What if Deficit Spending Were Outlawed?Follow

Outlawing deficit spending sounds to me like one of the stupidest decisions possible. Right up there with trying to balance a deficit in the middle of a massive economic recession.

So I guess my response is that I wouldn't balance a deficit. I'm a strong proponent of spending in bad economic times and then paying down the debt during economic spikes.

I'd outlaw going to war on a credit card, to start. We're still paying off the Iraq war and its going to take a decade to knock out Afghanistan. In WWII the debt was eventually paid off via war bonds, but if war bonds aren't a choice, we're going to have to go with war charity or no war at all.

No subsidies to companies that outsource anything. Either you're providing jobs within the country, or you're not. The exception would be raw resource extraction for multinational corporations, and even then, they could not receive subsidies for their off-shore operations without equivalent in-shore labor. Also, to receive subsidies they must produce a tangible good. Too much investing is done in imaginary products and speculative real estate, instead of manufacturing or R&D.

No state is allowed to receive more in federal benefits than it provides in federal tax revenue. (Ironically, most Dem states will be just fine with that. It's primarily the red states that will squeal when the teat is yanked away.)

The whole point is you can't do anything on a credit card anymore. I'm talking about a complete Dave Ramsey'ing of the federal budget.

On a seperate note, Ramsey'ing is now a word.

We get a ROI on entitlement spending, though. Money provided to American citizens is generally spent in America. WIC and SNAP benefits prevent desperate people from stealing to feed their children. Medicare and SS spending ensures that our elderly population is not dying in the streets. A SS check of a thousand dollars to my Aunt Lucille paid her rent and her groceries; both things directly fed that money back into the Detroit economy.

There is no ROI on war, despite all the "blood for oil" noise during the Iraq war.

That might be the problem but it doesn't mean slash-and-burn cuts during a downturn are the answer.

I'm simply positing a scenario to solicit ideas and discussion. What would you say the answer is? We can't continue to drive up deficits forever.

But you're pointing at a symptom, not the problem. The primary reason our healthcare costs are so high is because we leave those services to the private market, where insurance companies are essentially controlling healthcare providers profits. End result is that rely disproportionately on public insurance to stay afloat, because it's so unprofitable to rely on those with private insurance.

Yes, we can't maintain our rising healthcare costs. But cutting off funding for healthcare is a stupid *** response that leaves every other issue. How expensive American healthcare is happens to be far from just a deficit-related problem. We fix it, the sheer cost issue goes away. We stop funding social healthcare and we may save that money, but we've done nothing to make healthcare affordable and millions of Americans are now dying because they can't afford it.

Problem is that reforming healthcare means putting heavy controls in place, and introducing a new system for funding that doesn't leave insurance companies with all the power when negotiating with hospitals. Right now, insurance providers make HUGE profits. Healthcare services make mediocre ones. The best part is that insurance profit margins have continued to grow since the passing of Obamacare, despite outcry on the right that they would all crash and burn.

There is one other factor that will vastly reduce healthcare spending in the future--invest in healthy living education to reduce complications in the future (most notable for Americans is health disease). The right has gone out of the way to viciously attack Michelle Obama for her healthy living "crusade." Fact of the matter is that she's right--Americans are seriously under-informed regarding health risks and disease prevention. In the long run, her efforts alone will probably save the government more money than half the politicians who were bashing her for them. Even if we limit that effect just to the children she actively engaged with as part of her healthy living programs, and not the outreach.

Ask Canada; it seems to be working out quite well for them.

We're going to keep paying because its our own damn fault nothing is getting fixed. People don't deserve painful, slow deaths because they can't afford simple healthcare procedures.

Either way, the system NEEDS to be fixed. Not just because we can't afford it, but because it's not sustainable. When a hospital can't afford to keep its doors open, with no lack of qualified care/doctors or patients, because insurance companies are the only ones making money, its eventually going to collapse on itself. Hospital closures are going to continue to be increasingly common, which will force a change one way or another.

In the last 20 years, we've lost over 35% of hospital emergency rooms to closures (meaning, total number of emergency care units, accounting for new units as well, is down by over 35%). Quick google searches (though to nothing with enough credibility to bother linking) are suggesting we could see as high as 1/3 of our hospitals close by 2020.

Thing is, demand is only increasing. The ONLY reason those hospitals will close is because they're losing money, and the only reason they'd lose money is because they have no power to negotiate prices.

This'll become a much larger issue long before our medicare spending does. It also tells me that we're going to see a huge increase in public support for socialized healthcare in the next decade. So, really, the GOP is fighting a losing battle anyway.

You are right about one thing; I'm not trying to advocate anything. I simply asked people how they would allocate the government's resources if deficit spending were outlawed. You know, the sort of ultimately pointless academic debate that drives 90% of Asylum threads? I'm trying to have an interesting discussion, you're being an Internet tough-guy.

It became interesting when I started posting, shitbird. Prior to that, it was pity driven exposition by people trying to help you. Nothing could be more boring.

No, he's actually not wrong. Posts doing nothing but trying to find out what others think without offering any opinion of your own, or sharing information, are not interesting.

All you're doing is responding to our posts with what-ifs. You haven't contributed any value. We're posting because we're bored and want to +1.

This isn't a discussion, it's us talking at you.

[EDIT]

And how can we even disagree with you? Have you even offered an opinion? The most I can think of is if you wondering if something's feasible. That's actually the lack of an opinion.

Edited, Nov 8th 2012 11:53pm by idiggory

The only realistic solution to the problem is compromise. A few tax hikes here, a few spending cuts there. The republicans refuse to accept tax hikes on the rich, and the democrats refuse to make cuts to social programs. Realistically, they should consider the middle ground option: tax hikes across the board and spending cuts across the board. As long as both sides refuse to give any ground, there will be no solution. The sad reality is that everyone involved knows this, but nobody wants to be the first one to admit it (or rather, actually do something about it).

Hell no, I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.