflating if slowly since that time. I don't rent but friends tell me rents have gone way up everywhere and its keeping them in their current apartments.
There has been no deflation in the things 99%ers spend their money on other than housing. I don't care what the FED claims; because their numbers are fucking retarded, I don't buy a new TV every week, I sure as hell do buy bread and gasoline though.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I got distracted when I posted the previous post. I meant to say that taxes don't actually fund expenditures since the government can print money to pay for any expenditures it authorizes.
So what are taxes for? 1) If you have to pay taxes in dollars, then you better have some dollars. Taxes help ensure that a government's currency is used by its citizens. 2) Taxes can control inflation by destroying money (i.e. taking it out of the economy) 3) to implement policies (e.g. redistribution)
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
What did they make the public buy?
A big toaster?
hahahhaha
"I see nothing but deflation right now."
Evidently, this guy doesn't get a cable bill.
Because, there is no way they can lease it out to all those wonderful commercial space ventures.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Oh and yeah,we have weak inflation, not full deflation. So prices are rising, but lower than the 2% target inflation rate. The problem for 99%ers isnt inflation so much as a stagnant wage.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Why did the rest of the senate go along with this? And what about the house?
... I know it's another day, so Slashdot has to find another Republican to bash, but a lone senator can't keep a program funded.
"I already promised my friends they will get the job, so IT HAS TO BE DONE."
He would have been all over this like a fat kid on a box of donuts.
...because then the senator would be accused of being anti-jobs and anti-science. You know, because he's a Republican and that's the way they all are.
Chronic debtors invent euphemisms for debt. News at 11.
Maybe they can rework it into a 300 statue of Jesus?
Anonymous Cowards say nothing of interest on how money works Unfortunately, News at 11
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
but it may come in handy for ICBMs.
VACUUM testing rocket engines up to 1 MILLION pounds on the groud? I'm surprised it cost only $350 million.
Seriously, that could test the J-2X, rs-68a, RD-180, rs-25e, merlin 1d, or whatever indigenous engines are out there. India, France, Japan, SpaceX, or South Korea would be happy to borrow it for rocket engine testing. Russia, China, and Iran could use it too if Washington let them.
So what if Constellation isn't going to test a rs-68b there, it could still test the rs-25e for the SLS, or an indigenous kerosene staged combustion engine to replace the RD-180.
Call me old fashioned, I actually watched the first moon landing in 1968 while in first grade, but I sure hope they do end up using it.
NASA used to me about space exploration, manned space exploration.
'The A-3 testing tower will stand 300 feet and be able to withstand 1 million pounds of thrust'
As far as I'm concerned what this article says more than anything else is NASA has lost it's way.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
You tella car company that you're going to pay them a half million dollars for a special custom car. You sign the contract, which requires that you pay them $500000 and that they give you a car when it's completed. Halfway through the process you suddenly decide that you don't want the car after all.
Well, tough. You already signed the contract and they're already building the car. You have no choice but to pay for a car that you aren't going to use.
That's what goes on in vases like this. The government signed the contract saying that they'll pay. They can't renege on the deal just because they decided they didn't want what they were paying for any more, so instead they have to pay for it and let it gather dust once they have it. I can guarantee that if you or I signed a contract that said we'd pay for something we wouldn't be able to get out of it just because we no longer wanted what we were paying for.
This isn't so much about grandstanding politicians that want money for useless programs, but about grandstanding politicians who like to decide the government doesn't want something for which the contract has already been signed.
and the bureaucracy for getting reimbursed for anything is crazy enough that sometimes I just take the loss (getting parts from Digikey, etc). And this is where the money goes?!? I dig doing my little bit to help the space program, but this is frustrating.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Because in a NASA thread, it's astronoaut, not cosmonaut, you insensitive clod!
SpaceX just cut a deal with stennis for testing of their new raptor family. The first engine of this family will be 1/3 of an F1. And yes, it is using these towers. So, this is wrong.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
NASA bought it!
NASA manages it!
We own it.
So build it and, SHUT THE FUCK UP Generalissimo Bolden Ass Wipe!
Jeeze, these Afro's are so touchy about being Gay and all when they ARE. Go Figure.
We can use the vacuum test chamber to see how Time Warner Cable executives breathe at 100,000 feet altitude, film it and charge $1 pay per view. I'm thinking recovery of the 350 million won't take long.
Starve the beast end taxes.
no matter if it were a republican (low tax, low spend)
Ha, you're funny. As this article demonstrates, Republicans can spend (and/or waste) just as much, if not more than, Democrats. They just don't want to spend any of it on poor people or minorities.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Bread is the same price I've been paying for the last 10 years. Gasoline is cheaper than it was 5 years ago. What fucking inflation are you talking about?
I'll bet your salary isn't the same for the last 10 years. I'd bet it is much lower, with more of the shared burden for your benefits being passed on to you. You probably haven't gotten a raise for many years either. The prices may not show immediately that they are going higher, but they are. Remember when you were able to purchase a gallon of ice cream for the same price you are paying for that much smaller box now?
If the government spent less than it destroyed in taxes, the economy would shrink, no matter if it were a republican (low tax, low spend) or a Democrat (high tax, high spend) policy.
Economies are much bigger than just the government part. And the non-government part tends to be a lot more productive.
In deflation, it should be a stimulus policy
The fundamental flaw of Keynesian economics is that it conflates economic activity with economic growth. Just because you have a "stimulus policy" doesn't mean that you have economic growth. Japan showed that after the 1990 recession and the US and Europe are showing it now.
Wow, that's a super stupid thing to say. It's both historically inaccurate, plus the argument "We know X doesn't happen because in theory Y could instead" is logically invalid.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
It is designed for large 1 million lb VACUUM based thrust (IOW, an upper stage engine(s)). What is nice is that the raptor is a large upper stage engine. I expect that SpaceX will use this for their raptor engine. The E-3 stand will only work for sub-components testing, not the full engine.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Don't get me wrong. I want NASA spending that money on something useful, not a 'tower to nowhere'. I do kind of relate to the senators too. Jobs shouldn't be temporary. I know, a lot of younger people think they are.It can be nice to regularly change things up for a while. Eventually one has to grow out of that. Staying in place is what gets you benefit time, raises, etc... It used to be how one gets a pension too back when they had those. I save a lot in my 401k but I don't see how I am ever going to retire!
This stuff becomes important when one goes to have a family. Even without the family, one day hopefully we all realize that we need to work to live, not live to work. Stay and build up that vacation time!
NASA projects unfortunately aren't stable enough for this kind of life. The problem is every politician has to go and cancel whatever the one before had NASA doing and build their own legacy. Of course they actually have no legacy because the next one will just cancel it anyway but I guess they all expect the next guy to be better than themselves... Meanwhile jobs are created and destroyed. Workers are hired and layed off. At least these porky senators are helping workers have a reason to want to work for NASA. Any organization that wants to do great things like space exploration is going to need to attract the best people. Why would they go to a place that will lay them off every time the whitehouse changes it's curtains?
Of course, a tower to nowhere is still a stupid way to spend taxpayer's money. The real problem isn't the pork, it's the politicians that keep changing the goals!!!
