That's true, but what I meant was that they probably look at Philly as this den of Comcast and Verizon - Comcast is headquartered there and Verizon has a major presence from when it was Bell Atlantic. They are major players and the broadband coverage is pretty good - I think their mission to provide universal fast internet and the efforts needed to bust into Philly probably conspire to nudge them elsewhere.
Doesn't Philly already have a sort-of competition between FIOS and Comcast? Along with the difficulty of doing anything in the city of nepotism love, they may not see that as a priority.
I wouldn't even try to retire the old debt through a forced means - simply making sure that something like a 5 year average is balanced. Within 30 years or so most of the debt taken out to meet current obligations would be retired simply by making payments on it. Under normal circumstances, spending would be determined by congress, but in the case that they can't act like adults, I'd make equal cuts and revenue increases.
But a recession by definition is a lack of spending. If government doesnt change it by spending you end up with a depression.
Well, not automatically, but certainly government spending and backing of companies prevented the recession of 2008 from turning into a depression.
I'm not arguing that the government should not have the ability to borrow, nor am I arguing that the government should not have periods of deficit spending. But the long-term trend should be revenue neutral, with a relatively constant debt load reflecting a healthy spending on infrastructure. If debt is too low, that could be a sign of under-investment in infrastructure.
Money the government spends becomes somebody's income
That's true of any money spent by anybody, not just the government. That's the problem with your argument. If the government left the money alone, it would still be spent and would still increase revenue - but without a trip through the less-efficient command economy.
To some extent, you are right - a government which prints its own money can simply print more money rather than raise taxes. The effect is largely similar - inflation instead of tax rate increases. This is very different from household spending. That's why I don't object to borrowing for infrastructure improvements. But once you start using debt to cover day-to-day obligations, that is the sign of an unsustainable situation. And, hand waving about velocity of money aside, you are creating obligations for your children and grandchildren that they will never benefit from. That is a moral problem.
If windows sold laptops running windows forbidding chrome installs, and called it windowbook you'd be crying your heart out.
I believe that's called a "Surface", and no you can search my comment history - I never "cried my heart out". Never bought one, but neither did anyone else. I don't cry about Apple's locked-down iOS stuff, because they are very upfront that you need to install apps from Apple's store. I do cry about certain Android products that are far more locked down than standard "Android", simply because it is not at all clear without doing some research first... it's still being sold as "Android" despite being less capable.
Let's ignore for the moment that you can put Linux on a Chromebook, which does run Linux kernel after all.
You basically restated what I just said. If I buy a "laptop", I expect it to be a general-purpose computer. At the very least, it should run a general purpose OS like Windows. With some luck, you can make it run a different general-purpose OS. If I buy a Chromebook, I expect it to run Chrome. It's in the name: Chrome-book. I have no expectation that it should be a general purpose computer, and any ability to load a general purpose OS on it is pure gravy.
It sounds like you are in the market for a general purpose computer. Don't buy a Chromebook.
I'd wager that most of our other words are even older. And really, why use a borrowed French word like "scandal" when there is the perfectly good English word "wrongdoing"? The Norman invasion was almost 1000 years ago! Let it go.
And why would that be a huge problem? Presumably it would file chapter 11 and the owners would lose their shirts but the company would continue to operate after reorganization. This is not an absurd outcome.
We've been having the same problem with computers for years. Sure, you "buy" the hardware - but then all of the software that makes it usable is proprietary and you are at the mercy of the vendor. Even if you run Linux, it takes extraordinary effort to go all open-source.
This tractor mess is very analogous, and is in the same area of law (I think, IANAL). I really think copyright law should allow limited modification of hardware drivers, even for commercial purposes. For example, if I want to create a company which makes a better Nvidia graphics driver, that should be fine even if I just mod the existing binary drivers. Building my own clone and then shipping the Nvidia drivers should probably still be restricted. The idea is to encourage 3rd party "repair" options without destroying the value of Nvidia's IP. In the tractor case, this would allow 3rd party tools which interact and even modify John Deere software, but it would not allow a cheap knockoff to use the John Deere software directly.
Haha, yeah, I've heard that argument too. But it is morally defensible to borrow in order to build a bridge. And IMHO, much better than having the government lord over a big pile of money earmarked for an eventual bridge.
Fortunately I don't spend a lot of time studying GOP charts:)
Anyway, if you subtract 4 trillion dollars we still have a $15 trillion debt, so while that is significant, it is not actually the driver of our problems. Defense used to be a big source of spending, but now it is eclipsed by expanding entitlement spending. Now while I think making the whole country dependent on welfare is a mistake, I also recognize that this is a democracy and I don't get to have my way. As such, if we're going to be a welfare state then we should cover our costs with more revenue. It is immoral both to cut taxes in the face of mounting obligations, and to expand obligations without raising revenue. Both sides are guilty. The only* morally defensible borrowing is to fund infrastructure, because you can claim that the future generations who pay for it will enjoy its use.
* I'm not a fan of absolutist statements, but my imagination is failing me at the moment and I can't think of another defensible use of debt.
