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Administrative costs
26 Sep 2008 09:40 pm
Now I protest one of McCain's ridiculous falsehoods: that he is going to pay for tax cuts by cutting spending in agencies you don't care about and never heard of. Those agencies don't cost us enough money to pay for rebating that strange federal telephone tax. If you actually want to cut taxes, you have to address entitlement spending. And McCain is so far just as cowardly as the rest of them about actually taking an axe--or at least a means test--to Social Security or Medicare. I mean, fine, if you say you want those programs and are therefore willing to have marginal tax rates hit fifty percent. (Well, not fine. But I admire your consistency). But if you aren't willing to touch those programs, you cannot, with a shred of intellectual honesty, claim that you're going to meaningfully cut government spending.
I just had to comment how much I'm enjoying your simultaneous debate commentary. I'm a grad student at University of Maryland, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and a huge fan of your writing. And I agree, "Miss Congeniality," please.
You're at Reason right now? Awesome.
What entitlement spending? Do you include defense in that?
Nice to see you making sense again Megan.
Hmmm, means testing? So My wife and I pay at max rate for decades and get nada. Great system.
JimS whines: "Hmmm, means testing? So My wife and I pay at max rate for decades and get nada."
If you need it at some point you'll get it. Think of it as the patriotic thing to do.
Oh, wait, if you're a Republican you won't find that argument convincing...
When Gibson drilled Palin on this, she replied that one thing she would not cut is Veteran's bennies. He heard her saying all defense would be off-limits, and so offered a Goresigh, but that's not what she said.
I think a McCain-Palin administration in conjunction with a Dem Congress could see significant defense cuts, especially in the Pentagon bureaucracy and various glorified welfare programs that fall under the defense umbrella. Churchill cut defense mercilessly as Chancellor in the 20's against all expectations, and both McCain and Palin have Churchillian personalities (recklessness, weak ties to party, impatience with the academic, strong ties to country, what our leftist friends might call innumeracy).
Moe,
Republicans would be very satisfied to see SS and Medicare return to being insurance programs as originally intended and sold by FDR. It's the left that fears they would lose widespread support if means-tested. They might be correct.
Moe,
Republicans would be very satisfied to see SS and Medicare return to being insurance programs as originally intended and sold by FDR. It's the left that fears they would lose widespread support if means-tested. They might be correct.
Did I halucinate this? I could have sworn McCain actually mentioned "entitlements."
I'm pretty sure I halucinated Obama's answer to what he would cut due to the bailout. I could have sworn that he said we'd have to respond to doubling the national debt by adding more early childhood education spending. That can't have happened.
David Warner: "Republicans would be very satisfied to see SS and Medicare return to being insurance programs as originally intended and sold by FDR."
Intended? One of the things that FDR remarked was, specifically, that he wants to wrap up Social Security so tightly that no one will ever be able to remove it. Selling it as an insurance program, while it's really a system of direct transfers, is part and parcel of that ploy.
"Republicans would be very satisfied to see SS and Medicare return to being insurance programs as originally intended and sold by FDR."
The phrasing here is accurate and revealing. Indeed, Republicans would be happy to see this happen. However, they are not interested in spending any political capital or risking their re-election in order to make it happen. So they campaign endlessly on vague unspecified spending cuts but never, ever deliver them.
(The underlying problem being, of course, that the electorate feels the same way. They want magical spending cuts, but really like all the programs the government actually spends money on.)
This has been the pattern since 1980 at least. I think a generation of rigorously consistent behavior is enough time to declare it the rule, and completely discount any promises about spending cuts from McCain unless he gives details.
Worth noting that McCain actually has talked about entitlements -- while Obama has run pandering ads accusing him of wanting to slash Social Security benefits.
Also worth noting that a vigorous 72-year old might be the very best spokesman for raising the retirement age.
And McCain is so far just as cowardly as the rest of them about actually taking an axe--or at least a means test--to Social Security or Medicare.
Almost as cowardly, perhaps. He did, after all, vote against the prescription drug benefit, which puts him a bit up on most.
MoeLarryandJesus,
"Think of it as the patriotic thing to do."
First, like many veterans I find this being lectured on my patriotism bit pretty annoying.
Second, I love how people think it's patriotic to advocate raising other people's taxes.
In the end means testing is probably inevitable, but lets not pretend it's a fair system.
Okay here you go: consistency combined with realism:
Yes, tax rates should be in the range we see in Europe. Their growth rate is the same as ours, long-term.
This is the government we've chosen. If we want it we have to pay for it.
Even Holtz-Eakin agrees. The candidates can't say it, but that's where we're going. (Either that, or a death spiral.)
It's time to end the generation of magical thinking.
In the end means testing is probably inevitable, but lets not pretend it's a fair system.
How much would means testing truly cut? How many Americans could retire without SS and Medicare benefits? From looking at my retirement plan (albeit 40 years from now) I don't see how I could save enough money in that time. If I have SS, I'd have a decent retirement, without it I'm not 100% sure I could make it. Without Medicare I'm 100% sure I couldn't ever retire.
Until I see some numbers from the means testing crowd, I'm calling BS on the whole thing. Wouldn't it be better to just raise the retirement age to reflect that people are healthier longer, and many work in white collar jobs?
