Well, you just don't understand how money works, so there. See how easy it is to just make statements about other people without any justification for those statements?
I find it funny that you continue to accuse others of ignorance in the ways of money, yet you actually had to go to a class to learn about cost-benefit. And you aren't very good at it, either. People are constantly telling you how a car is a 'benefit' to them by allowing them to get to work, and you go on and on about how a car costs money, so it must be bad. Yet then you turn around and say it is better to replace a cheap tool (hammer) with a more expensive one (nail gun).
Since you never answered me before, I'll ask again: Are tools that help you make money good or bad?
Others will manipulate you in your ignorance.
Just because you say I'm ignorant doesn't automatically make it true.
Ah, name calling. The finest tool in the art of debate.
And why am I a 'moron' and 'stupid American' for making an informed decision about my transportation? It was simple: the amount of money I saved was so little that it wasn't worth wasting my time to sit on a bus for an extra hour or more a day. Where's the problem?
...who thinks that roads are all built for free.
Please point out where I said that roads are built for free.
Also, what exactly is it that you think those buses are driving around on? Sidewalks?
And trains and subways ride on tracks, which have to be built and maintained, just like a road.
You have to pay for buildings for maintaining the cars, employing people to repair them
I do? News to me.
That why it costs $500 for a few repairs on a car these days.
Except for when my car is under warranty. Or I just make the repair myself. Labor costs to me? Zero.
You don't pay for bus repairs.
Buses get repaired for free? Awesome.
Bus drivers drive a lot of people in a day, so that cost is spread out.
You know what I have to pay myself to drive my car around? Zero, which is less than whatever your 'spread out' cost is for the bus driver.
With your binary thinking and complete lack of ability to reason, you must be an American.
Oh, please. Get off your high-horse, and stop acting like you are so much smarter than everyone else.
So instead of paying $10k per year for a private car, you pay $1k per year to ride the subway/train.
I'm ashamed I have to share a country with a person as dumb as you. Your really think that the cost ratio of private to public transit is 10:1? I rode public transit for a lot of years, and switched back to driving my car because the cost difference was so negligible that it didn't make sense to add an hour or more to my daily commute to save so little. Never mind the fact that a majority of my bridge toll was going towards funding the same public transit that I rode before. Yes, you read that right. Not only did my bus ticket not cover the costs of operating the bus service, but they had to take from car drivers to make up the difference!!! So, even though I, as a car driver, was subsidizing the bus riders, the costs still came out almost even.
The cost of running that system is more than a single car, but since the train and tracks are shared by so many people, the per-person cost is far cheaper than paying for the purchase price, repair/maintenance costs, and fuel costs for a private car
Yeah, but to operate my car, I don't have to hire a driver, ticket salesperson, bureaucrats to run the union, buildings for all of these people to work in and store the buses and maintenance equipment, etc.
Do you sell your services as a carpenter, or do you rent the customer your hammer and come along as the operator of the hammer?
OK, so let's say I sell my services as a carpenter for $100 to nail in some boards to a fence. I make $100, and the fence boards get nailed in.
Now, let's say I rent my customer the hammer for $100, and I show up to 'operate' the hammer and nail some boards to a fence. I make $100, and the fence boards get nailed in.
So, the problem with your analogy is that there is no difference between the two scenarios, so the entire question was pointless.
It's just that you need to work on your understanding of microeconomics.
You need to work on your understanding of economics of any scale.
He said he is less likely to get the flu (from not being cramped in a small enclosed place with dozens of strangers). He never said he wouldn't ever get the flu.
Are you sure that you aren't actually enslaved to your car because you have no transportation choice?
Enslaved? What is your problem with cars? And having public transit as an option doesn't automatically 'free' you from your car. I had an hour+ commute each way for several years, and tried out the transit options, (which were actually pretty good). After a while, I realized that it cost nearly the same as driving my car, and it turned my 2-3 hours of driving into 4 hours sitting on buses. I quickly started carpooling, and it was far superior to taking the bus in every way. Yes, the car was far better than public transit [gasp].