I'm fine with a pay-as-you-go program as long as it is presented as such. But they didn't. The problem is that they pretended to "fix" social security by setting up a trust fund, then spent the trust fund on regular day-to-day expenditures. Now we are "repaying" the trust fund (e.g. using general fund money to pay benefits). In reality, the general fund is in the red so we are just swapping T-Bills from one place to another.
It's this inherent dishonesty - that people collecting now feel that the money is "theirs" rather than charity. I get the argument that "you should pay now because we paid when we were your age and you'll be in our shoes someday", but again, that is not what is presented. The overriding theme is one of entitlement and that the trust fund was a real pile of money rather than a pile of debt left to their kids and grandkids.
The action of reducing funding without reducing spending is just as bad as authorizing spending without funding. I'm not going to ding the conservatives in isolation. They have an immoral strategy and so do the progressives. The right thing to do is balance the books and use borrowing for capital/infrastructure improvements. While I have to admit a predilection towards smaller government, my #1 priority is getting the financial house in order. Frankly, I'd like to see a constitutional amendment which automatically hikes taxes and cuts spending in equal amounts whenever the idiots can't get their collective act together.
Maybe this whole concept of throwing anyone born from the late 60s through the mid 80s is just silly - I was born in the mid-70s and the 24-hour TV was well established by the time I was 10 or so. For someone born in the mid 60s, the situation would be very different, and people born in the 80s would have had hundreds of channels available.
No, but I have to confess that I only figured it out way to late in life. I wasn't the right age to have thought much about it - I was 11 I think - at the time, and I didn't get around to looking into the so-called "trust fund" until Al Gore promised to put it in a lock box.
You have been hoodwinked. Do the (symbolic) math. Old way - net_govt_expenditure = ss_taxes + other_taxes - ss_spending - other_spending New way - net_govt_expenditure = ss_taxes + other_taxes + ss_trust_fund - ss_trust_fund - ss_spending - other_spending
I'm saying that nothing really changed, they simply created a "trust fund" that existed in paper only and continued to simply spend all of the SS money. It's still a financial time bomb because more benefits are promised than the tax currently raises. Money from the general fund is currently being used to make up the difference by "paying back" the "trust fund". Never mind that different people are paying back the money than those who borrowed it in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
That's true, but what I meant was that they probably look at Philly as this den of Comcast and Verizon - Comcast is headquartered there and Verizon has a major presence from when it was Bell Atlantic. They are major players and the broadband coverage is pretty good - I think their mission to provide universal fast internet and the efforts needed to bust into Philly probably conspire to nudge them elsewhere.
Doesn't Philly already have a sort-of competition between FIOS and Comcast? Along with the difficulty of doing anything in the city of nepotism love, they may not see that as a priority.
Yeah, but that blue part on your graph just dwarfs everything else.
I wouldn't even try to retire the old debt through a forced means - simply making sure that something like a 5 year average is balanced. Within 30 years or so most of the debt taken out to meet current obligations would be retired simply by making payments on it. Under normal circumstances, spending would be determined by congress, but in the case that they can't act like adults, I'd make equal cuts and revenue increases.
But a recession by definition is a lack of spending. If government doesnt change it by spending you end up with a depression.
Well, not automatically, but certainly government spending and backing of companies prevented the recession of 2008 from turning into a depression.
I'm not arguing that the government should not have the ability to borrow, nor am I arguing that the government should not have periods of deficit spending. But the long-term trend should be revenue neutral, with a relatively constant debt load reflecting a healthy spending on infrastructure. If debt is too low, that could be a sign of under-investment in infrastructure.
Money the government spends becomes somebody's income
That's true of any money spent by anybody, not just the government. That's the problem with your argument. If the government left the money alone, it would still be spent and would still increase revenue - but without a trip through the less-efficient command economy.
To some extent, you are right - a government which prints its own money can simply print more money rather than raise taxes. The effect is largely similar - inflation instead of tax rate increases. This is very different from household spending. That's why I don't object to borrowing for infrastructure improvements. But once you start using debt to cover day-to-day obligations, that is the sign of an unsustainable situation. And, hand waving about velocity of money aside, you are creating obligations for your children and grandchildren that they will never benefit from. That is a moral problem.
I agree, but at least at the end of the day you'd have a balanced budget :)
I think you are probably using a Surface Pro or a Surface Book. The original Surface was an Arm device that was decidedly locked down.
Windows itself is general purpose. If you need to run Linux, you should probably do some research before buying a "Designed for Windows" laptop.
If windows sold laptops running windows forbidding chrome installs, and called it windowbook you'd be crying your heart out.
I believe that's called a "Surface", and no you can search my comment history - I never "cried my heart out". Never bought one, but neither did anyone else. I don't cry about Apple's locked-down iOS stuff, because they are very upfront that you need to install apps from Apple's store. I do cry about certain Android products that are far more locked down than standard "Android", simply because it is not at all clear without doing some research first... it's still being sold as "Android" despite being less capable.
Let's ignore for the moment that you can put Linux on a Chromebook, which does run Linux kernel after all.
You basically restated what I just said. If I buy a "laptop", I expect it to be a general-purpose computer. At the very least, it should run a general purpose OS like Windows. With some luck, you can make it run a different general-purpose OS. If I buy a Chromebook, I expect it to run Chrome. It's in the name: Chrome-book. I have no expectation that it should be a general purpose computer, and any ability to load a general purpose OS on it is pure gravy.
It sounds like you are in the market for a general purpose computer. Don't buy a Chromebook.
Which would piss me off if they sold it as a general purpose computer instead of a "Chromebook" that runs... Chrome.
over 40 years ago
I'd wager that most of our other words are even older. And really, why use a borrowed French word like "scandal" when there is the perfectly good English word "wrongdoing"? The Norman invasion was almost 1000 years ago! Let it go.
Limited liability should never cover employees, board members, or activist owners.
And why would that be a huge problem? Presumably it would file chapter 11 and the owners would lose their shirts but the company would continue to operate after reorganization. This is not an absurd outcome.
We've been having the same problem with computers for years. Sure, you "buy" the hardware - but then all of the software that makes it usable is proprietary and you are at the mercy of the vendor. Even if you run Linux, it takes extraordinary effort to go all open-source.
This tractor mess is very analogous, and is in the same area of law (I think, IANAL). I really think copyright law should allow limited modification of hardware drivers, even for commercial purposes. For example, if I want to create a company which makes a better Nvidia graphics driver, that should be fine even if I just mod the existing binary drivers. Building my own clone and then shipping the Nvidia drivers should probably still be restricted. The idea is to encourage 3rd party "repair" options without destroying the value of Nvidia's IP. In the tractor case, this would allow 3rd party tools which interact and even modify John Deere software, but it would not allow a cheap knockoff to use the John Deere software directly.
Haha, yeah, I've heard that argument too. But it is morally defensible to borrow in order to build a bridge. And IMHO, much better than having the government lord over a big pile of money earmarked for an eventual bridge.
Fortunately I don't spend a lot of time studying GOP charts :)
Anyway, if you subtract 4 trillion dollars we still have a $15 trillion debt, so while that is significant, it is not actually the driver of our problems. Defense used to be a big source of spending, but now it is eclipsed by expanding entitlement spending. Now while I think making the whole country dependent on welfare is a mistake, I also recognize that this is a democracy and I don't get to have my way. As such, if we're going to be a welfare state then we should cover our costs with more revenue. It is immoral both to cut taxes in the face of mounting obligations, and to expand obligations without raising revenue. Both sides are guilty. The only* morally defensible borrowing is to fund infrastructure, because you can claim that the future generations who pay for it will enjoy its use.
* I'm not a fan of absolutist statements, but my imagination is failing me at the moment and I can't think of another defensible use of debt.
I'm fine with a pay-as-you-go program as long as it is presented as such. But they didn't. The problem is that they pretended to "fix" social security by setting up a trust fund, then spent the trust fund on regular day-to-day expenditures. Now we are "repaying" the trust fund (e.g. using general fund money to pay benefits). In reality, the general fund is in the red so we are just swapping T-Bills from one place to another.
It's this inherent dishonesty - that people collecting now feel that the money is "theirs" rather than charity. I get the argument that "you should pay now because we paid when we were your age and you'll be in our shoes someday", but again, that is not what is presented. The overriding theme is one of entitlement and that the trust fund was a real pile of money rather than a pile of debt left to their kids and grandkids.
The action of reducing funding without reducing spending is just as bad as authorizing spending without funding. I'm not going to ding the conservatives in isolation. They have an immoral strategy and so do the progressives. The right thing to do is balance the books and use borrowing for capital/infrastructure improvements. While I have to admit a predilection towards smaller government, my #1 priority is getting the financial house in order. Frankly, I'd like to see a constitutional amendment which automatically hikes taxes and cuts spending in equal amounts whenever the idiots can't get their collective act together.
Maybe this whole concept of throwing anyone born from the late 60s through the mid 80s is just silly - I was born in the mid-70s and the 24-hour TV was well established by the time I was 10 or so. For someone born in the mid 60s, the situation would be very different, and people born in the 80s would have had hundreds of channels available.
It might be a nitpick, or it might not - but your 11 hours/day number is for all adults, not just millennials. This article seems to indicate that they spend 4 hours looking at screens.
No, but I have to confess that I only figured it out way to late in life. I wasn't the right age to have thought much about it - I was 11 I think - at the time, and I didn't get around to looking into the so-called "trust fund" until Al Gore promised to put it in a lock box.
You have been hoodwinked. Do the (symbolic) math. Old way -
net_govt_expenditure = ss_taxes + other_taxes - ss_spending - other_spending
New way -
net_govt_expenditure = ss_taxes + other_taxes + ss_trust_fund - ss_trust_fund - ss_spending - other_spending
Notice anything funny?
I'm saying that nothing really changed, they simply created a "trust fund" that existed in paper only and continued to simply spend all of the SS money. It's still a financial time bomb because more benefits are promised than the tax currently raises. Money from the general fund is currently being used to make up the difference by "paying back" the "trust fund". Never mind that different people are paying back the money than those who borrowed it in the first place.