I would love it if they did take NK. Instead of having to worry about a relatively stable nuclear power plus a wildly unstable nuclear power, we'd only have to worry about one relatively stable nuclear power. Conditions would improve quite a bit for NK's citizens, too. (Of course, conditions for NK's citizens would improve even more if NK peacefully reunified with SK.)
I wonder what kind of weirdos would step into the vacuum left by a KJ-U defeat, though.
Why allow a weirdo to step in? When Hirohito was defeated, Douglas MacArthur stepped into the vacuum, and did a first-rate job.
I would also note that the U.S. wrote Japan's post-war constitution. This has worked out extremely well for everyone. The Japanese respect their constitution, and don't seem to mind that it was written by occupiers. We didn't go with that tried-and-true approach in Iraq; their new constitution was wholly written by Iraqis. And the results are not so great (a marginal, fragile democracy).
"we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea"
If this is true, they have been invited by the leader of South Korea. Because the formal name for South Korea is "Republic of Koreaa" and the formal name for North Korea is "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (DPRK).
The irony of the situation is quite similar to how East Germany was known as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR).
Baseline budgeting has to do with how budget proposals are drafted and presented, it doesn't mean that if no legislative action is taken an appropriation automatically remains in effect indefinitely.
Baseline budgeting creates budget proposals in which every program gets an increase, by default. Effectively, this does mean that most appropriations remain in effect indefinitely -- and at ever-increasing levels -- because if the legislators don't go out of their way to reduce appropriations for particular programs, the increases sail right through.
I'd much prefer a process in which every program is assumed to be increasing in efficiency -- so by default, it gets an annual decrease. If it seeks to keep its appropriations the same (let alone to increase them), the program's director must explain why he or she failed to improve its efficiency in the past year, and how that failure will be rectified in the coming year.
The automatic increases in baseline budgeting are a self-fullfilling prophecy that every program is decreasing in efficiency. We taxpayers deserve much better from government officials who purport to be professional managers.
When I started looking a bit more closely at this, it isn't a cut at all. It is like you said...only a reduction in spending.
See that? You grasped the truth for a second, then you immediately fell back into the oversimplified rhetoric the media is spewing.
It's not a reduction in spending at all; it's an increase in spending -- but the increase happens to be not enormous as some had hoped for.
And by "some," I'm talking about those for whom no amount of government control over our resources is too much.
Obama got his tax increase....
Yes, and already everone has forgotten what Obama pledged during the re-election campaign: "balanced" deficit reduction that consists of $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 of new revenue. In December, the president received $600 billion in new taxes, which should now be matched with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, by his definition of balance. He has proposed no such cuts. In fact, he has only proposed even more spending increases.
sweep EVERYONE out of Washington
Why would you want to sweep out the few who give us straight talk about how sequestration isn't a spending cut at all?
The most extreme plan to balance the budget is not at all extreme. Connie Mack's "Penny Plan" proposes six annual tiny 1% cuts that would allow revenue to catch up with spending. You can see Lanny Davis, a self-proclaimed liberal, praise the plan here.
I work on a government contract, and I can tell you it would be easy to improve delivery of government services, even as those 1% cuts are being absorbed. (I know that my productivity increases by more than 1% every year. And if they would stop allowing people like me to stay at the Ritz-Carlton while traveling, bang, you've got a huge savings on the contract.)
Why some economists recommendation of "printing money" to solve financial problems works at least for the USA is because the US dollar is used by the majority of countries in the world to buy and sell petroleum, wheat, CPUs, edible oils, milk, manufacturing equipment, toys, etc from each other.
I'm skeptical. If Italy buys a tanker full of oil from Kuwait, and pays in US dollars, how does that transaction transfer wealth to the USA? How would the USA be worse off if Italy had paid with Euros?
If using dollars constitues a tax paid to the U.S., why do other countries voluntarily subject themselves to that tax, when they could easily avoid it by switching to a different currency?
