Here is an idea, RickyP. Try to formulate an original thought and answer the question. Just for your benefit (and yours only), I will re-ask it:

What can be done to limit a government's growth?

What did I use too much nuance or too big a vocabulary?

Here's an interesting thought B. Perry chirps on about job growth in Teaxs. Are you aware that half the jobs that were created in Texas during his tenure were government jobs? (Anotehr 40% were minimum wage.)
Surprisingly people wanted school teachers for their children, policemen on the corner or the border, and shorter lines at the DMV....
If you want a limit to govenrment you have to decide what functions that the govnerment has acquired throught the 20th century you think you don't need.
Funny thing, is that most of the things that employ a lot of people in government jobs, are things people don't want to sacrifice.
Just today Rick Perry applied for federal assisatance and kicked the response to Teas Wild fires over to FEMA.
The recent response to hurricane Irene by FEMA demonstrates how a decently run government agency can be vital to your nation. (Compare that to Katrina and the disfunction at that time. ) Would you do away with FEMA to save some money on this years budget?

Motion to stricken from the record. Witness is non-responsive.

Objection sustained.

Bah.
Any time you want to simplistically come up with "a way to limit government"..your going to come up against the problem that most people won't want you to take the action in question...
Cut agricultural subsidies? Over the Iowa farmers dead bodies...
Cut defence spending... No one on the right wants to.
Cut any govnerment program and they'll be a group, with a senator ot two in tow, who'll fight that tooth and nail.
There are no simple solutions. It'll be a hard grinding slog because most of what has grown over the last 100 years were well supported when introduced and generally serve the purpose they were intended.Exceptions may be found, but so far there haven't been a lot of specifics that amounted to a hill of beans. (A hill of beans being anything less than the money that Buffetts ideas for taxing millionares would raise and which some of you scoff at as not worth the effort...)
Example: A year or two ago a lot of conservatives were complaining that the federal government was spending money on volcanoe research and scoffed at the notion of that as an esential spend. Turns out, that includes the study of ash transmission which is crucial to the design of safe flight paths for jet engines when volcanoes are active...
Its a complex world.
The simplist way to cut government spending is to simply implement a 10% cut across the board and let the experts within each area implement the budget cuts based on their priorities. That won't "limit govenrment" but it will ensure spending is truly prioritized.

Wow! RickyP has come to my way of thinking! I came up with this solution 2 years ago on Redscape 1.0, and he mocked it (along with Danivon, btw), saying that it would affect the smaller budgets more than the larger. The Defense budget can take a 10% hit more than Education was the reason given.

Mind you I wanted a 20% actual cut, and let the chips fall where they may.

I think we have made great progress today, RickyP. I look forward to our next session.

rickyp wrote:bbauska

Based upon what RickyP is saying, the political problem is people voting for representatives who will give them the most "stuff". (Please correct me if I do not retain the meaning you are trying to display).

Pretty close. But more like, the same stuff but at less cost. Cutting taxes and telling people nothing is going to change about the services or entitlements they receive. (Usually when new services are brought in there is a discussion about taxation or ways to pay for them. Not always, but usually.)

Thank you for demonstrating your ability to demagogue and equivocate simultaneously. That is a real gift!

Did Paul Ryan's plan call for cutting taxes? Yes. Did it promise nothing was going to change with regard to entitlements? No.

Do you have a specific example of someone who promises to cut taxes and have nothing change?

And, if you are talking about the past, this forum is discussing the future. Please try to keep up.

Furthermore, before you drag out your "you have to understand the past to avoid repeating the mistakes . . ." canard, please understand no one is proposing what you are saying. Again, if you have an example of a GOP candidate running on the "I will cut taxes and nothing will change" platform, please give a citation.

The problem with a balanced budget amendment is that, when a real emergency occurs that depends upon a defict (a war or an economic bailout of fundamental importance like 2008 -9) you've handicapped your government. The stupid debate over the debt ceiling points that out clearly.)

Absolute rubbish. It's quite simple. The balanced budget requirement could be waived on one of two conditions: 1) there is a declared state of war; 2) 2/3 of both houses of Congress declare a "state of emergency" for a specified time. So, your "problem" is solved within a BBA.

You guys all like to howl about keynes as a problem. Keynes wasn't followed in your nation from 81 on. If he had been, you'd have run surpluses for most of the 80's and 90s and early 2000. When the shit hit the fan, there wouldn't have been much debt. If any,
You can't look at getting out of thirty years of mismanagement, exacerbated by the enormity of the financial meltdown (caused by the basic idea that regulation on financial transactions should be limited) and expect that you can get out of it quickly.