If you were able to eliminate the cost of your car while remaining able to work and without suffering some other inconvenience, you would make more money, not less.
That's a big 'if' there. How do you propose he get to work?
Therefore, your car does the opposite of making a profit.
No, if his car allows him to get to work to make the money, it helps him make a profit. Example (all numbers pulled out of my arse):
Scenario 1: Own a car and drive to work
50k salary - 10k in annual auto expense = 40k profit
Scenario 2: Don't own a car and sit around at home wondering how to get to work
0k salary - 0k in annual auto expense = 0k profit
you will be manipulated by people who use your lack of understanding of economics against you.
Wow, you don't understand how expenses work as part of the profit equation, and you are calling out someone else as illiterate in the ways of economics?
It has been estimated that nationwide, the ultimate reach of the alleged conspirators extended to only about 10 percent of all transit systems - sixty-odd out of some six hundred - and yet virtually all the other 90 percent also got rid of trolleys (as happened with many of the tramcar systems in the British Isles and France)."
From your own link. You shouldn't state something as a fact if there is a lot of uncertainty about it.
Hm, I never thought of that. Seems like a dumb system to issue new debt to cover excess SS receipts, when they could have used the money to buy up existing treasuries on the open market for the SS trust. It wouldn't reduce the debt, but it would at least prevent the debt from growing and forcing even more interest payments on us.
...that was mostly intragovernmental debt (Social Security buying gov't bonds as they are required to do) and the public debt actually went down.
I actually did more research of my own, and found that they actually list the public debt and the 'total debt', but they always list the public debt as the 'official' number to make things look better.
And my actual point (many posts ago) wasn't a knock against Clinton, but to point out that even when everything was humming along nicely (booming/bubble? economy, no wars, somewhat high tax rates, etc), the government still had to borrow money. They will always want to spend more than they have, no matter the circumstances. It's just a modern disease that is a part of the federal government. Without a balanced budget constitutional amendment, this problem will continue until our finances implode.
you seemed to think that the surplus meant he had reduced the debt (i.e. a treasury suplus),
A budget surplus by definition would mean that the debt would be reduced. Let me give you an example:
My monthly expenses are $1,000. I only made $900. I borrow $100 to fill in the gap. I had a deficit of $100. My debt has gone up by $100.
Next month, my expenses are $1,000. I make $1,050. I have a surplus of $50. That $50 goes to pay back some of my debt, which has now gone down to $50.
If the government has money left over from revenues after paying its obligations, that's a surplus even if the overall debt increased.
If you have a surplus, what happened to that extra money? And why would you borrow more money that you don't need? I don't think you quite understand how budgets work.
Do a Google image search on deficit by year and think again.
I did, but what does that have to do with my post showing that the debt went up every year under Clinton? It doesn't offer any rebuttal to my original post, which is that the CBO accounting must be full of shit if the debt went up.
The debt increased, but he did balance the budget,..
Think for a second about why those two things can't be true. If you increase the debt, you had to borrow money. If you had to borrow money, it was because you spent more money than you took in. If you spent more money than you took in, you did not 'balance' the budget!
Even if you make the assumption that God is a fictional character, why wouldn't you capitalize his name? I don't go around typing sherlock holmes or hannibal lecter.
The point is that Clinton had a *budget* surplus - not that he reduced the debt.
Why didn't you just say that in the first place? And why did you emphasize *budget*? What other surplus would we be talking about?
But if he had a surplus, why did he borrow money (i.e., add to the national debt)? If you have a budget surplus, the surplus should go to paying down the debt, yet the debt went up. The accounting doesn't add up, and I suspect accounting gimmicks were used to make it look like he had balanced the budget, when in fact he hadn't.
Is that hard to understand?
The way you posted it originally? Yes, it was very difficult to understand.
a "budget surplus" means you took in more than you spent.
Really? Thanks.
Budgets are only for one year.