Is gas really cheaper than 2009? I think I recall seeing it for $2.25 at a Shell station in 2008, and now it's around $3.19 I think at a Fred Meyer. (Different parts of my state.)
...is the thousands of slashdot readers being torn between their unwavering support for anything related to space exploration and their distaste for Republicans.
Also, it is a fallacy to think that taxes fund expenditures at the Federal level, since the federal government has a fiat currency, It can always pay its debts, not withstanding the limits of inflation).
True, but doing so will drive down the value of the dollar to the point of collapsing it's economy. This US citizens will enjoy discovering their dollar is worth half of what it was? Of course, it's already worth 1/3 of it's previous value in the world economy. Devalue the dollar much more in the world economy and it will stop being the prevailing currency used to trade important things like oil.
This has nothing on the amount of pork and waste in the farm bill that's making its way through Congress.
Call your representatives and ask them to stop it.
The government's ability to repay debts is mainly based on its power to tax to raise the funds. Governments that rely on printing currency to repay debts or for general spending tend to end up in the history books (Weimar Republic) or the newspapers (Zimbabwe) as economic basket cases crippled by hyperinflation.
Apparently nobody with mod points is reading your sig.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
that you see in backward countries struggling to be productive. GJ america
Protip: decreased inflation != deflation. Intro to calculus would have taught you that much. The article you linked to mentioned fears about deflation, but no actual deflation. Being afraid of something doesn't make it manifest.
So basically your own source, were you to deem it credible, would serve to show that even the EU is still experiencing inflation.
I have several friends that work at General Dynamics here in Metro Detroit and the government spending has them in a quandary: they are forced by politicians to create a bill as high as possible - mandatory junkets and overtime, even when there's nothing to do. "Research" projects are the only thing that they do and they just post youtube videos, cancel the project and start something new. None of them can quit, even though the economy has recovered, because they are being paid so well as a result of the requirement to bill taxpayers so much.
Really? And what program are they billing those hours to? I doubt that the Federal government has given them a "do whatever" contract with an endless pot of money to bill against. Sounds like BS to me. Either that or they may defrauding the government by billing inappropriately against a real contract if what you say is actually true.... which I doubt.
You should look into the Democrat's view on the sequester, very few of them like it. It was meant to be a trap for the Republicans, but it backfired on the Democrats. Some Republicans have been unhappy, but few Democrats have been happy.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
They just don't want to spend any of it on poor people or minorities.
Sure they do. The spend it putting poor minorities into Army uniforms and giving them free transportation, lodging and food in some resource-rich third-world country.
I don't know why NASA would cancel the project, I need to hold a million pounds of thrust in place 300 feet in the air all the time... What does the IG mean "it won't be needed"?
In all seriousness, though, why do we let people get away with this shit?? Slash NASA's budget, cancel constellation, then force them to build and maintain a testing location so that the "facility is prepared for ever-changing technologies and demands." Demands which will never come because NASA has no money to develop new engines and rockets, because they have idiots like this spending their money for them. If someone at a private company tried to allocate this much money to be wasted, they would be fired as fast as the board could pick up the phone. Wicker should be censured for abusing public funds.
At least any I've come across. Yes, the Gov't has to pay for work already performed, but it's a recognized fact that one Congress can't bind future ones to financial deals, and money to finish a particular contract may never arrive.
So by and large, as someone else pointed out, the Government has a clause in contracts allowing it to terminate the contract for convenience.
--PM
And, in the song as written, it's "You're a pal and a confidant." In this context, the word "cosmonaut" makes absolutely no sense.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
It's actually exactly right.
It's historically divergent because for most of history, nations didn't use fiat currencies.
Now they do.
That has some implications. Implications that most people haven't gotten, and the ones who do get it are quiet about it.
I recommend you to the writings of Warren Mosler; the topic is "Modern Monetary Theory".
You can find his works online. Try "Seven Deadly Economic Frauds".
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
This isn't true.
The US hasn't raised enough money via taxes to fund its annual operating expenses in a very long time.
Yet a US government check has never bounced.
It is 100% clear that, no matter what politicians say and what our household models of economics say, the Feds do not need your tax revenue to pay for anything.
The key difference between the post-1971 dollar and previous macroeconomic situatinos is that the US dollar is no longer redeemable in anything else. It is now entirely a fiat currency. It is a currency that can buy anything in the US economy because of two reasons
1) Legal tender laws -- the Feds force anyone in the US to accept USD for any debt, public or private
2) Taxes. The feds require most of us to pay taxes, and those taxes must be paid in USD. That means we need to do things in the real economy in order to get USD, so that we can give the govt a portion of that USD.
That's it. That's the whole game.
Why tax us at all? To force everyone to trade in dollars -- and critically -- to reduce private sector spending power when newly injected government money is chasing after the same economic output. If public and private dollars are chasing the same items, price appreciation will happen, and thats politically a loser. And, as you point out, it can become hyperinflation.
But really, after Nixon closed the gold window, our money is entirely artificial. If you brought in a sack of $20k in cash for your federal income taxes to some IRS office, they wouldn't say, "finally, we can go pay our debts!" or "finally! we can go buy that highway we need"
They'd update a number in a database and drop the sack of cash in a shredder. Nobody wants to move around all that physical cash.
Please read the writings of Warren Mosler, and on the topic of Modern Monetary Theory.
You are correct about one thing -- reckless currency debasement can become hyperinflation.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
If you want to see not only the actual stats for what inflation has been going on, note that inflation in America has been hovering around about 10% annual on most goods. See also this site:
http://www.shadowstats.com/
It not only shows the real statistics (based upon the formulas that were in use in 1980 and earlier), but explains what sort of manipulation has been going on with the CPI, why it is a bad thing, and why your claimed source with the NY Times is full of the proverbial BS.
This isn't the only site to try and correct the government numbers, but it does use credible metrics for proper comparison as opposed to deliberate understating of inflation. This also impact things like changes in the GDP and other economic health statistics as well.
In other words, you are just flat out wrong about your assumptions that inflation is not happening
Wages have been stagnant because a lot money has been transferred to non-wage benefits. You can't heap more and more requirements on employers and expect wage increases to happen as before. Furthermore, since wages and non-wage benefits are taxed differently, it encourages employers even more to substitute non-wage benefits for wage increases.
Of course, employees get screwed this way: it's better to have the money and be able to determine yourself what to do with it. But it's progressives and "liberals" that are screwing workers this way; the wage stagnation that progressives like to complain about is of their own making.
(A second problem with your analysis is that inflation rate doesn't tell you what people pay. The inflation rate for different income brackets is different depending on what those groups consume.)
You have a "stimulus" when you think people are not buying enough and saving too much; is that true of Americans? I don't think so.
Deflation and inflation are largely irrelevant; the value of money is just an arbitrary scale. If it adjusts, it adjusts according to economic conditions.
It sucks over there because governments limit economic activity through misguided policies. Both high taxes and other sorts of regulations do that. More government spending would generate a little more economic activity, but not enough to make up for the loss.
Look at Obama's stimulus programs: they failed to come even close to delivering what he promised. Government stimuli don't work and are a waste of money.
