[ExI] the bbb, the bub and the budget: was RE: China and solar power

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> 
>… Would you have said the same thing if it had been Joe Biden who decided to tear down the entire east wing of the White House and build an ostentatious 300 million dollar ballroom using secret money ….spike

 

 

John, I can be more specific, since you have known me and read my ExI posts for 30 years: I care nothing about personalities or parties.  I really care only about one thing in federal government: the budget.

 

The two mainstream parties look so much alike from that perspective I can scarcely tell them apart.  They worked together in 1994 creating the crisis I have been anticipating ever since: they made a bookkeeping change that year which allowed them to treat positive flow into Social Security as revenue.  Then they could pretend they balanced the budget that year (they didn’t.)

 

The problem with that whole approach is that if you treat positive flow from the Social Security fund as revenue, you then must treat negative flow (back into that fund) as voluntary expenditures, rather than what it really is: mandated expenditures.  The government is required to pay Social Security benefits (as it should be.)  

 

Because of that bookkeeping change in 1994, it allowed the federal government to spend way beyond its means while pretending it was not.  Currently the US is getting 7 trillion dollars a year in government while paying 5 trillion, then pretending this is sustainable.  Welllll, it isn’t.  If the Singularity comes along in two or three years, all is well.  But if it doesn’t, then all is very unwell.

 

John when you ask be about this politician vs that politician, recall that I only care about one thing in federal government: the budget.  Reason: I can see what is coming.  Elon Musk was telling the truth.  He told us we would need to get government spending down to 5 trillion a year somehow.  He suggested cutting a trillion out of the budget this year and another trillion next year.  Otherwise, the federal government will be a debt slave, doing nothing but paying Social Security, Medicare and interest.  Nothing else.  Every other government function will need to be handed up to state governments, some of which will do adequately, some will not.

 

Of course the Singularity might come along very soon, but it might not.  The Singularity might be a decade or more away, but that Social Security transition will happen in a bit over seven years.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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