[ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine"

spike spike66 at att.net
Wed Oct 23 18:25:44 UTC 2013


 

 

>. On Behalf Of John Clark
Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are
"asinine"

 

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 1:58 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> They had to make this whole thing appear dramatic, but it was all for
show.

 

>.So the thing was worth doing because it was so dramatic that there was a
real possibility that the president would think it was real and capitulate
to the Hillbilly's demands, but it was not so dramatic that you personally
couldn't see through it and understand that it was all fake. Is that what
you're saying? 

No.  The fake drama was to at least pretend we understand we have a serious
overspending problem, so those loaning us the money will not lose confidence
and stop loaning.  That's what I am saying.  There are no hillbillies.
Everyone involved is in government, the same dysfunctional government. 

> They need to do things like this in order to support the value of the
dollar, rather than threaten it. 

>>.That is nuts.

No John.  Borrowing 3 million dollars a second is nuts.  At least pretending
we want to stop doing that is sane.

 >>. and here's how you will know I am right: we will have something like a
repeat of this whole thing in December,

 

>.At one time I would have said nobody is dumb enough to repeat this whole
sorry fiasco, but that was before I met the Tea Party. If it turns out you
are right then there is no longer any doubt, President Obama successor will
be whoever it is that the Democrats nominate and election day itself will
just be a formality.

 

Indeed?  Would that be Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden?  Would you feel better
if they had no rivals?

    

 

> What if they just rubber stamped the debt limits? 

 

>.The debt limit should ALWAYS be rubber stamped!!!

 

There is where we differ John.  We must make the big government advocates
fight for every borrowed dollar.  If they are unwilling to fight, then it is
time to already sell some stuff we already bought.

 

>. In fact it's stupid you even have to vote on something like that.

 

On that contrary sir, this is what democracy is all about: making sure the
people are on board.  More and more of us are not.

 

>. If you vote to buy lots of very expensive things, like TWO wars, and you
refuse to raise taxes to pay for them, where the hell did those oh so
fiscally responsible Tea Party dimwits think the money to pay for those new
huge expenses was going to come from other than by printing more money??

 

It comes from already selling some of the things we already bought.  It
comes from US federal government could find ways to operate on about three
quarters of what it is now spending, which is what it is taking in.  Keep
federal tax structure as is, at the current level.  They would hand the
National Parks down to the state governments.  They would call in the troops
everywhere and cut armed forces in half, for starters.  They would come up
with one of their phony inflation numbers to adjust pensions.  Keep the ACA
but put no federal government money into it; rather they would take whatever
tax funds are collected from the opt-outs and use that to subsidize the
poor, at the state level.  Set up state government-run clinics funded by the
opt-outs, and staff them with nurses as well as full doctors.  Run all these
at the state level, with the feds out of the picture completely: the feds
don't have the authority that states have.  Import all foreign doctors who
apply for immigration, all of them.  Let the foreign doctors prove
themselves in the free clinics.  Scale back Medicare part D and put its
administration at the state level.  Give all current federal government
workers an across the board pay cut.

 

 

>. If you buy something new that is very expensive and is not in the budget.

 

.Then you scale it back, eliminate it or sell it.

 

>. and you refuse to raise taxes to pay for it then logically you are giving
implicit permission to print more money.

 

.But of course you can't do that unless someone lends the government the
money to print.

 

>. and a separate vote on the matter is utterly ridiculous.

 

Or utterly sane, for it forces representatives to acknowledge that we have
bought more than we can pay for, more than we can even borrow to "pay for."

 

 > Then the government has open ended permission to print as much currency
as it needs or wants

 

>.Exactly, and the determination of how much stuff the government needs or
wants is made by the House of Representatives.

Sure, but they cannot legislate wealth into existence.

>. If they decree that we need something or they just really really want it
then they're going to have to pay for it, and if it's expensive there are
only 2 ways to do that.

If they decree that we need something, they are subject to the will of the
lenders who may decree to the contrary.

>.1) Raise taxes, that is to say take more money from you and me to pay for
that new thing that we need so very badly.

The problem with raising taxes it that it may or may not raise revenues.  If
businesses are already on the margin of profitability, which most of them
are, we raise taxes 10% and revenues may increase 1%.  They may decrease by
1%.  In either case I can assure you there is no possible way to increase
government revenue enough to even cover that which we already bought.  We
must scale that back to the revenue they currently take in, thus the acronym
TEA, which is the only official position of the TEA party.

>.2) Print more money to pay for it.

Well sure, if someone is fool enough to lend you the money to do that.

> How would foreign debt holders see that?

 

>.As sane, because the only other alternative is to become a deadbeat and
welsh on your bills and gain a worldwide reputation as somebody who does not
keep his word.

So the alternative is to install a huge new entitlement program which the
casual observer can see we cannot pay for?  We never had a way to pay for
Medicare part D, so now we bring on ObamaCare?  Suggest transforming that to
a self-sustaining program not dependent on government funding by making the
penalty for not having health insurance pay for subsidies for the poor.
Take the IRS out of the loop entirely: they are corrupt.  We don't even know
what they did yet, since they are protected from testifying against
themselves.

Do all the stuff I suggested above and we will become an alivebeat.  We are
deadbeats now: we are not paying our debts.  Paying debts with borrowed
money isn't paying, it is just rearranging debt.  We are not living within
our means.

>> My contention is that the US federal government could find ways to
operate on about three quarters of what it is now spending, which is what it
is taking in.

 

>.Today the US federal government is employing the fewest people since 1966,
and back then 4.4% of the people worked for the government, now it's just
2%.

JA exactly.  Why do we need all those government employees?  That ratio of
about 40% as many as it was in 1966 is absurd.  In 1983 when I started my
engineering career, a typical senior engineer had an office with a desk, a
drawing board, several filing cabinets, a card catalog, a bookshelf, a
secretary, a shared courier, a shared draftsman, one or two flunkies to do
errands.  Now that same company's senior engineers have a computer small
enough to carry under the arm which is all the office furniture and the
secretary, and the courier, and the draftsman and everything the flunkies
used to do.  A big stodgy traditional pokey company like Lockheeed can
easily do more with 20% the people it had in 1983.

I am contending that the federal government do with about 75% of what it has
now, or 30% of what it had in 1966, when almost nothing was automated.

We saw how government bureaucracies work with the phone "shutdown" of 1
October.  They warned of all the dire consequences if those mean evil stupid
Tea Party people forced it.  Much to our surprise, we awoke on 1 October and
the world had not ended.  We were so puzzled, we began to sing that song
from a long time ago: 

Why does my heart go on beating?  

Why do the stars glow above?  

Don't they know it's the end of the world; 

It ended when the US Government attempted to somehow make do with slightly
reduced expenditures. 

So I took slight liberties with that last line, but when we failed to notice
they  were gone, the feds acted like petulant children, putting up
barricades to block visitors from open air memorials, placed highway cones
to prevent people from even taking pictures of Mt. Rushmore, closing
campgrounds that didn't cost them anything to leave open (they never
refunded our money) treating government assets as their own private
property, made cuts as visible and painful as they possibly could, even
spending more money to demonstrate how critically important they are, and
generally taking revenge on the American people.  

THEN: they are DISMAYED, SHOCKED!  That we are not buying their bullshit
anymore John.  We can make do with less, just like any family can find ways
to cut back if they realize they are over-borrowing and overspending.  We
can do it.

 >.And politicians, especially tea party politicians, love to shout that in
general we should spend less money, but when asked for specifics about what
exactly we should cut they suddenly get very shy.

Ja?  I don't get shy at all.  Do these things for starters:

They would hand the National Parks down to the state governments.  They
would call in the troops everywhere and cut armed forces in half.  They
would come up with one of their phony inflation numbers to adjust pensions.
Keep the ACA but put no federal government money into it; rather they would
take whatever tax funds are collected from the opt-outs and use that to
subsidize the poor, at the state level.  Set up state government-run clinics
funded by the opt-outs, and staff them with nurses as well as full doctors.
Run all these at the state level, with the feds out of the picture
completely: the feds don't have the authority that states have.  Import all
foreign doctors who apply for immigration, all of them.  Let the foreign
doctors prove themselves in the free clinics.  Scale back Medicare part D
and put its administration at the state level.  Give all current federal
government workers an across the board pay cut.

>. Basically they say we should cut all government programs except for
pork-barrel projects in my district (or state if I'm a senator) that will
help me get reelected.

Pork barrel projects have to go too.  Time to face reality.

>.  And if you vote for my pork-barrel projects I'll vote for your
pork-barrel projects. In that regard at least the Tea Party politicians are
no different from anybody else.  John K Clark  

Ja, if so, then it is time for a more sincere version of the Tea Party.
Call it the Green Tea Party.  We need a party which suggests we do all of
the stuff in the paragraph I put in this post twice, for these points cannot
be emphasized enough.  Start a party which is more budget hawkish than the
Tea Party and doesn't like pork, which makes the audacious claim that we
must cut government until expenditures match revenue, already sell some
stuff we already bought, reform entitlement programs, starting with the
apparently crippled-at-birth "Affordable" "Care" Act, as radical as that
sounds.  

If that Green Tea Party understands that expenditures must match revenue,
then we don't care what they believe about evolution, we don't care how
stupid they are, none of that matters for budget considerations, so long as
they understand that which seems to completely elude our current
representatives as brilliant as they are, even those so very enlightened on
evolution and creation: government spending must match revenue.  Even the
evolutionists in government act as though government can create wealth.
That is the most dangerous form of creationism.  Printing money is not
printing wealth. 

That Green Tea Party knows what needs to happen John.  That party would know
we need to stop borrowing money and live on what we make.  That concept
seems so fundamentally sane to me, I don't understand why even stating it
generates such wild-eyed denial and anger.  Time to move on to bargaining
and depression, or skip depression and just do bargaining and acceptance.  

Our lenders know what needs to happen.  Most of us here know what needs to
happen.  It is up to us to make it happen.

spike 

 

 


 

 

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