The funny thing about fiat currencies is that the money is based upon pure faith of the religious kind. Indeed it seems funny that people have far more faith in the value of the U.S. Dollar and the Euro than they do even in Jesus of Nazareth, yet historically at least the objective validity of the existence of Jesus is on a much more firm ground philosophically than the value of the U.S. Dollar.
The current monetary policy of the Federal Reserve seems to suppose that this faith is going to be broken soon, which is the only thing that seems to explain what it is that they are doing.
True. And while US politicians might not give a damn whether the Chinese hate us, that would devalue huge amounts of debt held by US retirees, banks, and small investors, and they do vote.
Printing money is, effectively, a tax on everybody who happens to hold money.
The value of a U.S. Dollar used to be essentially minimum wage of $1 per day for an eight to ten hour shift, or about 10 cents to 15 cents per hour. A loaf of bread used to be about two cents, and of course a dollar was coined from a troy ounce of silver (and intrinsically worth more than the actual silver as well).
If you think about it, people demanding minimum wage is raised to $10 per hour or more are admitting that to dollar isn't just worth a third, but only 1% of what it used to be worth and declining beyond even that.
Interestingly enough, the U.S. Dollar pretty much maintained its value (with admittedly inflation and deflation over the years) throughout the entire 19th Century and even into the 20th Century. You have to ask the question about who benefits from a continuously inflating currency.... and it should be pointed out that it isn't ordinary citizens who get the benefit.
Taxes are to pretend that the money could be paid back. If there were no taxes, then the government could *never* pay everything off. If that happened, then people would would stop lending money to the government. At that point, the government would lose the ability to control inflation and other parts of the economy. All money policy (including taxes) is about controlling the economy.
And no, the government couldn't operate off printed money, as at the rate it spends, the inflation would kill the economy.
So yes, in theory we could operate taxless, but in practice, no.
Learn to love Alaska
The funny thing about fiat currencies is that the money is based upon pure faith of the religious kind.
That is absurd. The ability to exchange the US dollar, Euro, etc for things of value is readily observed. I consider money more an emergent order phenomenon.
It is 100% clear that, no matter what politicians say and what our household models of economics say, the Feds do not need your tax revenue to pay for anything.
Except that the paying of taxes to the federal government and the states is one of the fundamental ways that the US Dollar holds value.
That would mean that prices have quadrupled since 2000: are rent, houses, gasoline, food, cell phones, jeans four times as expensive as in 2000? Of course not. Many of those things have actually gotten cheaper.
Inflation and CPI aren't particularly well-defined numbers, so people can legitimately get different answers and use/misuse them for various political purposes. But anybody who claims that they are around ten percent obviously is an economic charlatan.
Sometimes spending is just spending. Suppose the government spends a bunch of money crushing perfectly usable cars. $100 million worth of cars are turned into $1 million of scrap metal. To do so, they spend $1 million on diesel fuel for the equipment that crushes and transports the cars.
Show me where that $100 million ends up in someone's savings account.
You're assuming when the government spends $1 billion, it ALWAYS spends it on something that creates $1 billion in value. If $1 billion leaves the government, it has to go somewhere, right? Sometimes it goes down the toilet. In fact, not only does $1 billion in government spending not ALWAYS produce something worth $1 billion, it RARELY does so. So in ftfy would be changing "always" to "rarely" - net governtment spending is rarely net private saving.
Because Mississippi and the South in general are well-known as bastions of lily-white culture.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I think technically speaking the US Government can only mint coins, not print paper currency. Hence the proposal for minting trillion dollar coins. But in reading that Wikipedia entry they say:
The issuance of paper currency is subject to various accounting and quantity restrictions that platinum coinage is not.
So it's just a lot easier to mint coins. The entry goes into a bit of detail on the laws dealing with the minting of coins.
The A3 test stand was designed to test a high-performance upper-stage engine that must start at very high altitudes and run all the way to space (Shuttle engines started at sea level with lots of ground support equipment hooked-up, and while Saturn DID airstart some of its engines, they were lower-performance than the J-2X the Constellation program required, designed, and has built). The US lacked this test capability when we embarked upon the Constellation program (which is why the stand was designed and built in the first place - DUH) and not having a pre-existing stand like this was ONE of the reasons for the delays (the J-2X engine was a "long pole in the tent".) which ultimately killed Constellation. By completing the stand, we will enable any future president to push forward with an ambitious space program if he/she chooses without a multi-year delay to build the testing infrastructure. One of the biggest problems the US has had with manned spaceflight post-Apollo is that, with lower public support, NASA programs get jerked around and changed by every new president (so any new program that cannot be up-and-running within one president's administration gets axed by the next guy... this is why we never developed a follow-on to the shuttles - many alternate programs were started then halted)
Had this stand existed when Constellation began, the program might have been far enough along to survive the new President (Obama) but it was the delays in that program that enabled him to order an end to all US manned spaceflight in early 2010 (other than as passengers on Russian rockets). Congressional outrage over Obama's 2010 NASA budget and plan led the to the bi-partisan Senate science comittee ORDERING Obama to build the SLS rocket currently being built (they REQUIRED it by law) and while he has been slow-walking it and has repeatedly tried to re-direct the funds to other programs, the likelihood is that the next president will inherit the SLS and be able to build a program around it. If you study the SLS, you'll see that the most-capable versions projected will require the J-2X upper-stage engine (which the A-3 stand was developed to test ... and which, happily, will exist)
Don't get fooled by people who hate a project (and are grinding and ideological axe) into thinking it is a "boondoggle"; that's a political tactic. There are three groups who HATE the A-3 test stand: [1] People in the federal government who want to end NASA's manned spaceflight and re-direct the cash to other things (some in congress, and the budget people at OMB have been on this for DECADES), [2] People who oppose American huma deep-space exploration missions (SOME of these people have careers designing, building,operating robotic probes and they see manned programs as taking their money, and [3] People who either love Elon Musk and his Space-X (which they deify) or love the Boeing/Lockmart EELV rockets and argue that their fave medium rockets are sufficient for the manned missions they prefer. The tactics some of these critics deploy include declaring that a piece of infrastructure that's critical to any future large-scale deep-space exploration is not needed and demand no money be spent finishing it (after the taxpayers have already spent all the time and 90% of the money and it's nearly complete) and THEN they'll use the lack of infrastructure to justify attacks on future big American space activity as unworkable/expensive due to lack of existing infrastructure...
The money would be put to much better use in somehow keeping Mississippians in Mississippi. I get tired of them moving up here to Michigan and spreading sprawl, crime, racism and ghetto trash culture.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
The problem for 99%ers isnt inflation so much as a stagnant wage.
I am not sure I'd even agree with that. Wages *should* inflate with everything else; the fact that they don't suggests one of two things to me, though there are probably more reasons:
Productivity increases due to automation are enabling business to use less labor while still increasing production. We are not seeing the enhance wealth creation of previous technical revolutions because the labor force does not have the skills to broadly shift to other activities that would further raise productivity; even though they are now available for allocation to those activities. So while the labor market is not actually contracting and I think may never actually contract, we do have lots of working age individuals whose skill sets are to obsolete to employ in sufficient number.
