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Debt prevents us from realizing either side's vision

AlabamaPaul said:
FICA funds two programs and two programs only. That the government has chosen to spend any surpluses in other areas does not change the fact that the current debt is approximately equal to the nation's entitlement spending that occurred over the past 50 years or so...
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You avoided the the counterpoint to your "entitlement drove debt", the entitlement revenue was GREATER than it's spending and the surpluses were used to cover up the discretionary spending.

The current debt was not caused by entitlement spending, this coincidence you cite is not causation.
 
AlabamaPaul said:
The entire entitlement area of government spending...
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In what manner do you mean "return"? Most government spending doesn't produce a positive return. I'm not a keynesian so I don't buy the "multiplier" effect of government spending, but SS and Medicare support entire industries like health care and retirement living (and probably a few golf courses :)) so I would hardly say they produce no return. They create tons of jobs and free the children of elderly parents from having to spend their middle years caring for their parents which allows them to continue working and paying taxes.
 
Gimmesometruth said:
You avoided the the counterpoint to your "entitlement drove debt", the entitlement revenue was GREATER than it's spending and the surpluses were used to cover up the discretionary spending.

The current debt was not caused by entitlement spending, this coincidence you cite is not causation.
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There is no entitlement revenue as SS an Medicare are not entitlements. They are government run, compulsory insurance programs for all wage earners that currently provide sufficient revenue for benefits. I have never referred to either as an entitlement program...
 
AlabamaPaul said:
The entire entitlement area of government spending...
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This is such a sad response for a couple of reasons, first that dependent children receiving direct or indirect support from entitlement spending will contribute more than they receive in future earnings/revenue.....and the fact that people who paid into the system contributed for the previous generations' benefits while we are paying for theirs'.

If you don't want to participate, renounce your citizenship.
 
vash1012 said:
In what manner do you mean "return"? Most government spending doesn't produce a positive return. I'm not a keynesian so I don't buy the "multiplier" effect of government spending, but SS and Medicare support entire industries like health care and retirement living (and probably a few golf courses :)) so I would hardly say they produce no return. They create tons of jobs and free the children of elderly parents from having to spend their middle years caring for their parents which allows them to continue working and paying taxes.
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It means exactly what it infers. SS and Medicare are insurance programs that are funded through current receipts, though just barely. There is no increased productive output derived from the entitlement programs as they simply transfer responsibility from families to government which either extracts the payments through taxation or debt creation...
 
AlabamaPaul said:
There is no entitlement revenue as SS an Medicare are not entitlements. They are government run, compulsory insurance programs for all wage earners that currently provide sufficient revenue for benefits. I have never referred to either as an entitlement program...
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I could give a crap how YOU want to define the programs, YOU have been participating in a conversation where the common understanding of "entitlement programs" includes SS/Medicare.
 
vash1012 said:
Well, as he points out, Social Security and Medicare trusts buy treasury bonds from the treasury in order to "loan" it money (and also to act as an investment I suppose). With the SS and Medicare expenditures set to increase significantly over the next few years, they will no longer be able to use the funds in their trusts to buy treasury bonds and may even need to start getting some of the money they loaned the treasury back which will lead to larger deficits and higher interest payments as a percentage of GDP down the road. If we reform SS and Medicare to delay their needing to do that AND to eventually prevent them from needing to use general funds to fund their programs, we'll have an easier time paying off debt.
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For the author of the article to suggest reducing benefits for entitlement programs, which we paid into for years, is nothing less than criminal in my humble opinion. Now back to your point about what to do about future interest payments: If we want these reserves to increase savings in order to avoid deficits, we can perhaps talk about restructuring the program.
 
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Gimmesometruth said:
This is such a sad response for a couple of reasons, first that dependent children receiving direct or indirect support from entitlement spending will contribute more than they receive in future earnings/revenue.....and the fact that people who paid into the system contributed for the previous generations' benefits while we are paying for theirs'.

If you don't want to participate, renounce your citizenship.
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What part do you have difficulty understanding when I specifically state that SS and Medicare are not entitlements?
 
Gimmesometruth said:
I could give a crap how YOU want to define the programs, YOU have been participating in a conversation where the common understanding of "entitlement programs" includes SS/Medicare.
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I don't care what your common understandings might be. If you include SS and Medicare as entitlements, you're simply wrong...
 
AlabamaPaul said:
It means exactly what it infers. SS and Medicare are insurance programs that are funded through current receipts, though just barely. There is no increased productive output derived from the entitlement programs as they simply transfer responsibility from families to government which either extracts the payments through taxation or debt creation...
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FFS....there he goes.

Hey bama man, you going to keep conflating?
 