And finally, if the USA is in the sorry state it's in, in spite of having "taxed the rest of the world" for a number of decades, that makes the USA look especially incompetent, economically.
Yes, someday the supply of BTC will stop increasing. At that time, deflation will happen if demand for BTC continues to increase. If deflation happens, people will tend to hang on to their BTCs instead of spending them.
But you can't say there is increasing demand for a currency that nobody spends. An equilibrium will be reached. And so, this system self-regulates away the problem of deflation, does it not?
Wadhwa's proposal is "smart foreign students graduating with STEM degrees from U.S. universities" before "randomly selected high-school graduates from abroad." Yes, high-school graduates are relatively unskilled, compared to smart people with STEM degrees. Never once did Wadhwa bring up a specific ethnicity. theodp keeps injecting ethnicity.
To say that Wadhwa's proposal "boils down to techies-before-Latinos" is to say that Latino culture produces far fewer smart people with STEM degrees than other cultures. (To whatever extent that this is true, it's not the fault of the U.S., and the U.S. has no obligation to try to remedy the deficiencies of cultures outside of its borders.)
theodp wrote, "should Gutierrez cede to Wadhwa's techies-before-Latinos proposal?"
I can't believe theodb equated being Latino with being unskilled! I know several highly-skilled Latinos who would object to that. I object to that.
But if you want to rephrase the statement by removing the unfortunate ethnic slur: "should highly-skilled immigrants receive preference over unskilled immigrants," I would agree wholeheartedly. The last thing this economy needs is more unskilled immigrants.
Emma Lazarus did us a huge disservice when she wrote "Give me... the wretched refuse of your teeming shore," because now leftists think it's noble to recruit unskilled immigrants. But this is not the 18th century, when infrastructure was being expanded like crazy and there was huge demand for anyone able to pound in a railroad spike. It's not noble. All you end up with is a nation full of wretched refuse.
Harvard is a highly selective institution. Can you imagine what would happen to its reputation and status if it started allowing high-school dropouts to matriculate? For some strange reason, leftists aren't urging Harvard to accept wretched refuse, the way they are urging their country to do so.
how can the deeply religious be convinced (or reassured) that accepting what science teaches does not require rejecting their faith?
Don't trouble the good doctor with this bogus question. I'm a deeply religions person who accepts what science teaches. Your mistake is assuming that all, or even most, people of faith are luddites who need convincing, like your aunts and uncles. In fact, most are not.
A few years ago, the media touted Dean Kamen as a great inventor. Sure, his Segway didn't change the world a whole lot, but he was supposed to follow that up with super-efficient Stirling engines, which would power hybrid cars and purify water for third-worlders.
Whatever became of that? Nothing, as far as I can tell. I'd love it if some slashdotter could provide information to the contrary.
The average person today has far more lesiure time than ever before in human history. Medieval serfs had to spend every daylight hour toiling in the fields, 7 days a week, just to eke out a subsistence-level income.
Could somebody who actually knows something about 3D printing comment on the suitability of this material for a phone case? How rigid and/or brittle is the material that comes out of a 3D printer? Is it actually going to offer substantial protection to a phone? Is it durable; will it become scratched, warped, or discolored sooner than more conventional materials?
I haven't heard anyone call SS a "hammock," but I have heard more than one report of low-income housing being built with luxuries such as granite countertops, which most of the taxpayers paying for it don't have themselves. Do you condone that? That truly is getting into "hammock" territory.
If SS had been privatized a few decades ago, it would stand on a foundation of solid assets, as opposed to its current $20.5 trillion unfunded liability. What would be so horrible about that?
Now, back to my original question that you haven't addressed:
It would be possible to improve delivery of safety-net services even while absorbing the 1% cuts of the "Penny Plan." Given that the Republicans are too timid to endorse even those tiny cuts, how can an accusation of wanting to "take away the safety net" have any credibility whatsoever?