Monetary policy is deliberately unevenly driving inflation to select asset classes. This I think is what is creating the real structural problems our economy faces. I don't know if the architects of these policies are maliciously seeking to create bigger inequalities or if they actually think these policies have macro benefit.
At the micro level wage stagnation, is NOT as big a problem as inflation, for most people. The idea that if you had 2% wage growth along with 2% inflation everywhere else things would remain even ignores the fact that peoples savings are devalued. This idea that constant inflation is a good thing is policy that is at the very core of class warfare. It ensures working class people never get to retire and prevents them getting ahead in that they can't amass enough liquidity for personal security and then move on to investing because the amount of liquidity they need is constantly increasing.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Exactly!
Many times here you read about how China only holds a small portion of the national debt. What those "oh, China doesn't rule the US as they only have a small part of our national debt" people forget is that any devaluation also hurts those who do hold the "large portion of the National debt". I believe the largest holder is the US Social Security System.
"Social Security Trust Fund, which represented $2.7 trillion in 2011"
Of course, the best way of getting rid of the unfunded Social Security liabilities is also to inflate them away.
(Ironic how really none of the words "social", "security", "trust", or "fund" actually applies to that fiction.)
Protip: decreased inflation != deflation.
Actually, in economics it does if the rate of inflation is below the population growth, then the economy is said to be deflationary.
What drugs are you smoking? because I really need some of that delusional crack you are smoking.
Deflation? every dollar I have is worth less every single day, only someone that had been hit in the head over and over and over again with a sack of nickles would think that my money is growing in value. Inflation is at double digits the economists are so corrupt that they now have a very narrow measurement to manipulated the outcome.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Most reps I see speaking on blog, tv, newspaper, and so forth spout so much nonsense about women, minorities, that I would rather have dems. Not even counting there are far more reps that are creationist and what to push their religion down the throat of others than there are creationist dems. Sure both are bad, but creationism ? Tea party ? No thanks.
So yes, in theory we could operate taxless
He isn't proposing operating the government taxless. He's saying they don't need those taxes to pay for anything, the function of taxes is not to allow spending, taxes are not "income" or "revenue" for the government. Taxes merely destroy currency in the economy. Spending creates it. There doesn't need to be a 1:1 balance between the two, with any difference made up by borrowing. Governments only need to balance the two effects to match an increasing supply of currency to the actual requirements of the growing economy. Too much, you get inflation, too little deflation or stagnation. Everything else is just about redistribution.
If that happened, then people would would stop lending money to the government
MMT says that government borrowing in its own currency is a fiction. It means nothing. Stopping it means nothing.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
A quadrupling of price is not a 400% increase. It's the original price, plus 300%. Also, it would take much less than 40 years. "Simple math" doesn't include compounding. Someone please correct this if I'm wrong, but I believe the actual answer would be a bit over 14 years via the Rule of 72.
Just another day in Paradise
The idea that if you had 2% wage growth along with 2% inflation everywhere else things would remain even ignores the fact that peoples savings are devalued.
This depends upon what you do with your savings. If it's under your mattress, or in a savings account, you're probably correct. If you're not afraid of some volatility, then an index fund (S&P for example), would have kept you ahead of it.
Just another day in Paradise
No. Much shorter.
.
Simple math says:
(1+10/100)^y = 4 =>
log (1.10^y) = log(4) =>
y * log(1.10) = log(4) =>
y = log(4) / log(1.10) = 14.54
After 14.54 years you quadruple; after 15 years you would have a 418% increase.
Didn't they teach you exponentials and logarithmics in high school?
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
True, but doing so will drive down the value of the dollar to the point of collapsing it's economy.
Why would it do that? MMT (and the GP) just says new currency creation is limited by inflation. Obviously it's possible to collapse the economy, but why would anyone do that?
The point is that government debt is a fiction when it's in the domestic currency. "Repaying" loans in your own currency is also a fiction; you are just printing money. If you choose to destroy (via taxation) an equivalent amount of money elsewhere in the economy, so be it. But there's nothing that requires you to do so in order to pay debt. Taxes are only required to control inflation and to compel use of the domestic currency.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
You obviously need to learn some comprehension, as well as math.
The poster above was disputing the fact that inflation has been hovering around 10% because of what that would imply about the price level since 2000.
1.1^13 = 3.45. So not quite quadrupling, but that would be pretty close.
And a 300% increase does in fact correspond to a quadrupling (a 100% increase is a doubling etc.)
QED
Just a note on your comment regarding legal tender. Consider this, from Wikipedia...
There is, however, no federal statute that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in cents or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy.[26]
Just another day in Paradise
Except that you'd have to do away with the adjustments, and that's not likely to happen.
http://www.ssa.gov/cola/automa...
Just another day in Paradise
no matter if it were a republican (low tax, low spend)
Ha, you're funny. As this article demonstrates, Republicans can spend (and/or waste) just as much, if not more than, Democrats. They just don't want to spend any of it on poor people or minorities.
Yeah, you were correct, right there until the last sentence, and then you had to go all MSNBC on it. It's funny to see people stereotype while pointing the finger at others.
Just another day in Paradise
The Ghosts of Jamie Whitten and John Stennis live on in Mississippi. Bringing federal dollars to pork barrel projects.
Jamie Whitten was the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee and any appropriations bill that passed by had to have something for Mississippi. Stennis was the same way in the Senate and together they always got something for Mississippi it seems in every appropriations bill.
That was true when the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor was mandated by Congress after the Challenger incident. NASA didn't want it but if they wanted to fund the shuttle and other programs, they had to take the ASRM too. Things like having to deliver the ASRM rockets on barges were put into bid contracts to prevent Thiokol (the supplier of RSRM engines for the shuttle) from bidding on the contract. Oh, they just happened to have the site at Iuka MS, which among being the site of a defunct Nuclear Reactor project by the TVA and was also a former weapons depot.
You see that's the problem with the seniority system in Congress, you can get politicians re-elected by people and they just move up the ladder on all these committees and it's the committees where all the power is in Congress. You can't just put legislation on the floor of either the House or Senate, it has to go through Committee first and if you have ranking congressmen and senators blocking projects until they get what they want, then important legislation can be held up indefinitely. It's been that way since our Federal Government was formed and handcuffs well meaning legislation with bad things that garner support from fringe members of Congress to get the votes necessary to pass the whole package.
Even though everybody thinks that Earmarks are supposedly a thing of the past, they're still around. The testing facility in MS shows again that port barrel spending is alive and well and a lot of things still get through, for example with the recent budget deal. Did you also know we have a STARBASE program as well? Well in 2012 it received $5m in funding and while most won't consider it a lot, it's really a glorified recruiting program.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Henry Ford paid his workers $5/day in the 1920s. About $0.62 per hour. The value of gold at the time was about $20/oz.
Gold is currently valued at about $1200/oz. So if you think gold represents an intrinsic non-inflationary value, as goldbugs do, then the "inflation corrected" equivalent of Ford's $5/day is $37.50/hr.
(Likewise, the median weekly wage in 1925 was about $25/week. So a gold-equivalent of $1500/week today. The actual median wage today is $510, and the median houshold income is about $860)
Of course, there's a gold bubble. But I think the point is useful to make. The growth in the US economy has not gone to the majority US citizens.