Gimmesometruth said:
Actually, we were experiencing a recession in 2001 and spending increased while revenues declined as a percentage of GDP....due to the Bush tax cuts.....so yes, part of the problem was a demand component. The RE bubble was credit driven.
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Apologies, I should have checked my dates. I thought the recession ended earlier than it did so I should have said mid-2000's then. Either way, the Bush tax cuts, an unfunded war, and the passages of Medicare part D were the causes of the budget deficits then. I agree the 2007 crash was credit-driven, but to be credit-driven, there has to be demand for credit. No part of those budget deficits were due to a lack of demand after 2003 or so. The budgets deficits now definitely have more of a demand component as their cause given our unemployment rate, but to say that our deficits now are entirely demand-driven is simply false when we had deficits that were inherited from a time of strong economic prosperity due to due huge increases in spending and subsequent tax cuts.
 
AlabamaPaul said:
I don't care what your common understandings might be. If you include SS and Medicare as entitlements, you're simply wrong...
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Bama, you are excused from any further discussion in this thread, take your frigging screwball post and stick em.
 
AlabamaPaul said:
There has not been a truly balanced budgeted where the debt has been reduced since Eisenhower. What's your point?
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My point was that our budget deficit now is not entirely demand driven as the poster in the quote in my reply asserted if I understood him correctly.
 
Gimmesometruth said:
Bama, you are excused from any further discussion in this thread, take your frigging screwball post and stick em.
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When were you promoted to a mod? Unless you were, I'll post as I choose within the rules of DP. If you don't like it, I would suggest you move along...
 
vash1012 said:
My point was that our budget deficit now is not entirely demand driven as the poster in the quote in my reply asserted if I understood him correctly.
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I totally agree with your view in this respect...
 
vash1012 said:
Apologies, I should have checked my dates. I thought the recession ended earlier than it did so I should have said mid-2000's then. Either way, the Bush tax cuts, an unfunded war, and the passages of Medicare part D were the causes of the budget deficits then. I agree the 2007 crash was credit-driven, but to be credit-driven, there has to be demand for credit. No part of those budget deficits were due to a lack of demand after 2003 or so. The budgets deficits now definitely have more of a demand component as their cause given our unemployment rate, but to say that our deficits now are entirely demand-driven is simply false when we had deficits that were inherited from a time of strong economic prosperity due to due huge increases in spending and subsequent tax cuts.
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OK, fine, I should have said wage driven demand, the demand from 2000 through 2007 was nearly all credit driven, wages for other than the top quintile were pretty flat (as it had been since 1979). I agree and have made the same points over and over again about the debt increases during the Bush years, the only point in out history when tax rates declined during major military adventures.
 
I'd like to be excused from further discussion in this thread, if anyone has a moment.
 
AlabamaPaul said:
When were you promoted to a mod? Unless you were, I'll post as I choose within the rules of DP. If you don't like it, I would suggest you move along...
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No bamer, I'll just keep on reminding you how out of touch your definitions are in this thread.
 
AlabamaPaul said:
It means exactly what it infers. SS and Medicare are insurance programs that are funded through current receipts, though just barely. There is no increased productive output derived from the entitlement programs as they simply transfer responsibility from families to government which either extracts the payments through taxation or debt creation...
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Transferring that responsibility to the government doesn't increase productive output by allowing those families to work, pay taxes, and spend money instead of staying at home to care for an elderly person full time? SS needs an adjustment to make it solvent, but it isn't an "entitlement". People earned it by paying into the system for 40 years. It just needs some adjustments to the program so that people aren't pulling out 4 times as much as they put in.

Note: I just read where you are now saying this was somehow supposed to mean SS/Medicare aren't entitlements. Tell us what you are referring to as entitlements and we will discuss those.
 
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vash1012 said:
My point was that our budget deficit now is not entirely demand driven as the poster in the quote in my reply asserted if I understood him correctly.
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Are you still confused about how much of a decline in revenue we have had?
 
Gimmesometruth said:
No bamer, I'll just keep on reminding you how out of touch your definitions are in this thread.
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You are free to do as you choose, but equating SS and Medicare (funded through FICA payroll taxes) to true entitlements is ludicrous...
 
AlabamaPaul said:
What part do you have difficulty understanding when I specifically state that SS and Medicare are not entitlements?
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All of it, bamer. but you are excused, you are special.
 
vash1012 said:
Transferring that responsibility to the government doesn't increase productive output by allowing those families to work, pay taxes, and spend money instead of staying at home to care for an elderly person full time? SS needs an adjustment to make it solvent, but it isn't an "entitlement". People earned it by paying into the system for 40 years. It just needs some adjustments to the program so that people aren't pulling out 4 times as much as they put in.
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Have you been reading and comprehending my posts about SS an Medicare? It seems not...
 
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