Shutting Down Government
The US Budget passed, luckily, avoiding a government shut down. Over 800 000 Federal employees keep on working and 1.4 million soldiers continue to receive their pay cheques. This is of course, very good.
So really we're left with a question in the aftermath of what makes sense to cut and what does not. Certainly at this point, with the size of American deficit, an austerity package makes sense.
But, really, the Tea Party has grown on the concept of "starve the beast" and presuming a positive correlation between government spending and oppression. I'd like to point out something written by someone else on the subject before I throw my own view out:
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/02/17/government-spending-and-liberty/
The issue is that protecting the rights of the people, upholding the US constitution, is a task that is far more expensive than letting the mighty rule over the weak. Freedom is about choice of action and defence against others who would take away your choices. As far as the United States is concerned, the government does both but it is not the only entity in play.
Many different factors affect one's freedom and combined make out your total ability to succeed in society. We cannot disregard the government as the primary instrument for defending one's freedom simply because it has a capability of also suppressing it. Afterall, most would agree that a world run solely by corporations is likely to be extremely piss poor with such rampant poverty that any amount of legal freedom amounts to naught when you don't even have food to eat.
Starving the government and eliminate essential services is more likely to do such heavy long-term damage to the economy that any temporary relief on the deficit from the cuts are far outweighed by the losses. For instance, one of the obstacles in passing the budget was Planned Parenthood, costly a measly 323 million dollars a year. In a budget that is 3.2 trillion dollars, one would imagine such an item would not even come under scrutiny before larger ones (such as the F-35 purchase which will amount to tens of billions in total). But the prevailing idea is that cutting it would "save" the money when in reality, the preventative measures put into place by Planned Parenthood saves the government tens of billions per year in healthcare costs. A condom costs pennies. Managing a teenage mother who then has decrease employment opportunities costs you a lifetime of social services.
So when we think of an austerity package, what comes into question is what is essential and what is not. Courts, infrastructure and economic multipliers are essential. Preventative measures that save money in the long-term, those are revenue positive measures. Those should stay. Things that are revenue negative in the long run are the services that you tackle. This primarily means the military but there are also non-defence spending measures that can be eliminated as well.
As well, tax revenue collection is another way to tackle the issue. Reducing spending is one prong, but how about increasing tax revenues? Recently, it has been revealed that General Electric paid zero dollars in tax on 12 billion in profit. That means the average American, earning 40k a year, paid more tax than a hundred billion dollar revenue corporation. That is tax money lost and the loss has to be picked up by the middle class in America. Efforts should be made to capture this money to reduce the deficit.
On top of this, congress can work to reduce corporate loopholes in taxation (and thereby make the system more fair to small business who cannot afford the high class accountants necessary to make use of such unfair loopholes), shift more of the tax burden to the rich (and also reduce the loopholes they use) and increase tax revenue.
CBO recently published a long list of items that could be cut in the budget that amounted to six hundred billion a year. Depending on your political ideology, not all of those are cuts that "make sense" but certainly, one can cut more than the forty billion in spending that the current congress has done.
Cut spending, increase tax revenue, and commit to long-term economic goals. That should be what everyone in congress strives for. Shutting down government is an extremist view that does nothing more than damage the very fabric of the United States.
So really we're left with a question in the aftermath of what makes sense to cut and what does not. Certainly at this point, with the size of American deficit, an austerity package makes sense.
But, really, the Tea Party has grown on the concept of "starve the beast" and presuming a positive correlation between government spending and oppression. I'd like to point out something written by someone else on the subject before I throw my own view out:
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/02/17/government-spending-and-liberty/
The issue is that protecting the rights of the people, upholding the US constitution, is a task that is far more expensive than letting the mighty rule over the weak. Freedom is about choice of action and defence against others who would take away your choices. As far as the United States is concerned, the government does both but it is not the only entity in play.
Many different factors affect one's freedom and combined make out your total ability to succeed in society. We cannot disregard the government as the primary instrument for defending one's freedom simply because it has a capability of also suppressing it. Afterall, most would agree that a world run solely by corporations is likely to be extremely piss poor with such rampant poverty that any amount of legal freedom amounts to naught when you don't even have food to eat.
Starving the government and eliminate essential services is more likely to do such heavy long-term damage to the economy that any temporary relief on the deficit from the cuts are far outweighed by the losses. For instance, one of the obstacles in passing the budget was Planned Parenthood, costly a measly 323 million dollars a year. In a budget that is 3.2 trillion dollars, one would imagine such an item would not even come under scrutiny before larger ones (such as the F-35 purchase which will amount to tens of billions in total). But the prevailing idea is that cutting it would "save" the money when in reality, the preventative measures put into place by Planned Parenthood saves the government tens of billions per year in healthcare costs. A condom costs pennies. Managing a teenage mother who then has decrease employment opportunities costs you a lifetime of social services.
So when we think of an austerity package, what comes into question is what is essential and what is not. Courts, infrastructure and economic multipliers are essential. Preventative measures that save money in the long-term, those are revenue positive measures. Those should stay. Things that are revenue negative in the long run are the services that you tackle. This primarily means the military but there are also non-defence spending measures that can be eliminated as well.
As well, tax revenue collection is another way to tackle the issue. Reducing spending is one prong, but how about increasing tax revenues? Recently, it has been revealed that General Electric paid zero dollars in tax on 12 billion in profit. That means the average American, earning 40k a year, paid more tax than a hundred billion dollar revenue corporation. That is tax money lost and the loss has to be picked up by the middle class in America. Efforts should be made to capture this money to reduce the deficit.
On top of this, congress can work to reduce corporate loopholes in taxation (and thereby make the system more fair to small business who cannot afford the high class accountants necessary to make use of such unfair loopholes), shift more of the tax burden to the rich (and also reduce the loopholes they use) and increase tax revenue.
CBO recently published a long list of items that could be cut in the budget that amounted to six hundred billion a year. Depending on your political ideology, not all of those are cuts that "make sense" but certainly, one can cut more than the forty billion in spending that the current congress has done.
Cut spending, increase tax revenue, and commit to long-term economic goals. That should be what everyone in congress strives for. Shutting down government is an extremist view that does nothing more than damage the very fabric of the United States.
posted by Ultrapunk at
2:12 PM
1 Comments:
The military-industrial complex relationship is best fought with by changing the way the military sources equipment.
If you can only do single-source, then it should be a government corporation making the goods. Then voters can be properly angry about any waste.
If you are going to source from the private industry, then the military should come up with a list of requirements for their equipment and then companies not just bid but actually have to show working prototypes. If the working prototype doesn't match with the listed requirements, they don't get a contract. No deals before real hardware is shown.
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Ultrapunk, at 5:19 PM
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