What needs to be cut is military spending, and it needs to be cut drastically, by at least a factor of two. This has got to be the one area that combines massive spending with (extremely) suboptimal outcomes; I can't think of any other institution that delivers so little bang on so many bucks.
It's not as if we don't outspend every other major player combined already. Further, I'd make military personnel available for domestic duties as well. Rather than spending eighteen months getting shot at and being blown up, I suspect that most would actually be better put to use calling on elderly shut-ins, giving sponge baths . . . in short, taking over a lot of the more mundane nursing duties that suck up so much professional time and energy. Or maybe we could use raw recruits on road gangs to help rebuild domestic infrastructure.
That seems to me to be a much more reasonable allocation of resources.
ScentOfViolets said: "Further, I'd make military personnel available for domestic duties as well. Rather than spending eighteen months getting shot at and being blown up, I suspect that most would actually be better put to use calling on elderly shut-ins, giving sponge baths . . ."
Either ScentOfViolets has been sniffing something other than violets, or has managed to live totally sheltered from reality.
Military skill sets are difficult to acquire, require constant practice, and a high degree of motivation and intelligence.
I fear that ScentOfViolets is living in a far left liberal fantasy world that fails to understand what military service is and what it requires.
I'm sorry Bill, but your post makes no sense whatsoever.
But thanks for the tacit admission that the country spends way too much of it's finite resources on the military.
I'm with Bill here. ScentofViolets, it seems that you think both military work and giving sponge baths require no training, skill, or natural inclination. Or perhaps you think it doesn't matter whether they are done well. Sponge-bath givers go into their line of work for reasons- and armored-personell-carrier drivers go into their line of work for DIFFERENT reasons. People are not interchangeable, nor are their skill sets. And when I am in a position to need people visiting or bathing my shut-in self, I certainly hope my visitors and bathers won't be the military just because somebody thought it would save money. Good lord.
It's not quite as bad as advocating that nursing home-attendants should defend our country, but there is an equivalence there.
There are military personnel who have the skill sets to repair roads and other construction work. But in private construction work (and that includes government contractors), the difference between a good job an an unaccpetible job is the efficiency and productivity with which you do it, within a given set of standards. In the military, efficiency never applies to money- it applies to supplies and personnel. The orentation towards the efficient use of money is a discipline that must be acquired, and must be constantly, constantly reinforced. The military just doesn't have that. So I predict military projects started to occupy the military during peacetime would be
-fabulously over-budget
-weaken military readiness
-take work from civilian contractors who could have done the job under budget
-be the waste of resources that most make-work is.
Kind of like what the army corps of engineers ends up doing a lot.
Sigh. Pardon me for expressing skepticism that a young person can be trained to do one or the other but not both.
Or that the military hasn't already been used in peacetime for purposes that are not strictly military.
Please, make your objections thought out rather than knee-jerk.
ScentOfViolets: Sigh. Pardon me for expressing skepticism that a young person can be trained to do one or the other but not both.
Or that the military hasn't already been used in peacetime for purposes that are not strictly military.
Please, make your objections thought out rather than knee-jerk.
Well, you could make your examples a little more plausible. And my objections are well-thought out, though maybe I didn't show my work enough.
Training young people to do things takes time and money. Training soldiers to be caregivers would not be free. We have had many troubles over the years in using soldiers as peacekeepers- basically as police. It doesn't work especially well, because they are different skill sets and goals. That would be one of the uses the military has been put to that is not military. It's doable; but quite problematic. I think the gap between soldier and policeman is smaller than the gap between soldier and visitor-of-shutins. I don't mean that the concept is unthinkable; it just doesn't, on the face of it, seem like a moneysaver.
And really, your example just seems like a worst-case scenario. If I- vulnerable, weak, and not in control of my body functions- needed a sponge-bath, I think a solider would be my last choice. Soldiers are trained to be insensitive to pain. Caregivers are trained to be attuned to others' comfort. There's a direct problem here.
Then maybe we need fewer soldiers and more care-givers.
But really, I don't think the problem is the soldiers. I think the problem is their equipment. We are spending massive amounts on Buck Rogers stuff that has only marginal application to the actual missions we are sending our troops on, or on expensive systems whose technology is fantastically advanced but really little more effective than more conventional, mundane systems which are already in service. We also tolerate potentially massive graft and inefficiency in the military contracting process, which we cannot investigate because it is off-budget or classified or otherwise shielded from public scrutiny. Getting that under control might go quite some way towards closing our budgetary problems, without impacting our military capabilities.
The problem if you eliminate or restrict entitlements is, what replaces them? They are there because people need help, to cover expenses they cannot cover on their own. The alternative plans (SS "privatization," free-market health care) do not address these needs. All they amount to is shifting the burden from a large group (the entire society via taxes) to a much smaller one (individuals willing to contribute to charitable organizations).
It's all well and good to rail against taxation and excessive government spending. But you need to think about what you're saying, and I don't think you really have thought it through. At least, I hope that's the explanation, because the alternative (you've thought it through carefully and would rather just set everyone adrift on the seas of fate) is unpalatable in the extreme.