Five Reasons Why A National Balanced Budget Amendment Is Lunacy

[mikegriffith1]

Mr. H,

Dovahkiin is right. All the smart leaders were saying that when Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland went to shit with their stupid austerity measures after 2008.

If we did that we'd be in a recession for the next two hundred years.

Lunacy. Try your bizarre economic theory on your own budget. It is amazing that you guys seem to think that governments are immune from the laws of math.

 

[mikegriffith1]

What a bunch of lunacy. I'd like to see liberals try such jibberish in their own budgets. They'd be bankrupt in short order.

 

[NYcarbineer]

What a bunch of lunacy. I'd like to see liberals try such jibberish in their own budgets. They'd be bankrupt in short order.

Most Americans carry a ton of debt. The average person isn't any better at debt management than is the government.

 

[NYcarbineer]

We had a de facto balanced budget amendment. It was called PAYGO.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Gee, what about all the states that have balanced budget amendments and that balance their budgets without gimmicks? Why are they doing well? Why do they tend to outperform the states that don't have balanced budgets? Just some food for thought.

 

[Sun Devil 92]

I would guess that if people were clear on their objectives and guiding principles, the debt question could be solved.

It's a slippery slope, but I agree that we don't always need a balanced budget...year to year. However, debt should not be allowed to remain past a certain period of time.

If it does, then you go to austerity measures and deal with it.

Right now...debt is what allows morons like GWB to conduct stupid wars that have no value......

 

[Rozman]

We are $19 trillion in debt....
By the time Obama leaves office we will probably be close to $20 trillion....

In all these debates for both parties has anyone asked the candidates what the fuck are we going to do about this?

It's something our politicians....

Don't know about it
Don't care about it
Don't have a clue what to do about it.

Or feel like most Libs on the USMB feel....

Well nobody cared about it when Bush was President so why should we do anything about it.
Well it's no big deal because it's just an oh so small percentage of our GDP....
We Libs will worry about it when it's about 300,000 % of our GDP.

And Republican politicians are crap when it comes to this...
This should have been a priority for the party.

When will this country pull together on this.

To all candidates....
You want my vote
Explain what you are going to do about the national debt.

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

This is common sense. People who push for a "balanced budget" amendment tend to be the morons who believe the national debt is going to literally enslave our kids.
Five Reasons Why A National Balanced Budget Amendment Is Lunacy

Requiring a balanced federal budget is sheer lunacy and a recipe for disaster. We must do everything in our power to stop these well-intentioned but ill-informed individuals from pushing us down this road to ruin.
Here’s a summary of why we don’t need a balanced-budget amendment:
1. The U.S. can never be forced to default on debt denominated in dollars
2.) Deficit spending alone cannot cause inflation, crowding out or capture of resources
3.) The economic expansion of the 1990s caused the budget surplus and not the other way around
4.) Unbalanced budgets serve as economic stabilizers
5.) The government’s deficit is our surplus

Now I know you're not to be taken seriously

 

[Boss]

And Republican politicians are crap when it comes to this...
This should have been a priority for the party.

When will this country pull together on this.

To all candidates....
You want my vote
Explain what you are going to do about the national debt.

Here's the deal, no one wants to tackle this because it's political suicide. Conservatives found this out over a decade ago. The minute you suggest we should freeze just the built-in annual increase of funding to something, it is deemed a "draconian cut" by the left and you're starving little school kids or pushing granny off the cliff. They control the media and the media pushes the hard luck stories of all these poor innocent people who are going to be harmed by the evil republicans who are going to slash spending and leave them twisting in the wind.

Now, we have these debates over raising the "debt ceiling" and it's because the president refuses to submit a budget, so we have a series of "continuing resolutions" which simply kicks the can down the road a few months. Then we have idiots like the OP who say... we're not going to default on our debt... of course we'll raise the debt ceiling... don't worry, it's all good... the more debt we amass the better of we all are! It's a bunch of crackpot Keynesian nonsense.

