Tax cuts should end. (Did that get your attention?)

[bokworker]

Why is Communist China the world's biggest consumer and strongest economy right now?

as an aside Michael, China is no where near the worlds biggest consumer. The US consumer dominates that category.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Not only has Federal employment not grown by 20%, it has actually risen, then gone down again - due to census.  Just like every 10 years.  Including postal service!!  So, as can be seen, the reality is vastly different from the "1984 Doublespeak" being spewed by the Murdochianista Machine.  Too much Murdoch in the Kool-Aid!

And if we are truly concerned about the number of Fed employees, I submit a more accurate measure would be the count of how many Fed Emp's it takes per 1,000 population to run this circus.  And that is at the lowest since the early '60s.

Federal Government Employment Levels Through the Years (including the U.S. Postal Service)
   Executive Branch civilians    Total U.S. population    Executive Branch employees per 1,000 population
1962 (Kennedy)    2.48 million     186.5 million    13.3
1964 (Johnson)    2.47 million     191.8 million    12.9
1970 (Nixon)    2.94 million*    205 million      14.4
1975 (Ford)    2.84 million     215.9 million    13.2
1978 (Carter)    2.87 million     222.5 million    12.9
1982 (Reagan)    2.77 million     232.1 million    11.9
1990 (Bush)    3.06 million*    249.6 million    12.3
1994 (Clinton)    2.9 million      263.1 million    11.1
2002 (Bush)    2.63 million         287.8 million    9.1
2010 (Obama)    2.65 million+    310.3 million+    8.4+

SOURCE: Office of Management and Budget. *= Figure includes temporary Census Bureau workers. += Estimates by OMB and U.S. Census Bureau.

And that comes from here;
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/09/how_many_federal_workers_are_t.html

[RecycleMichael]

Public schools will perform at the very lowest level possible, unless their funding is based on performance rather than collective bargaining and population.

I disagree. You must see the worst in people and assume that just because they are in a union, their work is sub-standard.

You must not know many teachers. Most I know are very proud of their work and do much more than the lowest standard. They work very hard and do a great job.

I think your comment is insulting to all teachers. I would give you swats or send you to the Principal's office for that one.

[Red Arrow]

And suddenly our coalition is falling apart . . .

\

I don't see vouchers as a spending cut, just transferring money to a different entity.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Gaspar,
If you get a chill when hearing Democrats talk about reducing spending, why are you not absolutely catatonic about the reality of what the Republicans have done about spending and deficits and debt in the last 30 years?  

Constant source of amazement that reality is no where to be found when trotting out the old hacks about Democrats being the big spenders when by EVERY measure and ratio that can be used for evaluation, the Republicans have not only just outdone the Dem, but skyrocketed light years beyond them.

Too much of that special Kool-Aid blend.

I want to know what happened to the balanced budget amendment???  Remember the '70s??  Oh, yeah!  That's right - the Republicontins got in office.

[nathanm]

The Soviet Union lasted for 74 years.  Businesses were state run and competition was eliminated.

I think you should do a little reading on the Soviet economy before invoking it again. State-controlled, yes. Lack of competition, no, at least in heavy industry.

Besides, competition is no panacea. There are plenty of dysfunctional unregulated or lightly regulated markets out there.

And yes, the two folks who decided they needed to put media pressure on the rest of the panel do have some hare-brained ideas. Think about it for a second. Someone comes to you and asks "how should I go about reducing the deficit." Their answer: "Limit revenues." They may as well have answered "spaghetti." One does not follow from the other.

Let's examine the ratio of government employees to total population:



In terms of GDP, we have far fewer government employees relative to GDP than we have at any time since 1960.

And relative to private sector employment:



I think that puts to rest the idea that we have unusually high government employment at present. You'll note how in recessions, the ratio of government employees to private employees increases. That's because private employees get laid off while government employees aren't as affected.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I like spaghetti!

[Gaspar]

Why is Communist China the world's biggest consumer and strongest economy right now?

