Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: General Battuta on May 18, 2011, 06:19:01 pm
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Thanks, New York Times! Sorry about all those tax cuts crippling your quality! (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html)
This is a game where you cut programs and try to fix the budget deficit.
What will you do, HALPlites?
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=00kk0lr4
I have no idea what some things I've slashed are. :nervous:
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I used my left leaning Canadian bias and fixed the short term budget short fall with no problems. The long term shortfall is a harder one but I'm only a few billion short in the end. I focused on high wage earners, foreign military missions and nuclear arms spending (I didn't cut new or existing programs for other arms), oh and I made you guys pay a national sales tax like the rest of us in the modern world do. Problem is mostly gone.
This is actually a pretty cool tool. I hope the US get it's budget under control. It's a giant problem and it really can't continue...not if there is to be a positive outcome. Until recently Canada was the only country in the G8 who was running budget surpluses ... at least until the Torys took power and the world economy tanked. We're supposed to be back to surplus territory by 2015 which I support. Part of the reason why we came through the worst of the economy falling out with so few problems.
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Could someone explain to me what they mean when they say that there will be $X savings in 2030? Savings from the current deficit? The projected deficit? The projected deficit minus the current deficit? Plus it?
It seems like these sorts of things aren't well explained, especially in popular media.
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Take THAT, rich people and the military!
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=0mtj09r7
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Oh my god! It's like when you stop slashing revenue streams, you can afford robust public services (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=4m2245qm)! Who knew?!
Good luck railing it through a Republican House, though.
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1. Slash spending
2. ????
3. Surplus!
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=zxgtqj10 (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=zxgtqj10)
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Could someone explain to me what they mean when they say that there will be $X savings in 2030? Savings from the current deficit? The projected deficit? The projected deficit minus the current deficit? Plus it?
It seems like these sorts of things aren't well explained, especially in popular media.
Neither is the interest on the massive national debt. It's one thing to balance the budget with cuts and the like, however what is the interest by itself and how much of a surplus would you have to have to just pay for it. Then if that is the case you'd have to have an even larger surplus to start whittling down the nation debt.
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I did it with a combination of cuts (not so much to welfare but to many other things) and by restoring tax levels to the Clinton era levels. However I have doubts the deficeit in 2015 is going to be as "low" as they project. Too often they've made overly optimistic assumptions like this in recent years.....
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How are you guys getting the link with your own cuts version...?
The share link at the bottom of the page isn't working for me.
18% tax changes and 82% spending cuts. We had a surplus by 2030, slight deficit still left in 2015.
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Right above where you select things to cut and right below the graph it should have something that says "You solved the deficit! Share your plan..."
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I won the game by checking every box. :P
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Yeah that's why... I technically did solve the budget... but I didn't fix the 2015 part of it, so I don't get the link.
Ended with 361 Billion accounted for in 2015 of 418 = 57 billion deficit for 2015.
1,502 Billion for 2030, vs. 1,345 billon for 2030 = 157 billion profit.
Yeah... I think I'll take a 3x profit in the long run.
In real life the budget doesn't "have" to be balanced, but it needs to get that way. A short term small loss
would be fine in order to fix the majority of issues in 28 years.
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I decided to be agressive.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=wvyrf5qy
and by restoring tax levels to the Clinton era levels
You know, it suprsises me that nobody ever thinks of that.
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SLASH ALL THE THINGS!
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Raise taxes. Win.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=000j75yh
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This actually a lot of fun...
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=d31rnbr7 (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=d31rnbr7)
this plan will allow you to start paying off your national debt
edit: url fix'd
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=d31rnbr7 (http://)
this plan will allow you to start paying off your national debt
'the url is not valid and cannot be loaded'
(the irony)
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=0kjk02qz
Fixed that for you, AND brought you into surplus.
As I've said for a long while now, you can actually sustain most of your programs primarily through eliminating tax loopholes, taxing higher incomes at less-than-marginal rates, and reforming your broken health care system. Cuts accounted for 32% of my savings, and were directed toward government contractors, some military spending (on expansion), and addressing some of the problems with US health care (malpractice reform, and medicare growth cap).
The US obsession with "evil" taxation (nevermind that low and middle earners pay the bulk of personal taxes, and the highest incomes escape through loopholes and Bush's legacy) is it's biggest fiscal problem.
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=0kjk02qz
Fixed that for you, AND brought you into surplus.
As I've said for a long while now, you can actually sustain most of your programs primarily through eliminating tax loopholes, taxing higher incomes at less-than-marginal rates, and reforming your broken health care system. Cuts accounted for 32% of my savings, and were directed toward government contractors, some military spending (on expansion), and addressing some of the problems with US health care (malpractice reform, and medicare growth cap).
The US obsession with "evil" taxation (nevermind that low and middle earners pay the bulk of personal taxes, and the highest incomes escape through loopholes and Bush's legacy) is it's biggest fiscal problem.
So what about the current 2011 projected $1.645 trillion budget deficit? You've still got $1 trillion to go!
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So what about the current 2011 projected $1.645 trillion budget deficit? You've still got $1 trillion to go!
I'm sorry, I can only work within the tool's parameters :P
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Slashed everything except nuclear arsenal.
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My reaction to snail slashing everything except nuclear arsenal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ALwKeSEYs)
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Isn't this like the second or third time this has been posted? And it's not like this is the only forum I've seen this exact same link. Well it's more fun than Tetris at least. But lets actually do something interesting like talk about the actual issues. If anyone is up for that. So the first box says...
Cut foreign aid in half
Didn't click it. Wouldn't want to do anything to hurt our geopolitical leverage in oil producing dictatorships.
X Eliminate earmarks
Definitely clicked that one.