Oh and yeah,we have weak inflation, not full deflation. So prices are rising, but lower than the 2% target inflation rate.
In other words, some prices rise, some fall. For some products it might make (microeconomic) sense to delay buying, leading to the (macroeconomic) reduced overall demand, furthering the deflation problem. It's not like there's a line where the government's averaging method says "zero inflation" and suddenly everything collapses, it's a transition where deflation can at some point become self-reinforcing.
It always cracks me up when the Republicans are whining about how much the Federal government spends on social welfare completely ignoring the "welfare states" like this one. Just take a look at this list
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2...
Actually yes. There's been a rapid deleveraging since the Great Recession. That has the same economic effect as over-saving, it pulls too much money out circulation too quickly. Apparently the stimulus replaced only about a third of that. But if you include state- and county-government spending, there's actually been a greater reduction in overall government spending than the size of the stimulus. So in effect, there's a reduction in private spending at the same time as a reduction in overall government spending. Result... well, look around.
The Fed has tried to off-set that by, in effect, printing money. But QE is an inefficient way to increase circulating money, so has to be about ten times as large as simple direct stimulus spending. This creates inflation-bait if the economy does start to recover, requiring higher interest rates than otherwise, which will slow or kill the recovery. And all so that a few political wankers could puff up their chests and crap on about "belt tightening" and "gummit debt" during their reelection campaigns.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Wages have been stagnant because a lot money has been transferred to non-wage benefits.
That's a myth. It came from a paper (from Heritage, IIRC) that assumed that every worker takes 100% of available benefits. Which is functionally impossible.
Somehow you managed to completely skip over the issue of selling US government debt and how that is used to finance deficit spending when there isn't enough tax revenue. You skipped over the US government borrowing other people's money and paying them interest.
Please read the writings of Warren Mosler, and on the topic of Modern Monetary Theory.
Mosler?
Warren Mosler, a Deficit Lover With a Following
Mr. Mosler’s ideas, which go under the label of “modern monetary theory,” or M.M.T., are clearly on the fringe, drawing skeptical reactions even from many liberal Keynesian economists who agree with some of his arguments. But they have attracted a growing following, flourishing on the Internet and in a handful of academic outposts, as he and others who share his thinking have made the case that austerity budgeting in the United States and in Europe is doing irreparable harm. .....
“They deny the fact that the government use of real resources can drive the real interest rate up,” said Mark Thoma, an economics professor and widely followed blogger who teaches at the University of Oregon. After delving into the technical details of modern monetary theory for a few minutes, he paused, then added, “I think it’s just nuts.” ....
“These ideas definitely aren’t disseminated through published academic journals,” said Stephanie Kelton, an economist at University of Missouri-Kansas City, who coined the term “deficit owls” to distinguish modern monetary theorists from “deficit hawks.” “It’s all on the Internet.”
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
There may not be currently.
In effect, from 1933 to the 1970s, there was a law specifically saying what you could no longer accept as payment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
This was done explicitly to let the Feds control the dollar and to not give the people a viable alternative.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I don't actually like MMT, but it is an accurate depiction of reality.
The implications of MMT are very unsettling if you've grown up with a classical view of economics.
Keynesians are discredited and irrelevant. They have no basis for their objections because they were never coherent to begin with. Keynesians have consistently failed to predict economic events or why their policies don't have the intended effects.
MMT isn't something you can understand in a few minutes. You can hear the basic arguments in a few minutes, but it takes a while to internalize and re-orient your thinking.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Even then, some things may be 4x more expensive, but I may be getting paid 5x more and other things may be 10,000x less expensive, like computers.
Okay, it looks like you're only referring to gold now, where in your earlier post you were speaking about the dollar being required to be accepted as legal tender. My previous response was to point out that the dollar is not required to be accepted.
Just another day in Paradise
That is absolutely ridiculous given the extremely high private and public debt levels. Of course, by manipulating people's psychology to try to get them to go deeper into debt, you can raise demand artificially and make corporations temporarily happy (often, overseas corporations). But eventually, the people taking on the debt will have to pay the price. And, as Obama's utterly failed stimulus program shows, people are getting smart to this kind of crap and they aren't buying it anymore.
We can use the vacuum test chamber to see how Time Warner Cable executives breathe at 100,000 feet altitude, film it and charge $1 pay per view. I'm thinking recovery of the 350 million won't take long.
Can we put some others in there too? I'm thinking a group of 535 (435 + 100) people from DC, plus perhaps some from just outside DC that work in some 3-letter agencies... We could probably make a fortune off showing them what "freedom" (from breathable atmosphere) really looks like.
He is costing us a million dollars per year - awesome! Maybe have him pay for it himself? Nooo... use the taxpayers' money.
I don't buy a new TV every week, I sure as hell do buy bread and gasoline though
Gasoline prices nosedived over the last year. Right now it's the cheapest it's been in a long while. What the fuck are YOU talking about?
Governments that rely on printing currency to repay debts or for general spending tend to end up in the history books (Weimar Republic) or the newspapers (Zimbabwe) as economic basket cases crippled by hyperinflation.
Didn't both those countries have large amounts of foreign currency debt, combined with a sudden collapse in supply of a key commodity or export (gold in Germany, grain in Zimbabwe) which prevented them from buying foreign currency to service their debt? This forced them to sell their own currency directly for foreign currency (to pay their debts) which caused a massive oversupply, which fuelled high inflation, which lowered the foreign-conversion value of their currency, which...
The US govt has issued solely own-currency fixed-interest Treasury Bonds. It has no other loans, let alone foreign currency loans. It therefore fails to meet the first criteria for hyperinflation. If the US suffered hyperinflation, it would be able to pay off its debt in a week, hence it cannot suffer debt-driven hyperinflation.
[Regular inflation, yes. Hyperinflation, no.]
Actually, the fiat dollar has value because you must pay your U.S. taxes in dollars. One can't pay taxes in bitcoins or seashells in the U.S.. Thus dollars have value by compulsory power of law. This taxation in dollars helps ensure that others use or hold the currency.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Misses the point. You have to pay taxes in dollars, so come tax time, everybody has to have some dollars. So while a business might not accept dollars, it will end up paying taxes in dollars...
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Those instances had external problems that led to inflation. war, destruction of production, etc.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Show me where that $100 million ends up in someone's savings account.
Show me where the government got the "$100 million worth of cars". Chances are that's who has the $100m.
(In the case of the actual cash-for-clunkers program, the money was paid to the car owners who turned in their cars. Which, in practice, meant it actually went to the auto and dealer industry. And it was $3 billion, not $100m.)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
These are technicalities. The treasury can mint platinum, but can't print money except through the bond process. However, congress has the constitutional power to make money at will.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Paying all its debts at once would inject too much currency into the economy at once, sure. Still we could be injecting a lot more without causing too much inflation. We have too much ability to produce products that we can rev up production to meet the increased demand.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Turn it into a some kind of combo quad-track bungee jump--they love all that g-force yahoo stuff down there.
After 300 million customers, it pays off...
You are misunderstanding. Government debt, is money in private hands.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Mod parent +Informative, please. Thanks for posting it.
Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy is absolutely gorgeous.
Not flawless (better said... not a complete exploration of the consequences), but an eye opener on what "fiat money" is, why is not an absolute evil and how to look at it in a non-dogmatic faith-based way.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
True. And while US politicians might not give a damn whether the Chinese hate us, that would devalue huge amounts of debt held by US retirees, banks, and small investors, and they do vote.
Printing money is, effectively, a tax on everybody who happens to hold money.
No wonder the conservatives fight as hard as possible to "starve the beast" even when doing so straves everybody else: after all, they are ahead in the race and don't like to be given a handicap.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Name the tower after the Senator. Boy, will he look foolish.
Computers are a horrible example, but things which don't change too much in terms of the amount of labor which has been put into them such as a loaf of bread has gone up perhaps 4x as much. Some companies have been trying to keep those prices down, but the costs to provide that product has gone up, hence why companies such as Hostess have gone bankrupt from the squeeze trying to keep prices reasonable, paying labor costs that have gone up with inflation, and paying for higher grain and raw prices.
You do tend to earn more money as you get older, gain more experience, and hopefully move up the chain of command and perhaps are put in charge of others. That isn't a fair comparison for inflation either but rather a comparison of wages and benefits of entry level workers just starting out.
How is this absurd? The value of a Dollar or a Euro is based purely upon faith alone. What you are observing if you exchange this fiat money for something else is the faith of others with regards to that money. It is a real faith none the less.
That those same individuals may in turn base their assumption of value of those pieces of paper or even bits in a computerized ledger upon the faith that others similarly have in that money is true, and the hope that this money may have value in the future, but that is about it. It only has actual value once the transaction has actually happened, at which point the money is no longer money but tangible goods or services which have been rendered on your behalf.
The taxation argument is a fair one, other than the corrupt nature of taxation in the first place. The taxation you are talking about also is with reference to the U.S.federal government, as some states & local governments do let you pay taxes in forms other than U.S. Dollars.
Still, if hyperinflation was to happen where trillion dollar notes were worth less than a piece of toilet paper, paying taxes would be similarly meaningless. What makes taxes work is that individuals have genuine faith that it can be used for something in the future and has some actual value.
NASA should rename the tower after Wicker, and hold a big press conference combining the naming ceremony and the commencement of mothballing, just to make it really clear.
Most types of currency are based on faith. Gold and sea shells both require faith that others are going to value them. Now if we moved to a chicken currency we wouldn't need faith. A chicken produces interest in the form of eggs, can always be turned into a chicken dinner and drives the need for grain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
people have far more faith in the value of the U.S. Dollar and the Euro than they do even in Jesus of Nazareth
There's a wedding coming up. I'll try to use some dollars to get food for the guests. Any thoughts about how to get the wine?
Total US non-govt public debt
Quarterly changes in US public debt
But I'm not saying that deleveraging by the public isn't good, I'm just saying that you have to have economic policies that understand the effect and protect the economy from the negatives. Just as you need to understand the effects of the original leveraging, and the effects of that; which people didn't.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
How is this absurd? The value of a Dollar or a Euro is based purely upon faith alone.
You don't have to believe that the dollar or Euro has value in order to exchange those units of currency for things that you do value.
This. Mississippi is not known for having poor people or minorities.
I sure would but you have to cross that personal security barrier first! People need to have a ce thousand in the bank so they can write a check to get furnace replaced in February when it fails. Only then can they start putting their extra savings into investments. It's easy for me and likely you to forget just how hard putting away even a few grand is for lots of people.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
LOL.
I just saw the lines and remembered the tune. Didn't even see such a horrible pun in there at all.
Thought it was one of those constant crazy comments we get around here, and I do remember seeing it at least a few dozen times at this point.
Paying all its debts at once would inject too much currency into the economy at once, sure. Still we could be injecting a lot more without causing too much inflation. We have too much ability to produce products that we can rev up production to meet the increased demand.
The CPI is already a bit high without driving up inflation by recklessly printing money. Our foreign debt is still over 5-times the actual US currency in circulation (the convoluted difference between currency and value). Just printing money to pay our foreign debtors over a period of 20-years would have a noticeable inflation impact.
There is some truth to the statement that the US needs to produce more, and boosting the GDP growth rate will help stave off the effects of inflation.
In the actual cash for clunkers, they spent $100 million administrative costs to destroy $140 million worth of cars, for which they paid $2.8 billion.
The $2.8 billion can be seen as a transfer to the car manufactures and dealers. The $140 million of cars that were destroyed went to no-one - they were destroyed. They COULD have been given to the less fortunate, or perhaps assign them to the parole office where people working to get a fresh start could use them to get to a job. Lots of things COULD have been done with that value, 700,000 could have received cars, but instead they were destroyed.
Had those 700,000 cars went to under privileged college freshmen as a bonus to the scholarship program, the program would benefit someone. Noone benefits from the destruction of perfectly usable transportation.
Additionally, with the actual program, the way the actual government does things, to qualify you had to be a) driving and old, cheap car and b) buy a brand new car. Do you know what happens when people who can afford an old car sign a $15,000 loan for a new car, in the middle of a recession? Reposession, ruined credit, and no way to get to work. That's what happens. Take a guess what percentage of cash for clunkers cars got repoed. On top of the billions of wasted money reported as the direct cost of the program, it also saddled those who could least afford it with debt they'd been avoiding, costing the economy another billion dollars.
If you and I choose to make a trade, you give me $X and I give you Y item, we make that deal because it works for both of us. It's a win-win, unless one of us is being stupid. When the government mandates that they are going to take your money and use it to destroy things, that's not a win for anybody.
When I was young, my Mom printed coupons for me in exchange for doing chores, which I could redeem for cookies from the cookie jar; my Mom never worried about running out of coupons.
Funny thing about those coupons, my family and I started trading them with each other. Like, I'd say, hey bro, I'll do the dishes tonight if you give me two of your coupons. Occasionally, we'd get too many coupons, and there wouldn't be enough cookies, and so we'd have all these coupons and no cookies to eat, except that my sister would have hoarded them all, and she'd tell us that she'd sell those cookies back to use for three coupons per cookie, three times the face value! So Mom would intervene and take the coupons back, or confiscate the cookies we couldn't stuff in our mouths first. Anyway, one time, Mom cut a deal. Instead of taking those coupons away from us, she'd borrow them from us for a week or two, and then give them back, except we'd get more. We thought it was a pretty good deal. We'd be like, hey where's the coupons you owe us, heh? Yeah, we turned Mom into a chronic debtor.
Still, we never did run out of coupons....
The A3 stand is designed to simulate very low ambient pressues at very high altitudes; that's why it's so big. The A3 hosts the structure and systems required to pull a near vacuum WITH a running rocket engine inside.
Most of the existing stands in the US are sea-level test stands for testing 1st stage engines that are ignited on the ground.... the new J-2X engines have already been tested on some of those stands in early testing (characterizing operation at low altitude).
An additional problem with the non-Stennis stands is that most other facilities in the US have had encroachment by civilian housing to such an extent that it's becoming too difficult to test at them without upset taxpayers/voters. The only US Govt facilities for rocket testing that have not suffered from this are Stennis (in the middle of a huge government land reserve) and Edwards (huge USAF facility in the high desert). It's doubtful that any large rocket engine will ever again be tested at MSFC
NOT a rocket ENGINE test stand; it's a STRUCTURAL test stand (you build a big thing like a rocket, heavily instrument it for stresses, strains, vibrations, etc and then place it in the structural stand and it gets shaken by computers using hydraulic rams - and you learn if the structure will fly, or fly apart)
The former shuttle engine stand at JSSC (Stennis) is a stand at the same facility as the new stand being mothballed and discussed, BUT the old stand and the new stand are fundamentally different; The old one tests at a fixed, low altitude (something like 100 ft above sea level) and the new one can be set to simulate very high altitudes so you can test the ignition and operation of an upper-stage engine.
There's a big difference between spending money on big science and tech projects that are to benefit the nation as a whole (only benefitting specific individuals as a side-effect) and projects designed to do NOTHING productive at all for the nation but simply used to transfer money by force from hard-working productive people to lazy drunks and pot-heads who care so little about their lives that they make no effort to improve them and will never contribute to making society better.
EVERY rocket engine test stand gets "designed for" the engine it will initially test (if you do otherwise, some "pork-fighting" politician or reporter will accuse you of wasting taxpayer money on boondoggle capabilities that will never be used). It's also true that we develop new rocket engines so infrequently that technology marches-on between each design, so there's no easy way to predict what a design you might want to test 30 years from now will even need. As a result, stands which are generally VERY durable (to handle the testing) and designed to last a very long time are simply re-fitted and custom adapted to any future generation of engine which is designed for the same operating conditions (some stands are for a single engine at sea level, some for multiple engines in close proximity at sea level, or this new one for a single air-started engine at extremely high altitude) - this is actually cheaper and more-efficient over the long term.
I guess the project is kept in business is because a lot of friends of Sen. Roger F. Wicker are making a lot of money if the tower is completed.. I don't mind if the tower is completed if they already have companies in line who are willing to use it, if not, the project should stop immediatly and IMHO the senator should be kicked out of office if he wants it to complete even though it is already known it will only costs money and doesn't do anything for research, because people like that shouldn't be in office in the first place...
The cost of living adjustments are flexible and political, to say the least. In reality, they are updated to higher and higher standards of living over time, which simply could get stopped.
1.1 ^ 14 = 3.79, so approximately a quadrupling.
It's no wonder that with those kinds of stupid beliefs you come up with policies "We need a 30% flat tax on all assholes that makes $500K or more a year, and tax at 50% any stock or trading incomes." The reason other people are doing economically better than you is because you are stupid and uneducated.
The discussion was simply about inflation: did prices increase 10% per year as claimed by the original web site. Obviously not, because prices on almost everything have not quadrupled in the last 14 years.
I've got to ask, though: did you actually ever graduate high school? Compound interest is 7th grade high school, even part of Common Core.
http://www.ixl.com/standards/c...
I'm flabbergasted that anybody capable of even turning on a computer fails such basic math.
Yes, I'm familiar with that data. I'm not sure what you're trying to prove though. US debt-to-income ratios are still way above the year 2000 levels, and that "deleveraging" is actually slower than the rate at which the debt was built up.
It is utter hubris to think anybody can "protect the economy from the negatives" of individual borrowing or spending decisions. In fact, all you accomplish with these policies is to hurt the economy, by tricking or forcing people into making decisions that they themselves would have concluded are bad for them, and usually by benefiting rent-seeking corporations. "Protecting the economy" is really just a fig leaf for crony capitalism.
Your point being what exactly?
I assume your convoluted reasoning is something like: "conservatives are wealthy and wealthy people hold a lot of money, so they don't like inflation because it erodes the value of their money". It's not that simple, though, because many assets that wealthy people hold (real estate, shares, etc.) aren't really affected by inflation, so they don't care much.
Inflation mostly affects people who have bought long term debt at fixed interest rates: banks, mortgage lenders, and pension funds. Wealthy people don't buy that stuff because it's not that profitable.
The Administration is trying to defund planetary science for pork like this?
The funny thing about fiat currencies is that the money is based upon pure faith of the religious kind. Indeed it seems funny that people have far more faith in the value of the U.S. Dollar and the Euro than they do even in Jesus of Nazareth, yet historically at least the objective validity of the existence of Jesus is on a much more firm ground philosophically than the value of the U.S. Dollar.
The current monetary policy of the Federal Reserve seems to suppose that this faith is going to be broken soon, which is the only thing that seems to explain what it is that they are doing.
Equivocate much? Having faith that Jesus of Nazareth existed and having a religious belief that he is the son of God are not the same thing.
no matter if it were a republican (low tax, low spend)
Ha, you're funny. As this article demonstrates, Republicans can spend (and/or waste) just as much, if not more than, Democrats. They just don't want to spend any of it on poor people or minorities.
If you're interested in balancing the budget, always vote for Tax-and-Spend instead of Don't-Tax-but-Spend.
no matter if it were a republican (low tax, low spend)
Ha, you're funny. As this article demonstrates, Republicans can spend (and/or waste) just as much, if not more than, Democrats. They just don't want to spend any of it on poor people or minorities.
Yeah, you were correct, right there until the last sentence, and then you had to go all MSNBC on it. It's funny to see people stereotype while pointing the finger at others.
I don't follow MSNBC. I don't consider myself a "Democrat". I dislike things done by both parties and I think that both parties play politics and work more towards sustaining themselves and their party than they are to working for the people. For me, it literally comes down to the lesser evil.
However, If you honestly believe that the Republicans core isn't actively trying to promote policies that will undermine the poor and minorities in this country, and that this is only a stereotype that comes from liberal media, then you have your head up your ass.
Both sides are hurting the poor and the minorities, but one of them actively is trying to do it.
I think we're missing the point here.
Tell me more about this "Tower of Pork" of which you speak . . .
So what percentage did get repo'd? I'd guess it was around half of the private-party purchases. Tho from the list of vehicle makes turned in (which someone posted in a prior discussion), it looked to me like it mostly benefited small business (contractors' trucks and the like).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
In China, this is called corruption. It wouldn't happen in China either. Even if it does, it'll be all on the front-page news and the top level management is prosecuted.
The cost of living adjustments are flexible and political, to say the least. In reality, they are updated to higher and higher standards of living over time, which simply could get stopped.
Not sure what you mean, as they haven't kept up with inflation, and thus put people into lower standards of living. My mother and mother-in-law are living on payments of about $1k/month...both divorcees with no additional income. Now, I'd be okay with lowering the amounts for people with other income sources (savings, pensions, etc.) like myself, but I do believe we need a safety net for those who really can't fend for themselves.