The problem isn't Keynes. The problem is the habitual spending of more than the government takes in. We are approaching levels of debt that are not sustainable. Even a fiscal liberal like you (and, you are a fiscal liberal since you believe the way out of our current situation is to increase government spending), should be able to see that.

This has to be sold into the US as a 2 decades solution the way paying off the WWII debt was sold. Unfortunately that should mean both higher taxes and lower expectations but on one side you have a group ideologically oppossed to any reasonable level of taxation, and on the other you have a group that can't organize its priorities, even amongst itself. That, and you only seem to have 2 sides in any debate. And no real room for compromise.

Isn't it nice how YOU get to define what is a "reasonable level of taxation?" Anyone who disagrees with you is, by definition, "unreasonable." You sound remarkably like . . . the President.

Maybe the Americans who actually pay taxes ought to have a say in what is "reasonable" and you, Mr. Canadian, should be just a bit more objective?

Its also a question of values. Americans share with most Westerners a desire that the least among you should be treated reasonably well.

There is a fundamental assumption in your two sentences above. That assumption is that the government is responsible for how the poor are treated. In fact, you make it seem as though they have no responsibility in the matter, as if they are starving baby chicks in the nest waiting for Mother Government to bring them some worms.

But at the same time you have an innate worry that someone is going to get something they don't deserve.(miilionares and billionare wall street bankers excepted)

Again, you picture Government as the Distributor-in-Chief. That is not government's role.

So you often saddle the ways you have of ensuring a safety net with a beauracracy that makes the delivery of the "safety net" horribly inefficient.. An example is the idea that no one can be turned away from the emergency room. Meaning universal healthcare ends up being delivered by the most costly means possible. (I simplify to make the point. But you get the drift.) The Swedes have a "lavish" unemployment insurance system. But it helped them immediately, and automatically, respond to the recession, and they climbed out of it faster than almost anyone. With a lower over all cost. Why? Because no large group was overly affected so the domestic economy didn't deflate when they ended their spending completely. . Waiting too long, or spending too cheaply in the initial stages means that other western nations saw a downward cycle begin before their actions managed to have an impact.)

So, again, you, as a feigned "fiscal conservative," claim Government spending and redistribution of wealth is the key to economic recovery. Wow! I'm so surprised and enlightened. I can see how directly Sweden models the US.

So how do you balance the desire for a fairly equitable society, with the concept of the rugged self sustained individual thriving in competition. Seems to mean that there can't exist both. That there must be compromise.

Both can't coexist, so you call for compromise?

Surely, even you can see the incoherence of your thinking here?

Politically right now ... at least one side thinks it doesn't have to compromise but that in doing so the quality of society won't be degraded. It would be worth everyone taking a history lesson on life for the average person in the 1880s and 1890s before you repeal the 20th century.

I agree. The Left won't compromise. Hence, Maxine Waters calling for a trillion dollar jobs plan, Hoffa calling for war against the Republicans, and the Vice President saying that only unions are holding the barbarians at the gates. You're right. One side will not learn from history.

As 9/11 comes around, its worth considering the horrible decisions that were made after the event. From an article by Slate that talks about misplaced priorities and the idea that lower taxes are an end in themselves... In response to the 9/11 the GWOT meant,

For the 1000th time (at least), please tell us how raising taxes SOLVES the problem of government spending? The Federal budget has doubled in the last 10 years. The Bush tax cuts, arguably, could have cut some from the deficit, but even you cannot argue they would have come close to eliminating them, can you? And, for the 100th time, please tell us:

1. How high rates would have to be to close the budget gap?

2. Please provide documentation that the Bush tax cuts explain all or most of the debt and deficits for the last 10 years?

3. If low tax rates are THE problem, why didn't the brave President Obama tackle the problem when he had a filibuster-proof Senate and a majority in the House?

rickyp wrote:Bah.
Any time you want to simplistically come up with "a way to limit government"..your going to come up against the problem that most people won't want you to take the action in question...
Cut agricultural subsidies? Over the Iowa farmers dead bodies...
Cut defence spending... No one on the right wants to.
Cut any govnerment program and they'll be a group, with a senator ot two in tow, who'll fight that tooth and nail.

Bah.

The question was

bbauska wrote:Here is an idea, RickyP. Try to formulate an original thought and answer the question. Just for your benefit (and yours only), I will re-ask it:

What can be done to limit a government's growth?

In other words, what would YOU do to limit government's growth? As I said, the budget has doubled in ten years. Surely, even YOU can see that such growth is not sustainable, regardless of tax rates?

There are no simple solutions. It'll be a hard grinding slog because most of what has grown over the last 100 years were well supported when introduced and generally serve the purpose they were intended.Exceptions may be found, but so far there haven't been a lot of specifics that amounted to a hill of beans. (A hill of beans being anything less than the money that Buffetts ideas for taxing millionares would raise and which some of you scoff at as not worth the effort...)

Buffett said it was $50B a year. That's nice, but not exceptionally significant, given more than $1T deficits as far as the eye can see.

Example: A year or two ago a lot of conservatives were complaining that the federal government was spending money on volcanoe research and scoffed at the notion of that as an esential spend. Turns out, that includes the study of ash transmission which is crucial to the design of safe flight paths for jet engines when volcanoes are active...
Its a complex world.

Of all the issues I've scoffed at, I don't recall that one. Do you really need a re-listing of government waste and over-reach?

The simplist way to cut government spending is to simply implement a 10% cut across the board and let the experts within each area implement the budget cuts based on their priorities. That won't "limit govenrment" but it will ensure spending is truly prioritized.

In other words, there is no way to limit government--according to our "economic conservative" from Canada. You've taken several swings and have yet to identify any means of limiting government, so it must be "impossible" for you to envision.

bbauska wrote:Wow! RickyP has come to my way of thinking! I came up with this solution 2 years ago on Redscape 1.0, and he mocked it (along with Danivon, btw), saying that it would affect the smaller budgets more than the larger. The Defense budget can take a 10% hit more than Education was the reason given.

Mock? Well, perhaps. I find simple solutions to complex problems rarely work. The debt and deficit is a complex problem, really, in that it's tied to all manner of things like policy, special interest groups etc.

I believe there's a saying in the military that any good strategic plan lasts until first contact with the enemy. I'll posit a corollary: that any bold political plan only survives until first contact with reality.

Nut much of a plan OR reality given from those on the left here at Redscape...

I guess because I don't agree with you what the main problem is.

The main issue facing the US is the economy, primarily that growth is low, unemployment is high, markets around the world are slumping, overseas competition can undercut, etc.

If that's not dealt with, no amount of fiscal tightening will help you. It can even make things worse - much worse- especially if everyone else has the same idea. If Europe is cutting back, and China's bubble pops, who is going to buy American stuff?

Danivon:

who is going to buy American stuff?

19. Sell Taiwan the $1 billion of F-16's that they want to buy.

Wooh! a whole billion? Why that will increase GDP by a whole 0.007%. It'll reduce the debt by about 0.01%. I know it's no 19 on a list, but it's hardly going to do a lot.

Yeah, well, I guess the USA (along with the UK, France, Germany and Russia) can always rely on selling death-machines. Let's just hope we don't too often have to spend a lot of money fighting against them.

b

Wow! RickyP has come to my way of thinking!

Well, I agree that a flat across the board is the easiest way to cut spending... rather than let the various interest groups manipulate congress. And I think it has to take place at some point, since you've never really experienced a paring of the budget. (unlike many, what you would call socialist nations, who retracted spending when taxes and debt both became unbearable.)
But the timing? Unless the American economy is expanding before starting this, huge spending cuts will simply exacerbate the current economic malaise.
What would be wise, is to pass a 10% across the board budget cut law, automatically applied to federal budgets, after 2 quarters of GDP growth 3 % or better is achieved. (2%?)
The point I was making is that its easier to pass umbrella laws that affect all budgets than to attack the budget items one by one. With the way your govenrment and congress are oprganized it doesn't take a large group to protect a specific line item.
Already the defence contractors are lined up lobbying...
And a reasonable level of taxation Steve? How about the levels that existed when Saint Ron was in power? He was a reasonable man wasn't he? How about the levels that existed 10 years ago? In both periods investment was high, and the economy generally grew quickly. So taxation couldn't have been an unreasonable drag on business, personal spending or the economy in general. And that sounds reasonable.

One thing, you can't have a first world nation with a tax structure that resembles a third world nation. Infrastructure and governance cost money. A social safety net costs taxes. Your right about Ryans plan and his plan to reduce entitlements. The problem is, it went over like a lead balloon didn't it? People have become used to the security and comfort of those horrible socialistic mechanisms and don't want to give them up. Who can blame them?
Again the problem being that Americans don't really accept that you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Which comes back again to, when growth is occurring, cutting spending simplistically and letting the experts in each area maximize with 90% of what they've been used to...

danivon wrote:Wooh! a whole billion? Why that will increase GDP by a whole 0.007%. It'll reduce the debt by about 0.01%. I know it's no 19 on a list, but it's hardly going to do a lot.

Yeah, well, I guess the USA (along with the UK, France, Germany and Russia) can always rely on selling death-machines. Let's just hope we don't too often have to spend a lot of money fighting against them.

Yeah, it's a political statement more than an economic statement. I didn't feel like creating a new topic.

If you were Taiwanese, more likely you would see them as liberty machines rather than death machines.