You're right, but it's sad. The shuttle (and military programs like the F-35) wouldn't have been so expensive if assembled where it made economic sense to do so, instead of in the districts of the gladhanding-est congresscritters. If we could somehow terminate all wasteful pork projects, it would be such a boon to the economy that even those who directly benefit from the pork would be better off without it.
The other day I heard the umpteenth special interest group appeal to me to appeal to my congresscritter to not cut funding for some "vital" program, and it occurred to me that instead of being individuals that do and create and achieve, we've become a nation of squeaky wheels. (If each of these thousands of special interest groups convinces thousands of citizens to beg for funding, imagine what a nightmare it must be to be an elected official these days. While being bombarded with a constant cacophony of squeaking wheels -- you and your staff must politely listen and acknowledge each squeak -- how can one ever hope to concentrate on making sound policy? You can't, and that explains a lot. Worse, some leaders actually like being the figure to whom the squeaky wheels complain, and they encourage more squeaking.) The adage, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease," is true if only one wheel is squeaking. If 200 million wheels are squeaking, the mechanic will rightly say "screw this" and go home.
The problem of waste storage is the main objection to nuclear power. Some of our leaders don't want that problem to be solved (either by Yucca or by breeder reactors), because they don't want that objection to be overcome.
Never mind that nuclear power is the ultimate in green energy (no CO2 emissions, etc.); they oppose nuclear power in all forms. (Maybe they had proto-hippie parents who filled their minds with tales of glowing three-eyed fish.) If it's not an anemically low-energy-density source that can never hope to meet the needs of an energy-intensive civilization -- i.e., if it's not wind or solar -- it doesn't meet their definition of green.
Even Reagan would fail to meet most of the current Republican agenda
If you're going to make an assertion like that, please back it up. How, specifically, did Reagan's views differ from "the current Republican agenda"? (If you're talking about a non-tea-party Republican like Boehner, I can see it; Reagan's deficits were probably much too small for Boehner's liking.)
People can't believe in tax cuts for corporates and the rich
"Republicans want tax cuts for the rich" is a mantra you hear repeated endlessly by Democrats, and also in the media (which is largely the same thing). But in fact, the Bush tax cuts reduced everyone's rate, not just the rich. It's very telling that only in recent weeks, while trying to stir up fiscal cliff fears, has Obama begun to tell the truth; regarding expiration of the Bush tax cuts, he warns that "everyone's taxes will go up on January 1." (How can that be, Mr. President -- I thought those tax cuts were only for the rich?!)
You claim that Republicans lost because they said "we're going to take your safety net away."
There's just one problem with that. No Republican has said that. No Republican has even proposed significant cuts in the social safety net.
The most extreme Republican plan to balance the budget is not at all extreme. Connie Mack's "Penny Plan" proposes six annual tiny 1% cuts that would allow revenue to catch up with spending. You can see Lanny Davis, a self-proclaimed liberal, praise the plan here.
I work on a government contract, and I can tell you it would be easy to eliminate government waste such that delivery of safety-net services improves, even as those 1% cuts are being absorbed. (I know that my productivity increases by more than 1% every year. And if they would stop allowing people like me to stay at the Ritz-Carlton while traveling, bang, you've got a huge savings on the contract.)
Mind you, the "Penny Plan" never stood a chance because most Republican congresscritters are scared to endorse even these tiny cuts.
Would you allow that perhaps Republicans lost, not because they said they would take away the safety net (they have not said that), but because the media spreads the false perception that Republicans want to slash the safety net?
If you won't allow that, then please explain how you justify your assertion that Republicans say "we're going to take your safety net away," when not one of them has said that.
Slashdot Mirror
China would love the excuse to outright take NK.
I would love it if they did take NK. Instead of having to worry about a relatively stable nuclear power plus a wildly unstable nuclear power, we'd only have to worry about one relatively stable nuclear power. Conditions would improve quite a bit for NK's citizens, too. (Of course, conditions for NK's citizens would improve even more if NK peacefully reunified with SK.)
I wonder what kind of weirdos would step into the vacuum left by a KJ-U defeat, though.
Why allow a weirdo to step in? When Hirohito was defeated, Douglas MacArthur stepped into the vacuum, and did a first-rate job.
I would also note that the U.S. wrote Japan's post-war constitution. This has worked out extremely well for everyone. The Japanese respect their constitution, and don't seem to mind that it was written by occupiers. We didn't go with that tried-and-true approach in Iraq; their new constitution was wholly written by Iraqis. And the results are not so great (a marginal, fragile democracy).
"we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea"
If this is true, they have been invited by the leader of South Korea. Because the formal name for South Korea is "Republic of Koreaa" and the formal name for North Korea is "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (DPRK).
The irony of the situation is quite similar to how East Germany was known as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR).
Baseline budgeting has to do with how budget proposals are drafted and presented, it doesn't mean that if no legislative action is taken an appropriation automatically remains in effect indefinitely.
Baseline budgeting creates budget proposals in which every program gets an increase, by default. Effectively, this does mean that most appropriations remain in effect indefinitely -- and at ever-increasing levels -- because if the legislators don't go out of their way to reduce appropriations for particular programs, the increases sail right through.
I'd much prefer a process in which every program is assumed to be increasing in efficiency -- so by default, it gets an annual decrease. If it seeks to keep its appropriations the same (let alone to increase them), the program's director must explain why he or she failed to improve its efficiency in the past year, and how that failure will be rectified in the coming year.
The automatic increases in baseline budgeting are a self-fullfilling prophecy that every program is decreasing in efficiency. We taxpayers deserve much better from government officials who purport to be professional managers.
When I started looking a bit more closely at this, it isn't a cut at all. It is like you said...only a reduction in spending.
See that? You grasped the truth for a second, then you immediately fell back into the oversimplified rhetoric the media is spewing.
It's not a reduction in spending at all; it's an increase in spending -- but the increase happens to be not enormous as some had hoped for.
And by "some," I'm talking about those for whom no amount of government control over our resources is too much.
Obama got his tax increase....
Yes, and already everone has forgotten what Obama pledged during the re-election campaign: "balanced" deficit reduction that consists of $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 of new revenue. In December, the president received $600 billion in new taxes, which should now be matched with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, by his definition of balance. He has proposed no such cuts. In fact, he has only proposed even more spending increases.
sweep EVERYONE out of Washington
Why would you want to sweep out the few who give us straight talk about how sequestration isn't a spending cut at all?
The most extreme plan to balance the budget is not at all extreme. Connie Mack's "Penny Plan" proposes six annual tiny 1% cuts that would allow revenue to catch up with spending. You can see Lanny Davis, a self-proclaimed liberal, praise the plan here.
I work on a government contract, and I can tell you it would be easy to improve delivery of government services, even as those 1% cuts are being absorbed. (I know that my productivity increases by more than 1% every year. And if they would stop allowing people like me to stay at the Ritz-Carlton while traveling, bang, you've got a huge savings on the contract.)
Why some economists recommendation of "printing money" to solve financial problems works at least for the USA is because the US dollar is used by the majority of countries in the world to buy and sell petroleum, wheat, CPUs, edible oils, milk, manufacturing equipment, toys, etc from each other.
I'm skeptical. If Italy buys a tanker full of oil from Kuwait, and pays in US dollars, how does that transaction transfer wealth to the USA? How would the USA be worse off if Italy had paid with Euros?
If using dollars constitues a tax paid to the U.S., why do other countries voluntarily subject themselves to that tax, when they could easily avoid it by switching to a different currency?
And finally, if the USA is in the sorry state it's in, in spite of having "taxed the rest of the world" for a number of decades, that makes the USA look especially incompetent, economically.
Yes, someday the supply of BTC will stop increasing. At that time, deflation will happen if demand for BTC continues to increase. If deflation happens, people will tend to hang on to their BTCs instead of spending them.