Just another day in Paradise
Well, now you've changed who we're discussing from "Republicans" to "Republicans core". I've got my own complaints about the way the party has been run for the last 15 or so years, but I still consider myself to be a fiscal conservative. I know plenty of Republicans who don't fit your statement, but then they wouldn't likely be part of the "core". I have a mother and mother-in-law living on their SS checks with no other sources of income (beside help from me). So, I completely understand that there needs to be a safety net for those in dire need. On the other hand, I see so much waste in government that it makes me want to puke, and yet they want more money???...F them. There are plenty of things to cut first. Put some money to work on infrastructure (one area i agree with Obama on), that will stimulate jobs and business. Obviously, more defense cuts need to occur, and I say that as a defense contractor. And, Congress needs to stop funding shit that the military doesn't want...Global Hawk for example. We could go on and on, but I think we're mostly in agreement, no?
Just another day in Paradise
That's debatable, since many of the items used in COLAs are of higher quality than they used to be.
There's a fine line between a safety net and a subsidized retirement plan. $1k/month is actually a pretty good amount to live on in many places. And I think it's reasonable to ask the question of why they didn't prepare more for their own retirement and why their former husbands aren't paying.
$1k in Fairfax County VA, where my mother-in-law is, won't get much at all, and she can't afford to move without help. My mom is in the Detroit suburbs, so somewhat better, but still needs help from me financially. If I didn't have to worry about them, I'd probably be able to retire right now.
I agree there's a fine line, and it should be based upon where you live, and what resources you have. As for them preparing, both are divorcees who got squat from former husbands. Mother-in-law worked into her 70s as a psychiatric nurse, but on her post divorce income couldn't really save anything. Nobody's hiring old nurses these days, though she's still able to do volunteer work, and gets some minor benefits from that. Mom, 75 and with a high school education, worked as a real estate agent, and still does occasionally, but the housing market in the Detroit area is crap, and most people don't want to deal with an old lady agent. Other work opportunities for her are next to nil.
Just another day in Paradise
thank you
Fairfax County is one of the most expensive places to live in the country; I wouldn't dream of living there myself. Moving to Lexington would cut her cost of living in half. She'd recoup the cost of moving within a few months from what she saves. You can loan her the money (about $1-2k). Or you can grab a U-Haul and just help her, which is what many kids do for their parents.
If she got nothing, that means she didn't bring anything into the marriage (which she would have gotten in full), and the couple didn't save for retirement during marriage either (which would have been split). So, in different words, she didn't bother saving for retirement and instead spent the money on living a nice life in some swanky area.
Post-divorce is too late to start saving. But if you do, the first thing to do is live extremely frugally. She should have moved out of Fairfax right away after her divorce and really cut costs.
My parents moved in their 70's to save money. I live in a cheap neighborhood in order to be able to save for retirement. I think it's wrong to ask me to take away money from my retirement savings in order to financially support your mother-in-law's lack of retirement planning and expensive choice of where to retire.
And if you want to give her a better retirement, why don't you give her a little extra money out of your own pocket or help her in other ways?
I said "Republican Core" because I'm not so naive to think that every sheep following the Republican Party is in favour of throwing all poor and minorities under the bus, and all the other ridiculousness that we see from the far right.
The problem with "Republicans" is that many of them actually see themselves as very moral, ethical, and compassionate people. In my experience, many of them are!
However, it's a moot point if the average "Republicans" is still backing this "Republican Core" that loudly proclaims that they are the party of "Christian values", while enacting policies that more closely reflect Ayn Rand.
How is this absurd? The value of a Dollar or a Euro is based purely upon faith alone.
You don't have to believe that the dollar or Euro has value in order to exchange those units of currency for things that you do value.
No, you need the religious kind of faith to receive them in the first place, except perhaps as a free gift that you don't care if it has any value in the first place. It is a pretty good assumption that you have this kind of faith if you already have this kind of fiat money and don't instantly throw it away as something worthless.
Yeah, unfortunately she'd be living out of range for us to help her around the house. It's a trade off.
Your evaluation of her lack of planning is baseless. Her husband was the primary partner in an architecture firm here. He's living nicely in retirement now...we still see him occasionally. She got screwed in the divorce process...rules vary wildly from state to state...I've been through it too (single dad after buying out my ex). He helped develop this "swanky area" back in the 70s and 80s. It wasn't so swanky back then when the divorce occurred. I think it's a bit much to ask for a working single woman to move away from an area where her two children live, and quit her job, only to hope to start fresh in a new area. One of the reasons I decided to move here in the early 80s was because I know that I'd make more income in a high cost area, and would retire into a low cost one....we've been planning that for a while. Oh, and trust me, we have given her money...my wife just wrote her a nice check last weekend because she's been putting off cataract surgery due to the cost. But all this aside, we can afford to help her, and yeah I'll retire later because of it, but there are plenty of people in much more dire circumstances, and without family to help them. Those are the ones who really need the safety net.
Just another day in Paradise
Well, now that simply depends on your view of economics. Mine is based mostly upon my own life experiences, having grown up with several family members who were small business owners. I know they're all anecdotal, but it becomes very real to you when you live it. All of them started with very little...
My grandfather started a small tool & die shop in Detroit near the end of WWII. Nothing big, but it was good enough to support a housewife and six kids.
My dad (not biological, but he raised me) started a specialty box company in the Detroit suburbs, making them for the auto industry. By the time he shut it down just a few years ago, he was living very comfortably...and passed from cancer just about a year ago.
Dad's lifelong friend from his days in the 82nd airborne, started a business and became a large distributor for Sharp down in FL.
My youngest uncle, a CPA by training, also ended up being a majority owner of a business that got bought up, making him rather wealthy.
And finally, there's myself. Coming out of the Air Force (we didn't have enough money for college) in the middle of one of the worst recorded recessions in '81, and about $1k to my name. I've done pretty well for a kid from the inner city.
So, go ahead and tell me about the poor and their lack of opportunities. I understand them, and can sympathize with a few who have it really hard, but most...not so much. I understand that we need safety nets...I have to help my own mother (she got nothing when dad passed...they weren't married, he left now will (his biological kids got everything), and MI has no common law marriage) and mother-in-law, both of whom live on their SS checks of about $1k/month. I've argued with others who would call it poor planning on their part, maybe so, but I understand that their chances to make it have passed...both are in their late 70s now. I understand that regulation is necessary for society to protect workers. I also understand a bit about over regulation, and that's where I agree with Rand.
Just another day in Paradise
if you already have this kind of fiat money and don't instantly throw it away as something worthless
Why would you throw it away when you can buy something that you do value with it instead? I think it is disingenuous to call it "religious kind of faith" when it simply works. I can have faith that I will somehow be alive after my death or that I won't ever spontaneously just fly up into space. One is based on hopeful feelings and one is based on concrete observation, not just during my lifetime, but of what we can see of the universe.
But I could characterize both as a "religious kind of faith", completely disregarding the differences between these two acts of faith.
This argument also ignores that the US government takes that fiat money as payment for tax debts. That gives it a concrete value even in the complete absence of faith.
Virginia's divorce laws seem pretty reasonable and don't just "screw" people. In any case, she knew who she was marrying and she knew the rules. Apparently, her husband managed to save and leave the marriage with a good retirement so she could have done the same.
She can live wherever she wants to if she can afford it. I think it's a bit much for her to ask others to pay for her choices, though. She chose to get married, she chose her husband, she chose to merge her finances, she chose to have kids, and she had a divorce. Those aren't things that just happen by accident, and many others have made choices that are less fun but more prudent.