And the overall debt (in the handy little link that I put in my post) is listed year by year.... just like the budget.
A "treasury surplus" would mean the treasury has more money than it owes.
...which is not the case with the US treasury. It owes more than it has, which is the opposite of what you just said. I'm having trouble figuring out what the point of your post is.
Factcheck linked to some congressional budget info showing a 'surplus', but seeing as how the national debt went up each and every year under Clinton, I'm stumped as to how Factcheck thinks that he had a surplus in any given year. In fact, I sent an email to them to point out the treasury data seems to contradict the congressional budget info.
When it comes to accounting, you have to ignore the internal bullshit tricks, and look at the actual outcome. Enron claimed massive profits each and every year with their gimicks, but the end result was bankruptcy. The federal government can claim that there was a surplus, but if they had to borrow that year, then they spent more than they took in.
But my point still stands: a healthy economy will still have the government spending more than it takes in. Your gunshot/cut comparison is apt.. if you assume that the cut is a slow bleed that will still end up in death, just farther down the line.
And as to where, your entire post is presented as though 1.6T is a long-term running figure.
The 1.6T figure is the current estimate for the upcoming fiscal year. Here is my exact statement regarding that figure:
Seeing as we are running an annual deficit around 1.6 trillion,..
My statement only talks about right now, not some future date. Where are you getting this 'long-term' implication? I'd really like to know.
You even make fun of the notion that deficits this high will go away.
Where? Are you sure you are reading the correct post? I didn't make fun of anything in my post. Here is my entire post:
Even if we were to cut the defense budget completely, that would save less than a trillion dollars. The estimates for the Bush tax cuts run around 350 billion dollars. Seeing as we are running an annual deficit around 1.6 trillion, I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that trimming one and eliminating the other would get us 'in the black in no time'.
+5 insightfuls are handed out a little too readily it seems.
Every single assertion you have made regarding my post is completely fabricated. If you think otherwise please quote where my post says any of the things you have claimed.
Amazing that people here can be so daft as to forget that we have had deficits even in years when we weren't in a recession. I mean, seriously, how can you forget about that?
How can you, with a straight face, quote our current deficit figures as though they;re a long-term running trend?
Please point out where I said, hinted, or implied that our current deficits are any sort of 'long-term' trend.
The main cause of our economic problems is the recession.
Thanks, Captain Obvious! I didn't know that recessions caused economic problems.
As the economy improves, federal income will improve with it.
We've been running deficits since the 1950s. At no point in the last 60 years has our government been able to spend less than what they take in. Good economies, great economies, high taxes, low taxes, Republicans, Democrats... it hasn't mattered. At some point, you have to acknowledge the real source of the problem... out of control spending.
I know Fox has poisoned you. They tell you we're broke.
I don't watch cable news at all.
These two statements you made should be more than enough to prove that you are completely full of shit.
Even if we were to cut the defense budget completely, that would save less than a trillion dollars. The estimates for the Bush tax cuts run around 350 billion dollars. Seeing as we are running an annual deficit around 1.6 trillion, I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that trimming one and eliminating the other would get us 'in the black in no time'.
+5 insightfuls are handed out a little too readily it seems.
I'm always amazed that people think Clinton reduced the debt. He was reducing the deficit, not the debt. Debt continued to pile up under Clinton, just not quite as fast.
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Well, you just don't understand how money works, so there. See how easy it is to just make statements about other people without any justification for those statements?
I find it funny that you continue to accuse others of ignorance in the ways of money, yet you actually had to go to a class to learn about cost-benefit. And you aren't very good at it, either. People are constantly telling you how a car is a 'benefit' to them by allowing them to get to work, and you go on and on about how a car costs money, so it must be bad. Yet then you turn around and say it is better to replace a cheap tool (hammer) with a more expensive one (nail gun). Since you never answered me before, I'll ask again: Are tools that help you make money good or bad?
Others will manipulate you in your ignorance.
Just because you say I'm ignorant doesn't automatically make it true.
You're a moron, and another stupid American...
Ah, name calling. The finest tool in the art of debate.
And why am I a 'moron' and 'stupid American' for making an informed decision about my transportation? It was simple: the amount of money I saved was so little that it wasn't worth wasting my time to sit on a bus for an extra hour or more a day. Where's the problem?
...who thinks that roads are all built for free.
Please point out where I said that roads are built for free.
Also, what exactly is it that you think those buses are driving around on? Sidewalks?
And trains and subways ride on tracks, which have to be built and maintained, just like a road.
You have to pay for buildings for maintaining the cars, employing people to repair them
I do? News to me.
That why it costs $500 for a few repairs on a car these days.
Except for when my car is under warranty. Or I just make the repair myself. Labor costs to me? Zero.
You don't pay for bus repairs.
Buses get repaired for free? Awesome.
Bus drivers drive a lot of people in a day, so that cost is spread out.
You know what I have to pay myself to drive my car around? Zero, which is less than whatever your 'spread out' cost is for the bus driver.
With your binary thinking and complete lack of ability to reason, you must be an American.
Oh, please. Get off your high-horse, and stop acting like you are so much smarter than everyone else.
So instead of paying $10k per year for a private car, you pay $1k per year to ride the subway/train.
I'm ashamed I have to share a country with a person as dumb as you. Your really think that the cost ratio of private to public transit is 10:1? I rode public transit for a lot of years, and switched back to driving my car because the cost difference was so negligible that it didn't make sense to add an hour or more to my daily commute to save so little. Never mind the fact that a majority of my bridge toll was going towards funding the same public transit that I rode before. Yes, you read that right. Not only did my bus ticket not cover the costs of operating the bus service, but they had to take from car drivers to make up the difference!!! So, even though I, as a car driver, was subsidizing the bus riders, the costs still came out almost even.
The cost of running that system is more than a single car, but since the train and tracks are shared by so many people, the per-person cost is far cheaper than paying for the purchase price, repair/maintenance costs, and fuel costs for a private car
Yeah, but to operate my car, I don't have to hire a driver, ticket salesperson, bureaucrats to run the union, buildings for all of these people to work in and store the buses and maintenance equipment, etc.
I don't see the problem.
The problem was that the poster didn't understand that the comparison was to low speed rail, not air travel.
Low speed rail should be dirt cheap, especially someplace like China where much of the population is very poor.
It is. That was the point of the quoted article. No one is taking the expensive high speed trains, because the low speed trains are more economical.
My "analogy" was not strange or bad.
Well, yes it was. And here is why:
Do you sell your services as a carpenter, or do you rent the customer your hammer and come along as the operator of the hammer?
OK, so let's say I sell my services as a carpenter for $100 to nail in some boards to a fence. I make $100, and the fence boards get nailed in.
Now, let's say I rent my customer the hammer for $100, and I show up to 'operate' the hammer and nail some boards to a fence. I make $100, and the fence boards get nailed in.
So, the problem with your analogy is that there is no difference between the two scenarios, so the entire question was pointless.
It's just that you need to work on your understanding of microeconomics.
You need to work on your understanding of economics of any scale.
It would be a very bad manager that only considered a tool to be a liability.
Well, then you must be a bad manager, because in your other comments in this discussion, you said:
Your automobile is an expense that you bear as part of the cost of having employment.[snip]Therefore, your car does the opposite of making a profit.
So is a tool that helps you make a profit good or bad? You can't really seem to decide.
I pursued an MBA for a while some years ago.
Given some of your comments regarding costs, liabilities, profit, etc, that I've seen in this discussion, I can see why you stopped.
Are you sure that you aren't actually enslaved to your car because you have no transportation choice?
Enslaved? What is your problem with cars? And having public transit as an option doesn't automatically 'free' you from your car. I had an hour+ commute each way for several years, and tried out the transit options, (which were actually pretty good). After a while, I realized that it cost nearly the same as driving my car, and it turned my 2-3 hours of driving into 4 hours sitting on buses. I quickly started carpooling, and it was far superior to taking the bus in every way. Yes, the car was far better than public transit [gasp].
Train, subway, bike or a combination of them.
When did trains and subways become free? How is paying for public transit better than paying for a car?
or do you rent the customer your hammer and come along as the operator of the hammer?
That may be the strangest, and worst, attempt at some sort of analogy that I have ever seen on /. What the hell kind of question is that?
The hammer is an expense which a carpenter must bear as a cost of doing business.
...and my car is a cost I must bear as a cost of making a salary.
If you were able to eliminate the cost of your car while remaining able to work and without suffering some other inconvenience, you would make more money, not less.
That's a big 'if' there. How do you propose he get to work?
Therefore, your car does the opposite of making a profit.
No, if his car allows him to get to work to make the money, it helps him make a profit. Example (all numbers pulled out of my arse):
Scenario 1: Own a car and drive to work
50k salary - 10k in annual auto expense = 40k profit
Scenario 2: Don't own a car and sit around at home wondering how to get to work
0k salary - 0k in annual auto expense = 0k profit
you will be manipulated by people who use your lack of understanding of economics against you.
Wow, you don't understand how expenses work as part of the profit equation, and you are calling out someone else as illiterate in the ways of economics?
It has been estimated that nationwide, the ultimate reach of the alleged conspirators extended to only about 10 percent of all transit systems - sixty-odd out of some six hundred - and yet virtually all the other 90 percent also got rid of trolleys (as happened with many of the tramcar systems in the British Isles and France)."
From your own link. You shouldn't state something as a fact if there is a lot of uncertainty about it.
...the cheapest air ticket I could find was 1200 Yuan.
Fascinating, but completely irrelevant. The quote from the article was comparing high speed rail to low speed rail, not air travel:
"Tickets for high-speed trains can be twice as expensive as the highest-class tickets on regular-speed trains."
Because doing a quick check, the price is 490 Yuan, not 469!
Um, it is possible that the price has changed since the article was written....
Hm, I never thought of that. Seems like a dumb system to issue new debt to cover excess SS receipts, when they could have used the money to buy up existing treasuries on the open market for the SS trust. It wouldn't reduce the debt, but it would at least prevent the debt from growing and forcing even more interest payments on us.
...that was mostly intragovernmental debt (Social Security buying gov't bonds as they are required to do) and the public debt actually went down.
I actually did more research of my own, and found that they actually list the public debt and the 'total debt', but they always list the public debt as the 'official' number to make things look better.
And my actual point (many posts ago) wasn't a knock against Clinton, but to point out that even when everything was humming along nicely (booming/bubble? economy, no wars, somewhat high tax rates, etc), the government still had to borrow money. They will always want to spend more than they have, no matter the circumstances. It's just a modern disease that is a part of the federal government. Without a balanced budget constitutional amendment, this problem will continue until our finances implode.
you seemed to think that the surplus meant he had reduced the debt (i.e. a treasury suplus),
A budget surplus by definition would mean that the debt would be reduced. Let me give you an example:
My monthly expenses are $1,000. I only made $900. I borrow $100 to fill in the gap. I had a deficit of $100. My debt has gone up by $100.
Next month, my expenses are $1,000. I make $1,050. I have a surplus of $50. That $50 goes to pay back some of my debt, which has now gone down to $50.
If the government has money left over from revenues after paying its obligations, that's a surplus even if the overall debt increased.
If you have a surplus, what happened to that extra money? And why would you borrow more money that you don't need? I don't think you quite understand how budgets work.
Do a Google image search on deficit by year and think again.
I did, but what does that have to do with my post showing that the debt went up every year under Clinton? It doesn't offer any rebuttal to my original post, which is that the CBO accounting must be full of shit if the debt went up.
The debt increased, but he did balance the budget,..
Think for a second about why those two things can't be true. If you increase the debt, you had to borrow money. If you had to borrow money, it was because you spent more money than you took in. If you spent more money than you took in, you did not 'balance' the budget!