Eliminate farm subsidies
I'm on the fence on this one. Agriculture regulations suck, but American farm subsidies are already lower than those in most other developed countries the US competes with, and if we drop them and lose food security we've given other countries bargaining power. There's nothing particularly wasteful about dumping money into agriculture versus the rest of our service based black hole economy as it's a more capital intensive sector than most. I didn't click it.
Cut worker pay/state aid
Didn't click any of these, simply as any cuts to public services like education, research or infrastructure that might result are penny wise and pound foolish. After all (http://www.uli.org/~/media/Documents/ResearchAndPublications/Magazines/UrbanLand/2009/April/Peterson.ashx) the US currently spends 40% of what it needs just to maintain it's current level of infrastructure.
X Reduce nuclear arsenal and space spending
This could be done without any real cost. It's not like you need a whole lot of nukes to fry China, and until they start working on an effective missile defense there's no need for us to encourage them to first.
Other defense cuts
Didn't click any of these. Things are hard enough already in Iraq and Afghanistan. I could see withdrawing from the latter but in Iraq we have a shot.
X Enact medical malpractice reform
An entirely reasonable thing to do, which has worked well in the states it's been implemented in.
X Increase the Medicare eligibility age to 70
What can I say? I'll help Obama set up death panel squads while I'm at it.
X Reduce the tax break for employer-provided health insurance
Working people will lose coverage, which is bad. But pushing companies to pay for health insurance directly reduces their profit.
X Cap Medicare growth starting in 2013
This is at least a start in slowing the insane demand-push inflation we get from our mixed public private ****care system.
X Raise the Social Security retirement age to 70 + SS and disability cuts
Now there's no economic reason to keep those funded, is there? I would cut further but the darn thing won't let me. Those liberals at NYTimes are making me have to do tax increases!
Return the estate tax to Clinton-era levels
As silly and Reaganite as this sounds, the estate tax actually hurts growth by reducing accumulated wealth and therefore lowering savings rates. The effect on work incentives from inherited wealth is minimal in comparison as far as research shows.
I clicked most of the rest of the tax increases just to run a larger federal budget surplus. Budget surpluses tend to boost overall savings rates as well as improve the current account and trade balance. I didn't go for the capital gains tax, carbon tax, and bank tax though. A sales tax is a good idea in the US mainly because it hurts imports and will help bring world trade back to something halfway reasonable. Link, (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=820rh4qw) since everyone else did. In practice I wouldn't push for any cuts at this time as the economy recovers. 2014 is a good point to start. That sounds rather late, but cutting the deficit when the economy is still producing under capacity is risky.
This is all assuming of course that the current federal debt limit shenanigans play themselves out as usual.
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Aggressively cut programs, but didn't raise taxes by much: problem solved!
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=fftr4230
Some highlights:
Farm subsidies: welcome to capitalism, where if you can't sell your product, you lose.
Reduce troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 30,000: Why are we still interfering over there? If they get all up in our face again, then we'll open up the can of whoop-ass. Until then, the whoop-ass can stay closed.
Medicare eligibility to 70: Okay, maybe I think old people have been around a bit too long. We're the first species on the planet to actively fight Darwinism.
Cap Medicare growth: I'll admit, I saw the huge number and said "savings!"
Taxes: I took Obama's proposal on investment taxes, added an income tax bracket for $1,000,000+, and eliminated loopholes while lowering rates. That way, I can still tell my constituents that I voted to lower taxes.
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Farm subsidies: welcome to capitalism, where if you can't sell your product, you lose.
The actual productivity of the farm sector hardly matters. The bulk of the American economy (the service sector) contributes virtually nothing to science or industry either. What's important is that agriculture consumes large amounts of capital, which spurs industrial production.
Reduce troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 30,000: Why are we still interfering over there? If they get all up in our face again, then we'll open up the can of whoop-ass. Until then, the whoop-ass can stay closed.
Pulling out of Iraq now will risk letting the house of cards we built there fall apart. But if we can hold on to it we might get another 1 million barrels/day. That's a lot of oil.
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Didn't we pull out of Iraq or am I just remembering a PR milestone?
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Farm subsidies: welcome to capitalism, where if you can't sell your product, you lose.
The actual productivity of the farm sector hardly matters. The bulk of the American economy (the service sector) contributes virtually nothing to science or industry either. What's important is that agriculture consumes large amounts of capital, which spurs industrial production.
Reduce troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 30,000: Why are we still interfering over there? If they get all up in our face again, then we'll open up the can of whoop-ass. Until then, the whoop-ass can stay closed.
Pulling out of Iraq now will risk letting the house of cards we built there fall apart. But if we can hold on to it we might get another 1 million barrels/day. That's a lot of oil.
(Pssssst... I'm not actually a politician!)
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Didn't we pull out of Iraq or am I just remembering a PR milestone?
Last I heard, we did.
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We still have "advisers" there. They aren't allowed to do any combat though.
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Didn't we pull out of Iraq or am I just remembering a PR milestone?
Still equivalent to a short division in the country.
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Didn't we pull out of Iraq or am I just remembering a PR milestone?
Most combat troops are out, but the rest will still be there until the end of the year.
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The Iraqi army and the friendly neighborhood militias can fight now but the army is totally incapable of establishing a support infrastructure. US combat units withdrew in mid 2010 but they still have training and logistics assets over there. The US is supposed to withdraw from urban areas in a month and from the entire country by the end of the year. We'll see how things go. The private military contractors will probably remain, though.
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But I thought that raisin taxes was communist....
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Yeah. Only dirty capitalists pigs dry grapes.
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But I thought that raisin taxes was communist....
It's for the greater good...
The greater good...
Where is that coming from? :)
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But I thought that raisin taxes was communist....
Having a government is probably also communist. :lol: