Monday, July 18, 2011

Someone School Me...

I'm trying to wrap my brain around this whole "debt ceiling" business. Now, I'll admit right up front I am not an economist, nor do I play one on the internet. Heck, I didn't even stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night. But it seems to me that what the .gov wants to do is analogous to this scenario:

I've got a mortgage and a second mortgage, two car payments, and have been making only the minimum payment on each of my ten credit cards. I've got a history of defaulting on loans, opening new credit cards to pay off old ones (which I then run up again), and handing out money left and right with no interest in ever getting it back.

And the "solution" to me finally running out of money is to raise the credit limit on my credit cards?

Would that fly for anyone that didn't have .gov at the end of their name?

Now, what am I missing? How is the above scenario significantly different than what the government is proposing to do with the budget crisis now? Tax receipts are outstripped by spending, so the natural response is to raise taxes. There are nebulous claims that spending will be pulled back, but with no specifics given. We're just supposed to raise the credit limit debt ceiling and somehow hope they'll spend less?

That's not the kind of change I'm interested in...

That is all.

8 comments:

Alan said...

It doesn't work for you because you can't print money to make up the difference.

Of course that only works until the rubes figure out they're getting screwed.

Anonymous said...

Every time we increase the debt limit we spend it. Right now we are spending $300 Billion a month. We are taking in $172 billion to $200 billion. We are short minimum $100 billion a month and the only thing we are getting is lip service about reining in spending.

Ozero says his unwritten plan will cut $4 trillion but he fails to say that the taxes will go up first and the tax cuts won't happen for 10 years. More new math.

Don't raise the debt limit and start slashing spending today.

Bubblehead Les. said...

One day the Federales are going to send in their Deputized Muggers with their Tacticool Pima County Special Edition M4's and say "Empty your Pockets!" What are they going to do when everyone pulls out their Empty Pockets and say's "Kiss the Bunny between the ears, 'cause that's all we have left?"

Anonymous said...

Raising the debt limit just encourages this kind of insanely stupid spending..

http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/18/feds-pay-for-study-of-gay-men’s-penis-sizes/


Feds pay for study of gay men’s penis sizes
Published: 12:47 AM 07/18/2011

By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) subsidized a study attempting to find out if a gay man’s penis size has any correlation with his sexual health.

The research, titled “The Association between Penis Size and Sexual Health among Men Who Have Sex with Men,” began in 2006 and surveyed 1,065 gay men. Among its key findings: Those gay men who felt they had small or inadequate penis sizes were more likely to become “bottoms,” or anal receptive, while gay men with larger penises were more likely to identify themselves as “tops,” or anal insertive.

Another discovery from the research: men with smaller penises were more likely to be psychologically troubled than those with larger genitalia. The goal of the study was to understand the “real individual-level consequences of living in a penis-centered society.”

The researchers at Hunter College Center for HIV/AIDS Educational Studies Training (CHEST) got taxpayer money as part of an NIH grant that went to Public Health Solutions and the National Development and Research Institutes, Inc. (NDRI).

NDRI has received taxpayer money since 1985 for “behavioral science research on drug abuse, AIDS and crime.” NIH records show that NDRI has received more than $15 million since 2000.

The gay men penis-size study falls under the NDRI’s drug abuse, AIDS and crime research category. In 2006, the year the organization started funding the penis-size research, it received $899,769 in taxpayer money. (Woman tries to sell three-day-old infant to Taco Bell customer)

Grant records indicate that NIH funds NDRI wth taxpayer dollars in order to “prepare behavioral scientists, especially from minority backgrounds, for careers in drug abuse research and allied fields” — a goal accomplished by “recruiting and appointing promising scientists, half from minority backgrounds, for traineeships,” giving them “advanced training in substantive topics and theory, research methods and practices, and the ethical conduct of research,” and by ”mentoring and advising trainees.”

“We’ve got nameless, faceless bureaucrats who thought this was a good use of taxpayer money,” says Andrea Lafferty, president of the Traditional Values Coalition, which surfaced the penis-size study. “But, at the end of the day, it was the NIH directors who signed off on it. These nameless, faceless bureacrats seem to think the American taxpayers are a limitless ATM machine.”

Mike W. said...

Alan - And if you DID start printing your own money and handing it out to pay off your debts people would quickly realize it was worthless.

Fiftycal said...

OK, let's look at something some people can understand. You start talking about "trillion, billion, million" people blank out. Can't relate. OK, to start with, for every $100 the government (US gov., others are excluded from this) spends, $44 is BORROWED. $30 of that is borrowed from itself, IE, PRINTED! You wonder why our gas prices go up? Well, oil prices v. euro havn't gone up as much.

So, the US spends $1,500 BILLION more each year than it takes in. ObamMAO and his henchmen want to "tax the riche" to make up the difference. OK, 3% increase on the riche'. That brings in maybe $50 billion. What about the other $1,450? Well, restore the Klinton tax rates on everybody, that brings in $200 billion a year. So how about the other $1,250? End the wealth re-distribution "earned income tax credit", that doesn't pay out $150 billion. What about the OTHER $1,100 BILLION? So, you tell me? Wanna raise the tax on gasoline $5 a gallon, making it JUST LIKE EUROPE? NOT ENOUGH! That only brings in $700 billion. And it KILLS the economy. And WHAT ABOUT THE LAST 400 BILLION a year that is more than could be taken in?

Do you realize that IF there was a $100 BILLION a year "surplus" AND that was used to BUY BACK the debt, it would take ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS to eliminate that debt?

Right now, with the highest rated bonds in the world, debt payment on the INTEREST is $360 BILLION. We increase the DEBT that much in LESS than 4 MONTHS!

Chris said...

It actually works a little differently on the macroeconomic scale. Nothing will really happen if we raise the debt ceiling this time, like we've done before under Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. Nothing significant happened. What it does is continue to encourage irresponsible spending. When you have assholes on both sides more concerned about their phony, baloney jobs and their party's image than the country that's the real problem. I've heard cut this, raise that always so quick to make Americans suffer for them and their special interests. I've heard no mention of 4 wars, foreign aid and banking cartels. When someone down there is ready to do their job, I'll listen.

Anonymous said...

If Alan did start printing his own money, can we call it "Al-yen"?

*rimshot*

It'll probably be worth more than our dollar will be at the current rate of inflation...