As illustrated above, they have the highest population of workers.  Per Capital GDP is only a fraction of ours.  A year's salary for the average Chinese is equal to a month's salary for us.  Their entire economy is based on manufacturing cheap consumer products for the rest of the world.

[Gaspar]

I disagree. You must see the worst in people and assume that just because they are in a union, their work is sub-standard.

You must not know many teachers. Most I know are very proud of their work and do much more than the lowest standard. They work very hard and do a great job.

I think your comment is insulting to all teachers. I would give you swats or send you to the Principal's office for that one.

My wife is a teacher, as are most of her friends.  Some do a great job, but because exceptional performance is not rewarded, few do an exceptional job. 

You can't give me swats any more.  I have my rights! 

[Gaspar]

I think you should do a little reading on the Soviet economy before invoking it again. State-controlled, yes. Lack of competition, no, at least in heavy industry.

Besides, competition is no panacea. There are plenty of dysfunctional unregulated or lightly regulated markets out there.

And yes, the two folks who decided they needed to put media pressure on the rest of the panel do have some hare-brained ideas. Think about it for a second. Someone comes to you and asks "how should I go about reducing the deficit." Their answer: "Limit revenues." They may as well have answered "spaghetti." One does not follow from the other.

Please identify the "hare-brained ideas" in the draft from President Obama's panel. 

Please illustrate how reducing spending from 43% GDP to 21% GDP (taking spending from over 6 trillion to just above 3 trillion) reduces revenue.

Also, provide evidence of how eliminating mortgage deductions and other standard deductions, and reducing tax rates to compensate reduces revenue.

I keep reading the darn draft and I can't see anything that would call for a hit on revenue that's not greatly overcome by a reduction in spending.

[nathanm]

Please illustrate how reducing spending from 43% GDP to 21% GDP (taking spending from over 6 trillion to just above 3 trillion) reduces revenue.

I didn't say spending reductions lead to revenue reductions (although that is a strong possibility in a stagnant economy), I said that the draft plan calls for a limit on government revenues as a percentage of GDP. Which has nothing to do with reducing the deficit. Which calls into question the motives of the people who wrote the draft.

[heironymouspasparagus]

China is floating their currency this week - so they say.  This illusion we have maintained to ourselves that we are the "biggest and baddest" in the world may take a little hit real soon.  I suspect that one of the net fallouts of this will be to show the real economic power of China.  It is gonna be a whole lot more than a $4 trillion GDP when everything shakes out.  And the per capita will change, too.

So they have gone from nothing to #2 in about 20 years.  What will they do in the next 20 years?

We better reinstate the draft soon if we are to have even a ghost of a chance of fighting the next war!

[Gaspar]

I didn't say spending reductions lead to revenue reductions (although that is a strong possibility in a stagnant economy), I said that the draft plan calls for a limit on government revenues as a percentage of GDP. Which has nothing to do with reducing the deficit. Which calls into question the motives of the people who wrote the draft.

No, No it does not.  It calls for a limit on government SPENDING as a percentage of GDP.  In the real world (not the liberal world) spending is the opposite of revenue.

[nathanm]

No, No it does not.  It calls for a limit on government SPENDING as a percentage of GDP.  In the real world (not the liberal world) spending is the opposite of revenue.

That's not what I read, but I haven't read the actual report.

Edited to add: Apparently, the co-chairs' draft report recommended both. So why don't you go stuff your partisan snark where it belongs, over on redstate or lgf?

Edited again to add: Having looked at the slides, it's right there in the summary:

  Caps revenue at or below 21% of GDP and gets spending down to 22% and eventually to 21%.

[bokworker]

So we are back to where we were when we had our brief group hug...limit revenue to 21% of GDP AND limit spending to 21% of GDP and viola, a balanced budget.

edited to add- Now of course the hard part is that even doing that merely keeps the cumlative deficit (and national debt) level. Level is better than growing and yes, that means over time the ratio of debt to GDP is going down (assuming GDP growth is positive) but don't we really want the actual amount of debt to go down? i.e. have budget surpluses for a while?