We've gotten away with our massive out of control debt because we had a high credit rating and the global trade preferred currency is the dollar. We've now been downgraded and Russia is making moves to replace our currency with theirs as the preferred global trade currency. So we're about to go careening off the cliff in grand fashion. But... as long as the liberal's iPhones are working and they can still get a grande mocha latte at Starbucks life is good! Let's all vote for Bernie and get Free College!

 

[Dovahkiin]

Where did I act like the federal government was a separate entity from the people?

Now substitute Federal Government for Person A and Private Sector for Person B. Whenever the governments spends more than it earns, WE EARN MORE THAN WE SPEND!

WE are Person A and Person B.

If you frame it like that, sure. He's talking about the private sector earning though, y'know, the thing you guys love.

 

[Siete]

like I said, as long as the government continues to borrow from Social Security a balanced budget is impossible.

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul contradicts "balanced"

 

[Dovahkiin]

Dude, a "balanced budget" amendment would almost certainly mean drastic cuts in the things you claim to care about, caring for the needy, etc.. If you really want to do that, help us get back full employment, my inflation thread talks about what happened in the second post to take that away from us.

We're going to get back to full employment whenever a Conservative gets elected and we reverse the stupid liberal War on Capitalists. But we're also going to balance the budget and start living within our means, and programs are going to be cut. Departments and agencies are going to be eliminated. Federal government is going to relinquish control of our lives and return power to the States and private sector.

The government since the 70s has been following the absurd idea known as NAIRU, put forth by Friedman, which essentially says we can't go below a certain is unemployment rate or we'll experience "accelerated inflation." This is false, of course, but it doesn't mean the politicians didn't buy it. (I talk about this in my inflation thread on the second post.) There is no "liberal war on capitalists." Silly partisan crap like that is why I can't take half of the people here seriously. You do know private sector job growth has boomed under Obama? Doesn't mean we're anywhere near full employment though. Our government isn't doing enough to provide that, again, like I said, thanks to following the advice of a moron. Balance the budget? The budget of our federal government is not comparable to state budgets, you should know this. A "balanced budget" amendment is absolute lunacy, what happens if we start experiencing low/high aggregate demand and the private sector can't do things properly? What if we have an infrastructure problem and desperately need to pump up things, requiring a large deficit, but a balanced budget amendment exists? Yeah, drastically shrink the government, more stupid lip service that conservatives aren't actually going to do. Just ask one of my favorite presidents Reagan, who ran a deficit to help the boom you guys talk about.

 

[Dovahkiin]

We pay the tab for everything the government spends money on? See, this is the silly rhetoric that makes me wonder what the hell has happened to this country.

Well yes... who the hell else do you think pays it? The Magic Money Fairy???

The government doesn't produce a damn thing to earn revenue or profit. Every penny they have comes from the taxpayers. There is no Magic Money Fairy.

It's not rhetoric, it's just a fucking fact of life.

Please show me a time in history where the government has come down to citizens and started demanding buckets of money for the purpose of paying off the debt. (taxes don't count.)

 

[Dovahkiin]

Mr. H,

Dovahkiin is right. All the smart leaders were saying that when Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland went to shit with their stupid austerity measures after 2008.

If we did that we'd be in a recession for the next two hundred years.

Only a true moron believes that "austerity" is the cause of the economic problems of "Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland." In the first place, none of them ever implemented "austerity." In the second, "austerity" is not what caused their massive debts.

Are you stupid?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/opinion/austeritys-grim-legacy.html

Governments that slashed spending in the face of depression hurt their economies, and hence their future tax receipts, so much that even their debt will end up higher than it would have been without the cuts.

And the bitter irony of the story is that this catastrophic policy was undertaken in the name of long-run responsibility, that those who protested against the wrong turn were dismissed as feckless.

 

[Dovahkiin]

Mr. H,

Dovahkiin is right. All the smart leaders were saying that when Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland went to shit with their stupid austerity measures after 2008.

If we did that we'd be in a recession for the next two hundred years.

Lunacy. Try your bizarre economic theory on your own budget. It is amazing that you guys seem to think that governments are immune from the laws of math.

No one is saying governments are immune from the law of math. We're not like greece though, we have control of our money and don't have to borrow the Euro like Greece does. Reagan already tried my idea, and we boomed.

The Republicans who now praise that "Reagan boom" never refer to the deficits or blame the Democratic Congress, while Democrats repeatedly attack "Reagan deficits." Neither side seems aware that a steep rise in deficits began in 1981, preceding the "boom" by almost two years.

When deficit reductions finally began in 1987, they paved the way for the next recession. Political irony is everywhere.

 

[Dovahkiin]

What a bunch of lunacy. I'd like to see liberals try such jibberish in their own budgets. They'd be bankrupt in short order.

Huh? Are you talking about not balancing the budget? I'm pretty sure we've never tried to do this for good reason.. and anytime we've tried to shrink the debt, you know what happens? Take a guess.
Think big deficits cause recessions

 

[Dovahkiin]

What a bunch of lunacy. I'd like to see liberals try such jibberish in their own budgets. They'd be bankrupt in short order.

Most Americans carry a ton of debt. The average person isn't any better at debt management than is the government.

Important thing:
Why public debt is not like credit card debt

 

[Dovahkiin]

Gee, what about all the states that have balanced budget amendments and that balance their budgets without gimmicks? Why are they doing well? Why do they tend to outperform the states that don't have balanced budgets? Just some food for thought.

You can't compare states, that actually rely on the federal government for a lot of things, and the federal government, which handles a shit ton of things and needs to spend on, well, A shit ton of things for the states you talk about.

 

[Dovahkiin]

We are $19 trillion in debt....
By the time Obama leaves office we will probably be close to $20 trillion....

In all these debates for both parties has anyone asked the candidates what the fuck are we going to do about this?

It's something our politicians....

Don't know about it
Don't care about it
Don't have a clue what to do about it.

Or feel like most Libs on the USMB feel....

Well nobody cared about it when Bush was President so why should we do anything about it.
Well it's no big deal because it's just an oh so small percentage of our GDP....
We Libs will worry about it when it's about 300,000 % of our GDP.

And Republican politicians are crap when it comes to this...
This should have been a priority for the party.

When will this country pull together on this.

To all candidates....
You want my vote
Explain what you are going to do about the national debt.

I will never vote for any candidate who will try to shrink the national debt.
I will show you why:

. 1817-21: In five years, the national debt was reduced by 29 percent, to $90 million. A depression began in 1819.

2. 1823-36: In 14 years, the debt was reduced by 99.7 percent, to $38,000. A depression began in 1837.

3. 1852-57: In six years, the debt was reduced by 59 percent, to $28.7 million. A depression began in 1857..

4. 1867-73: In seven years, the debt was reduced by 27 percent, to $2.2 billion. A depression began in 1873.

5. 1880-93: In 14 years, the debt was reduced by 57 percent, to $1 billion. A depression began in 1893.

6. 1920-30: In 11 years, the debt was reduced by 36 percent, to $16.2 billion. A depression began in 1929.

 

[Boss]

Where did I act like the federal government was a separate entity from the people?

Now substitute Federal Government for Person A and Private Sector for Person B. Whenever the governments spends more than it earns, WE EARN MORE THAN WE SPEND!

WE are Person A and Person B.

If you frame it like that, sure. He's talking about the private sector earning though, y'know, the thing you guys love.

He's talking Keynesian idiocy and it doesn't work. It runs up massive debt.

We've got to get our spending under control in order to pay down our debt. The government isn't going to voluntarily do that. A Balanced Budget Amendment is like daddy cutting up the credit card. You're going to have to learn to live within your means. We cannot continue with the liberal pie in the sky dreams of free everything... it's insane. We cannot continue with crony corporatist republicans dancing around on the head of a pin explaining how the debt is no big deal... it's stupid. We need a way to force them to make the hard choices that have to be made. The time for lollygagging around and doing nothing is over. We can't continue adding a trillion dollars a year to our debt... it's not sustainable. Pretty soon, there won't even be enough private sector earning to pay the interest, much less the principle.