But you can't say there is increasing demand for a currency that nobody spends. An equilibrium will be reached. And so, this system self-regulates away the problem of deflation, does it not?
Sadly, it seems like BTC derives value not so much from trust placed in it, but from the way people have lost trust in the traditional alternatives.
You can pay your rent in BTC if your landlord chooses to accept them, and you can't if your landlord doesn't.
When the supply of BTCs stops increasing -- assuming demand for BTCs continues to increase -- you're correct, there will be deflation.
And deflation means that all existing BTCs will gain in purchasing power.
How exactly does that constitute the "collapse" of BTC?
16 months ago, Robert Zubrin wrote an essay exposing Obama's real intentions regarding NASA.
Wadhwa's proposal is "smart foreign students graduating with STEM degrees from U.S. universities" before "randomly selected high-school graduates from abroad." Yes, high-school graduates are relatively unskilled, compared to smart people with STEM degrees. Never once did Wadhwa bring up a specific ethnicity. theodp keeps injecting ethnicity.
To say that Wadhwa's proposal "boils down to techies-before-Latinos" is to say that Latino culture produces far fewer smart people with STEM degrees than other cultures. (To whatever extent that this is true, it's not the fault of the U.S., and the U.S. has no obligation to try to remedy the deficiencies of cultures outside of its borders.)
theodp wrote, "should Gutierrez cede to Wadhwa's techies-before-Latinos proposal?"
I can't believe theodb equated being Latino with being unskilled! I know several highly-skilled Latinos who would object to that. I object to that.
But if you want to rephrase the statement by removing the unfortunate ethnic slur: "should highly-skilled immigrants receive preference over unskilled immigrants," I would agree wholeheartedly. The last thing this economy needs is more unskilled immigrants.
Emma Lazarus did us a huge disservice when she wrote "Give me... the wretched refuse of your teeming shore," because now leftists think it's noble to recruit unskilled immigrants. But this is not the 18th century, when infrastructure was being expanded like crazy and there was huge demand for anyone able to pound in a railroad spike. It's not noble. All you end up with is a nation full of wretched refuse.
Harvard is a highly selective institution. Can you imagine what would happen to its reputation and status if it started allowing high-school dropouts to matriculate? For some strange reason, leftists aren't urging Harvard to accept wretched refuse, the way they are urging their country to do so.
how can the deeply religious be convinced (or reassured) that accepting what science teaches does not require rejecting their faith?
Don't trouble the good doctor with this bogus question. I'm a deeply religions person who accepts what science teaches. Your mistake is assuming that all, or even most, people of faith are luddites who need convincing, like your aunts and uncles. In fact, most are not.
A few years ago, the media touted Dean Kamen as a great inventor. Sure, his Segway didn't change the world a whole lot, but he was supposed to follow that up with super-efficient Stirling engines, which would power hybrid cars and purify water for third-worlders.
Whatever became of that? Nothing, as far as I can tell. I'd love it if some slashdotter could provide information to the contrary.
The average person today has far more lesiure time than ever before in human history. Medieval serfs had to spend every daylight hour toiling in the fields, 7 days a week, just to eke out a subsistence-level income.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Could somebody who actually knows something about 3D printing comment on the suitability of this material for a phone case? How rigid and/or brittle is the material that comes out of a 3D printer? Is it actually going to offer substantial protection to a phone? Is it durable; will it become scratched, warped, or discolored sooner than more conventional materials?
The TenFourFox Development blog is pretty fascinating, describing all the tricks used to keep Firefox running on PPC, right up to Firefox 17.
I haven't heard anyone call SS a "hammock," but I have heard more than one report of low-income housing being built with luxuries such as granite countertops, which most of the taxpayers paying for it don't have themselves. Do you condone that? That truly is getting into "hammock" territory.
If SS had been privatized a few decades ago, it would stand on a foundation of solid assets, as opposed to its current $20.5 trillion unfunded liability. What would be so horrible about that?