Even if you make the assumption that God is a fictional character, why wouldn't you capitalize his name? I don't go around typing sherlock holmes or hannibal lecter.
The point is that Clinton had a *budget* surplus - not that he reduced the debt.
Why didn't you just say that in the first place? And why did you emphasize *budget*? What other surplus would we be talking about?
But if he had a surplus, why did he borrow money (i.e., add to the national debt)? If you have a budget surplus, the surplus should go to paying down the debt, yet the debt went up. The accounting doesn't add up, and I suspect accounting gimmicks were used to make it look like he had balanced the budget, when in fact he hadn't.
Is that hard to understand?
The way you posted it originally? Yes, it was very difficult to understand.
Not really:
Not really what?
a "budget surplus" means you took in more than you spent.
Really? Thanks.
Budgets are only for one year.
And the overall debt (in the handy little link that I put in my post) is listed year by year.... just like the budget.
A "treasury surplus" would mean the treasury has more money than it owes.
...which is not the case with the US treasury. It owes more than it has, which is the opposite of what you just said. I'm having trouble figuring out what the point of your post is.
No he didn't. I'll see your factcheck and raise you a treasurydirect:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm
Factcheck linked to some congressional budget info showing a 'surplus', but seeing as how the national debt went up each and every year under Clinton, I'm stumped as to how Factcheck thinks that he had a surplus in any given year. In fact, I sent an email to them to point out the treasury data seems to contradict the congressional budget info.
When it comes to accounting, you have to ignore the internal bullshit tricks, and look at the actual outcome. Enron claimed massive profits each and every year with their gimicks, but the end result was bankruptcy. The federal government can claim that there was a surplus, but if they had to borrow that year, then they spent more than they took in.
And as to where, your entire post is presented as though 1.6T is a long-term running figure.
The 1.6T figure is the current estimate for the upcoming fiscal year. Here is my exact statement regarding that figure:
Seeing as we are running an annual deficit around 1.6 trillion,..
My statement only talks about right now, not some future date. Where are you getting this 'long-term' implication? I'd really like to know.
You even make fun of the notion that deficits this high will go away.
Where? Are you sure you are reading the correct post? I didn't make fun of anything in my post. Here is my entire post:
Even if we were to cut the defense budget completely, that would save less than a trillion dollars. The estimates for the Bush tax cuts run around 350 billion dollars. Seeing as we are running an annual deficit around 1.6 trillion, I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that trimming one and eliminating the other would get us 'in the black in no time'. +5 insightfuls are handed out a little too readily it seems.
Every single assertion you have made regarding my post is completely fabricated. If you think otherwise please quote where my post says any of the things you have claimed.
How can you, with a straight face, quote our current deficit figures as though they;re a long-term running trend?
Please point out where I said, hinted, or implied that our current deficits are any sort of 'long-term' trend.
The main cause of our economic problems is the recession.
Thanks, Captain Obvious! I didn't know that recessions caused economic problems.
As the economy improves, federal income will improve with it.
We've been running deficits since the 1950s. At no point in the last 60 years has our government been able to spend less than what they take in. Good economies, great economies, high taxes, low taxes, Republicans, Democrats... it hasn't mattered. At some point, you have to acknowledge the real source of the problem... out of control spending.
I know Fox has poisoned you. They tell you we're broke.
I don't watch cable news at all.
These two statements you made should be more than enough to prove that you are completely full of shit.
Even if we were to cut the defense budget completely, that would save less than a trillion dollars. The estimates for the Bush tax cuts run around 350 billion dollars. Seeing as we are running an annual deficit around 1.6 trillion, I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that trimming one and eliminating the other would get us 'in the black in no time'.
+5 insightfuls are handed out a little too readily it seems.
I'm always amazed that people think Clinton reduced the debt. He was reducing the deficit, not the debt. Debt continued to pile up under Clinton, just not quite as fast.
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm
The last time the debt went down was around 1951.