Now, back to my original question that you haven't addressed:
It would be possible to improve delivery of safety-net services even while absorbing the 1% cuts of the "Penny Plan." Given that the Republicans are too timid to endorse even those tiny cuts, how can an accusation of wanting to "take away the safety net" have any credibility whatsoever?
You're right, but it's sad. The shuttle (and military programs like the F-35) wouldn't have been so expensive if assembled where it made economic sense to do so, instead of in the districts of the gladhanding-est congresscritters. If we could somehow terminate all wasteful pork projects, it would be such a boon to the economy that even those who directly benefit from the pork would be better off without it.
The other day I heard the umpteenth special interest group appeal to me to appeal to my congresscritter to not cut funding for some "vital" program, and it occurred to me that instead of being individuals that do and create and achieve, we've become a nation of squeaky wheels. (If each of these thousands of special interest groups convinces thousands of citizens to beg for funding, imagine what a nightmare it must be to be an elected official these days. While being bombarded with a constant cacophony of squeaking wheels -- you and your staff must politely listen and acknowledge each squeak -- how can one ever hope to concentrate on making sound policy? You can't, and that explains a lot. Worse, some leaders actually like being the figure to whom the squeaky wheels complain, and they encourage more squeaking.) The adage, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease," is true if only one wheel is squeaking. If 200 million wheels are squeaking, the mechanic will rightly say "screw this" and go home.
The problem of waste storage is the main objection to nuclear power. Some of our leaders don't want that problem to be solved (either by Yucca or by breeder reactors), because they don't want that objection to be overcome.
Never mind that nuclear power is the ultimate in green energy (no CO2 emissions, etc.); they oppose nuclear power in all forms. (Maybe they had proto-hippie parents who filled their minds with tales of glowing three-eyed fish.) If it's not an anemically low-energy-density source that can never hope to meet the needs of an energy-intensive civilization -- i.e., if it's not wind or solar -- it doesn't meet their definition of green.
Even Reagan would fail to meet most of the current Republican agenda
If you're going to make an assertion like that, please back it up. How, specifically, did Reagan's views differ from "the current Republican agenda"? (If you're talking about a non-tea-party Republican like Boehner, I can see it; Reagan's deficits were probably much too small for Boehner's liking.)
People can't believe in tax cuts for corporates and the rich
"Republicans want tax cuts for the rich" is a mantra you hear repeated endlessly by Democrats, and also in the media (which is largely the same thing). But in fact, the Bush tax cuts reduced everyone's rate, not just the rich. It's very telling that only in recent weeks, while trying to stir up fiscal cliff fears, has Obama begun to tell the truth; regarding expiration of the Bush tax cuts, he warns that "everyone's taxes will go up on January 1." (How can that be, Mr. President -- I thought those tax cuts were only for the rich?!)
You claim that Republicans lost because they said "we're going to take your safety net away."
There's just one problem with that. No Republican has said that. No Republican has even proposed significant cuts in the social safety net.
The most extreme Republican plan to balance the budget is not at all extreme. Connie Mack's "Penny Plan" proposes six annual tiny 1% cuts that would allow revenue to catch up with spending. You can see Lanny Davis, a self-proclaimed liberal, praise the plan here.
I work on a government contract, and I can tell you it would be easy to eliminate government waste such that delivery of safety-net services improves, even as those 1% cuts are being absorbed. (I know that my productivity increases by more than 1% every year. And if they would stop allowing people like me to stay at the Ritz-Carlton while traveling, bang, you've got a huge savings on the contract.)
Mind you, the "Penny Plan" never stood a chance because most Republican congresscritters are scared to endorse even these tiny cuts.
Would you allow that perhaps Republicans lost, not because they said they would take away the safety net (they have not said that), but because the media spreads the false perception that Republicans want to slash the safety net?
If you won't allow that, then please explain how you justify your assertion that Republicans say "we're going to take your safety net away," when not one of them has said that.